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“During the night a group of six persons in two armoured vehicles, having rammed through the fencing surrounding Institution 14/10, were to break into the compound of the labor camp. Having broken through to the sector indicated by the group’s Commanding Officer, they were to adopt a defensive position and retain it for five minutes. After this they were to leave by the same route, abandoning the vehicles after a few kilometres and disappearing.

“The rendezvous was to be on April 20 in Khudzhand, Tajikistan. There all the participants would receive genuine passports as citizens of Tajikistan and, in the guise of seasonal workers, would be transported overland to the place of the planned events. They would be registered and prepared for the operation approximately 100–150 kilometres from Krasnokamensk. All equipment essential for conducting the operation would be prepared by another group functioning independently. The group would move out at the very last moment. The precise destination was known only to two of six men, myself and the group’s Commanding Officer. The others were operating blind and would receive material recompense. Now, concerning the reasons why I am appealing to you. My principled belief is that MBK has the basic right to take decisions concerning his own destiny. In reaching my decision on February 10 to participate I was certain that he was behind this operation. Now I am no longer 100 per cent certain of that.”

Obviously MBK is the imprisoned ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Krasnokamensk is a town on the outskirts of which Penal Colony 14/10 is located, where he is imprisoned.

If I understand correctly, the document describes a plan to organise an enforced “escape.” There could be only one outcome of any such attempted departure from the colony for Khodorkovsky (and not only for him): a bullet. “Shot while attempting to escape during a break-out planned by members of the Yukos oil company organised crime group.” And that would be the end of the “Decembrist Exile” soap opera with its endless court cases on every pretext, its indefatigable lawyers, its Open Russia Foundation, its chemicals and destinies, its discussion of the right to scholarly activity in prison camps, the visits widely reported in the press, and so forth. The soap opera would have a stop put to it, and no doubt Khodorkovsky’s colleague, Leonid Nevzlin, would finally be extradited from Israel. Is all this credible? Entirely.

Then again, perhaps it is all complete nonsense, the lunacy of an individual citizen. Such things happen. But what if it isn’t? There could be yet another possible outcome: a prison uprising might appear to have happened, and who would be the ringleader of a riot in 14/10? Naturally, a person who aspired, or so the Kremlin claims, to great power. They would have been quite right to detain him in punishment cells, and indeed to have liquidated the rioter.

There are stories, as every journalist knows, which it is better to publish than keep to yourself. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that this may save somebody’s life. If we are to give credence to the plan outlined above and our informant’s explanations, then the lives of prisoners in Corrective Labor Camp 14/10, of Khodorkovsky, and also of officers staffing the colony are presently under threat.

Should a newspaper report the probability of a deadly threat to somebody? Undoubtedly, in order to avert a possible tragedy. The enforced “escape,” no matter who was preparing it or for what purpose, is hardly in Khodorkovsky’s interests. The attempt to implement the escape might lead to the death of other prisoners and officers of the camp, the more so because the “seasonal workers” for the “breakthrough group” proved on closer inspection to be former military men, some of them ex-KGB officers, with a less than unblemished reputation. Some, indeed, had served prison sentences.

And what if it is a complete hoax, and Novaya gazeta is merely being implicated in an imaginary plot? We will