MOSCOW, February 11 - RAPSI, Maria Petrova. The Russian government has appealed the European Court of Human Rights' decision which ruled in favor of Alexei Pichugin, the former YUKOS head of security who was sentenced for life for masterminding several murders , his lawyer Ksenia Kostromina told RIA Novosti on Monday.

She said that she had received a letter from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) informing her that the Russian government had filed an appeal on January 22.
She added that the ECHR Grand Chamber would decide on whether the appeal should be accepted or not within three months.

Alexei Pichugin was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment in 2005 after a Russian court convicted him of having planned the 1998 assassination of Nefteyugansk Mayor Vladimir Petukhov, as well as of the attempted assassination of former YUKOS CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky's adviser Olga Kostina that same year.

Then he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007 for murder and attempted murder. This sentence was added to a 20-year sentence.

In his application, Pichugin asked the ECHR to recognize that three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights were violated during the consideration of the first case, namely Article 3 on the prohibition of torture, Article 5 on the right to liberty and security, and Article 6 on the right to a fair trial.

The court subsequently ruled that Russia had violated Article 6 and awarded Pichugin 9,500 in damages and costs.

On October 23, 2012, it held that Russia also violated Pichugin's right to a fair trial.

Kostromina had said that she planned to file an appeal with the Russian Supreme Court to overturn Pichugin's sentence and the cassation ruling in the first case against him.

The YUKOS case has been one of the most high profile in Russia in recent years. In the early 2000s, the authorities accused Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev of economic crimes. The arrests and trials of a number of other company members soon followed. YUKOS, then the country's largest oil company, was declared bankrupt and its assets were taken over by Rosneft. Many in the West believe that the case was politically driven, although Moscow denies the charges.