MOSCOW — Chess master Garry Kasparov staged the latest of his guerrilla hit-and-run protests against the Kremlin on Wednesday, showing up at the criminal trial of a former billionaire and engaging in a brief, heated debate with one of the prosecutors.
Spectators gawked and whispered when Kasparov sat on a front bench in the courtroom where Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, is being tried on charges he embezzled billions of dollars while he was the chief of the Yukos Oil Company.
Kasparov and other supporters of Khodorkovsky say he is chiefly guilty of making an enemy of former President Vladimir Putin.
Last week Kasparov used a similar gambit, popping up Friday at a ceremony in Sochi during the mayoral race in that city, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. He managed to do what the challengers on the ballot hadn't: confront the Kremlin-backed candidate, Anatoly Pakhomov.
The Khodorkovsky trial has been plodding along with motion hearings and Kasparov and some of his supporters managed to slip into the cramped third-floor courtroom without being challenged. Kasparov sat just a few feet from Khodorkovsky, who smiled and nodded at his visitor.
When the judge ordered a recess, Kasparov confronted prosecutor Gyulchekhra Ibragimova as she walked past him on her way out.
During the brief and tense exchange, Ibragimova told Kasparov she respected him but added he should have been playing chess rather than wasting his time in court.
"You are an amateur" in the courtroom, she told him.
A smiling Kasparov accused the prosecution of seeking "to replace the force of law with the law of force," and suggested she and other prosecutors were "selling the honor of your profession" by pursuing the case against Khodorkovsky.
A half-dozen guards, some with automatic rifles and pistols, stood by watching impassively.
Khodorkovsky and his co-defendant, former Yukos executive Platon Lebedev, witnessed the confrontation at close range from inside the glassed-in defendant's booth. Both grinned. Lebedev winked at one supporter.
Many of the roughly 30 spectators in the courtroom were Khodorkovsky supporters, and during the recess several shouted at prosecutors as they hurried down the stairs.
Kasparov, one of the most famous of the Russian opposition leaders, said before the trial began it was his "civic duty" to demonstrate support for Khodorkovsky.
The government has accused Khodorkovsky and Lebedev of embezzling $25 billion from subsidiaries of the now-bankrupt Yukos. Both defendants have pleaded innocent to the charges.
Khodorkovsky is already serving an eight-year sentence in a Siberian prison following his 2005 conviction on fraud and tax evasion charges.
Yukos, once Russia's largest oil producer, was declared bankrupt in 2006 and later sold to pay billions of dollars in alleged back taxes. Most Yukos assets are now owned by the state-controlled Rosneft oil company, today the country's biggest oil producer.
If convicted of the new charges, Khodorkovsky could serve another 22 years in prison.
The latest Khodorkovsky case is seen as a test for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has called for judicial and political reforms and for broader participation in elections.
These measures would reverse the course set by Putin, Medvedev's mentor and predecessor, who rolled back democratic reforms during his eight years as president.
"As long as this trial continues, the talk of liberalization remains just talk," Kasparov said at one point. "It makes the whole concept of law and justice a sad joke."