Accused doctors are ‘scapegoats’, Magnitsky’s boss claims

The Moscow News

As the Russian media reported criminal charges against two prison doctors supposedly responsible for Sergei Magnitsky’s death, his old boss is not wholly convinced.

“While I’m sure these doctors were sadistic sociopaths for what they did to Sergei, I’m sure they were taking orders from investigators higher up,” Bill Browder told The Moscow News, minutes after a Moscow court turned down a request from Natalia Magnitskaya, the dead man’s mother, to get tissue samples for independent examination.

Passing down the food chain

“What we see going on here is that there has been huge international pressure building up over the last year for the Russian government to prosecute the people who tortured and killed Sergei Magnitsky.
“They have been responded to this pressure by sacrificing the lowest people on the totem pole rather than any serious officials who played a role in the torture and murder of Sergei Magnitsky or the crimes he discovered,” Browder said.

But members of the Presidential Council on Human Rights were more upbeat, “These decisions, about the prosecution are the result of our [the council’s] work together with investigators… Work on the Magnitsky case continues with investigators and we are in touch practically every day,” Kirill Kabanov, council member and head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, told RIA Novosti.

But he was skeptical about press reports that all the guilt fell on the doctors.

Due medical care

The Investigative Committee launched a criminal case against two former pre-trial detention center staff Larisa Litvinova and Dmitry Kratov on Monday.

Litvinova, who was Magnitsky’s doctor, is charged with causing the lawyer’s death by neglecting to render professional care. Her superior at the detention center, Kratov, is charged with negligence. Magnitsky’s mother unsuccessfully sued to get access to tissue samples from her son to get what she hoped would be an objective port-mortem assessment.

While Magnitsky supporters lambast the lack of critical care they say he was also tortured prior to his death.

“At Sergei Magnitsky’s funeral, relatives discovered that his hands were marked by bruises and abrasions, and several of his fingers broken. They also learned that Magnitsky had been placed in handcuffs and struck with a rubber baton in his final hours in custody,” a press release emailed to The Moscow News said.

Magnitsky was working for the Hermitage Capital investment fund when he was arrested. He claimed he had uncovered massive fraud on the part of law enforcement officials just before he was detained by some of the same officials. His death led to an international outcry. займ на карту займ срочно без отказов и проверок zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php онлайн займы