A note taped to a Moscow courthouse door was all that awaited the hundreds of family, friends, lawyers, journalists and human rights activists who arrived on Wednesday expecting to hear the verdict in the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man.

The long-awaited judgment had been postponed to May 16, the note said without explanation, in the latest Gogolesque twist in the legal attack on Mr Khodorkovsky and the Yukos oil company he created.