Bosses Pressed Russian Judge, Official Says.

MOSCOW -- The judge in last year's politically charged trial of the former oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky openly admitted that the verdict would be dictated to him by his superiors, a former court official charged in an interview published on Friday. ''He spoke this way about the trial: 'I basically don't decide this. As they say, that's how it will be,' '' the former official, Igor Kravchenko, said of Judge Viktor N. Danilkin in an interview with the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which is often critical of the Russian government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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