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MOSCOW – Europe's human rights court ruled on Tuesday that Russia was guilty of violations in its jailing of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but found no firm proof that the case was politically motivated, Reuters reported.

The European Court of Human Rights ordered Moscow to pay him 24,500 euros ($35,300) in compensation for violations linked to his 2003 arrest and jailing on charges of fraud and tax evasion.

Lawyers for Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, said they had no plans to appeal the ruling, calling it "a major victory" and saying their client was "delighted by the vindication of his position by the European court."

Khodorkovsky, 47, built up a fortune after Soviet Union's 1991 collapse as the head of oil major Yukos, but fell out with then-President Vladimir Putin after airing corruption allegations, challenging state control over oil exports and funding opposition parties.

Many Western governments and business have come to see his case as raising serious doubts about Russia's commitment to the rule of law.

lawyer Lord David Pannick told reporters in a telephone briefing the European court ruling "was a major victory for the claimant and a major defeat for the government whether or not the court attributes -- as it very rarely does -- a bad faith motive to that government."

The Strasbourg-based court ruled: "Khodorkovsky's case might raise some suspicion as to what the real intent of the Russian authorities might have been for prosecuting him, (but) claims of political motivation behind prosecution required incontestible proof, which had not been presented."

After the initial fraud and tax evasion conviction in 2005, Khodorkovsky was tried again and found guilty in December of stealing billions of dollars of oil from Yukos subsidiaries through price mechanisms and laundering some of the money. He is sentenced to remain in jail until 2016.

The human rights court ruled that Khodorkovsky's arrest at gunpoint as he was about to board his plane at a Siberian airfield was unlawful.

He was initially taken in for questioning as a witness but within hours had become an accused and served with a 35-page charge-sheet, the court said.

It also said that his detention had been extended without justification on two occasions and that there had been procedural flaws that had put Khodorkovsky at a disadvantage.

"It is a very, very impressive list of violations, almost all the principal points which we have raised," defence lawyer Karinna Moskalenko said.

She said the fact that the Strasbourg court did not rule the arrest to be politically motivated was not a defeat because it required a "very high" burden of proof.

To date the court has only once issued a positive ruling on such a complaint, she said.

The Council of Europe is charged with implementing the courts decisions, which Russia is legally obliged to follow.

Khodorkovsky's supporters say his trials were part of a Kremlin campaign to punish him for challenges to Putin, keep him out of politics, ensure loyalty from other tycoons and tighten state control over Russia's oil reserves.

Once Russia's biggest oil producer, Yukos was bankrupted by back-tax claims after Khodorkovsky's arrest in 2003 and its assets sold off, with its main production subsidiaries ending up in the hands of state-run Rosneft (ROSN.MM).

Khodorkovsky said on Tuesday that he had appealed for parole, raising renewed hopes among rights activists for his early release, despite an appeals court ruling upholding his conviction last week.

In a sign of a potential change in the Kremlin's attitude, state-controlled television aired Khodorkovsky's answers to a written interview in a prime-time broadcast over the weekend.

Putin harshly criticised Khodorkovsky in televised remarks in December, saying "a thief must be jail", but President Dmitry Medvedev said earlier this month that the former tycoon's release would not be dangerous to society.