Rights campaigners question Interior Ministry’s version of Magnitsky’s death

Interfax

Human rights campaigners distrust the Interior Ministry’s version of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death as well as the ministry’s claims that he was arrested because he could flee abroad.

“The facts we possess support our version that he died as a result of being beaten. He was actually killed. Let them prove the opposite,” head of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission and Moscow Helsinki Group member Valery Borshchyov told Interfax on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, chief of the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Department Pavel Lapshov denied any “cause-and-effect link between alleged beatings or any hardships or deprivations he [Magnitsky] had allegedly been put through”.

“He died in a cell where eight people were beating him. There is a death certificate that states that Magnitsky had a head injury. There are documents confirming the use of a rubber stick and handcuffs, and there is a report by a district investigator about the possibility of opening a criminal case under Article 105 [of the Criminal Code] – ‘murder’. There is a document confirming that Magnitsky’s mother was refused an independent forensic examination. We want these facts to be investigated,” Borshchyov said.

“The Serbsky Institute [for Social and Forensic Psychiatry] did not confirm a prison doctor’s diagnosis that Mignitsky was suffering from psychosis. The use of handcuffs and a rubber stick against him was unjustified,” the campaigner said.

Borshchyov led an independent inquiry into Magnitsky’s death and took part in drafting a report on the case within the framework of the Presidential Human Rights Council.

Borshchyov dismissed as unfounded the Interior Ministry’s version that Magnitsky had been put into an isolation ward because investigators feared he might flee abroad. “He had no international passport. He could not have fled with his domestic passport because of passport control”.

The presidential council’s working group had drafted its report on Magnitsky’s case long before Hermitage Capital published its own report, he said.

Interior Ministry investigator Oleg Silchenko insists that he had every reason to demand Magnitsky’s arrest. payday loan займы онлайн на карту срочно https://zp-pdl.com zp-pdl.com займы на карту без отказа