"As he was being released, Khodorkovsky requested that he were issued documents needed to travel abroad. After the release he took a flight to the Federal Republic of Germany," the service's press service said.
The prison service did not provide detail of the flight, which took Khodorkovsky out of Russia. But an RT source at a local airport cited aviation chatter as saying that Khodorkovsky had flown out of the town of Segezha, where his prison is located, in a helicopter. RT's correspondent at the scene Egor Piskunov is trying to verify the information.
There may be some confusion about the helicopter, since Russia's Emergencies Ministry reported that it sent one of its helicopters to the same airport on Friday to evacuate an employee who had been injured in a car accident.
What is known is that Khodorkovsky has walked out of prison in the Karelia Region, nearly 1,000 kilometers north of Moscow, hours after the presidential decree was signed. His lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant confirmed it, citing an official notification.
