Mikhail Khodorkovsky walks free from prison after Putin pardon Mikhail Khodorkovsky Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's most famous prisoner, is now a free man. The former oil tycoon, who spent more than a decade behind bars, left the Segezha prison colony on Friday morning, his lawyer said, hours after President Vladimir Putin signed a decree authorising Mr Khodorkovsky's release. In the two-sentence decree, Mr Putin said his decision to grant Mr Khodorkovsky clemency was "guided by the principles of humanity." The decree did not say whether the pardon had been conditional on Mr Khodorkovsky admitting guilt. Once Russia's richest man, Mr Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 on allegations of tax evasion and fraud at his oil company Yukos, yet his arrest was widely seen as politically motivated as it came soon after he challenged Mr Putin over top-level corruption. In the months following Mr Khodorkovsky's arrest, Yukos was dismembered and sold to his rivals and state enterprises, with a significant portion of the assets now under the control of state-owned Rosneft. Mr Putin made the surprise announcement about Mr Khodorkovsky's pardon to a small group of reporters on Thursday following a four-hour annual press conference with local and foreign media. Mr Putin said that he had received a letter from Mr Khodorkovsky who had asked for pardon on humanitarian reasons and cited the poor health of his mother. [He] has already spent more than 10 years in prison. That is a serious punishment," Mr Putin said. The pardon comes less than two months before Russia is due to host the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and many view the clemency as a move to appease international opinion ahead of the event. While Russia has poured $46bn into preparing for the Winter Olympics, heads of state including US President Barack Obama have pulled out of attending amid criticism of the Kremlin's human rights record. On Friday, Russia's humans rights ombudsman Vladimr Lukin called Mr Khodorkovsky's release a "remedy" for a society "ill with fear, hate and excessive suspicion." "The decision will have a very good invigorating and humanising effect," he told Russian newswire Interfax. On Friday, it was still unclear whether Mr Khodorkovsky had indeed written a letter to Mr Putin asking for pardon, or whether he had actually admitted guilt, as Mr Putin's spokesman has alleged. Mr Khodorkovsky's legal team said they did not have prior knowledge of a letter and declined to comment further on Thursday until they had spoken to their client. Friends of Mr Khodorkovsky questioned whether the oil tycoon would admit guilt after more than a decade of resilience in prison. Alexander Temerko, a former Yukos vice-president said: "I will never believe he admitted his guilt, because there can be no guilt when a crime has not been committed."