Report Calls for Prosecution of Officials in Death of Russian Lawyer

New York Times

A human rights panel that advises President Dmitri A. Medvedev on Wednesday published a damning report on the case of Sergei L. Magnitsky, arguing that highly-placed investigators and prison officials share responsibility for his death in state custody.

Among the surprises in the report is the assertion that Mr. Magnitsky’s death may have been brought about by a beating at the hands of a team of eight psychiatric orderlies at a clinic where he was transported after suffering from abdominal pain and vomiting. Government investigators have attributed his death to heart disease that went undetected during his 11 months in custody.

It is known that he was beaten. The clinic’s attending physician, Dr. Aleksandra V. Gaus, has said she called in the team of orderlies to subdue Mr. Magnitsky because she believed he was psychotic. Forensic experts have noted that Mr. Magnitsky’s body showed the “impact of a blunt hard object (or objects) not long before death,” and legal documents reveal that “a rubber baton was used on Magnitsky” in the clinic’s reception area.

The report, compiled by the Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights, a group of prominent rights activists, finds fundamental flaws in Mr. Magnitsky’s prosecution. Among the investigative team working on the case against Mr. Magnitsky, it says, were Interior Ministry officials against whom he had testified in a $230 million fraud case the year before.

Mr. Magnitsky’s requests to remove these investigators from his case were rejected by the Interior Ministry, the report says.

This “created a situation of obvious conflict of interest, which contradicts the requirements of the law,” the report says. “The refusal to eliminate the given conflict of interest may prove to be negligence, or else some kind of personal interest on the part of the heads of the investigation.”

The report will pose a challenge for Mr. Medvedev, who has demanded that the guilty parties be prosecuted. The inquiry he set in motion, now 18 months old, has met adamant resistance. The police called a news conference on the anniversary of Mr. Magnitsky’s death to accuse him of further crimes and also bestowed public honors on some of the investigators who put Mr. Magnitsky behind bars.

Russia’s powerful Investigative Committee announced on Monday that there will be prosecutions in the case, but suggested that they will be limited to doctors who denied Mr. Magnitsky medical care during his 11 months in custody.

The report released Wednesday apportions significant blame to Oleg F. Silchenko, the lead investigator in the case, saying he used false grounds to keep Mr. Magnitsky in pre-trial detention for 11 months, moved him to a facility with minimal medical facilities and delayed his transfer to the clinic where he died. Investigators have said Mr. Silchenko has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Mr. Magnitsky, 37, was working as outside counsel for Hermitage Capital, a British investment fund whose owner had clashed with Russian law enforcement authorities. Mr. Magnitsky, who advised Hermitage on paying Russian taxes, testified that senior Interior Ministry officers had used his employer’s companies to embezzle $230 million from the Russian treasury. After that, Mr. Magnitsky was arrested and held without bail on charges of assisting in a $17.4 million tax fraud. займы на карту срочно займ срочно без отказов и проверок https://zp-pdl.com/fast-and-easy-payday-loans-online.php zp-pdl.com займы на карту без отказа