Musicians Sound Out for Russian Prisoners
Members of the Kremerata Baltica string orchestra emerged on stage first, all dressed in black. Their leader, the violinist Gidon Kremer, took his place in front, wearing a white shirt and a long black vest, with his bespectacled profile to the audience, his knees slightly bent, looking like a forlorn fiddler.
They played something impossibly plaintive, a piece of music in which the sadness built interminably, it seemed. The orchestra took halting breaks followed by a note of even greater sadness. There would be no relief: The musicians seemed simply to stop at one point and take a bow.
“V & V,” for voice and violin, by the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, where the taped voice belonged to a long-dead singer, was the opening piece in an unusual concert on Tuesday night that was organized in the geographical center of Europe, a few blocks from the European Court of Human Rights, to draw attention to the continuing struggle of two former oil magnates, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky and Platon A. Lebedev, and, organizers said, other Russian political prisoners.
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Russia’s Medvedev sides with human rights activists on Sergei Magnitsky killing
Russian President Dimitry Medvedev surprised many when he backed a report blaming the 2009 fatality of anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on prison brutality.
But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appeared to do that Tuesday after being handed a scathing report, prepared by the Kremlin’s own human rights commission, that described the 2009 prison death of anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky as the work of prison guards who savagely beat him and doctors who refused to treat him. The report also blamed top officials for covering up the whole affair.
“The case of Magnitsky is a very sad case, for this man is dead, and in all likelihood, there were certain criminal actions that led to this result,” Mr. Medvedev said after meeting with the commission, an advisory body that includes some of Russia’s top human rights campaigners.
While the Kremlin commission’s advice is often ignored, experts say things might be different this time. The report given to Medvedev, which clashes sharply with the findings of an official investigation, not only describes the appalling conditions Mr. Magnitsky was subjected to but also names several prison officials and medical authorities who allegedly colluded in the abuse.
“Our report is no abstract document,” says Valery Borshchev, a former Duma deputy and coauthor of the report. “We name the people actually responsible for what happened to Magnitsky and cite the evidence that permits us to accuse them of corruption and other legal violations. We name the doctors who withheld medical assistance from him. We don’t name any top officials because their involvement has yet to be proven.”
Unlawful arrest, brutal detention
Magnitsky, a lawyer with the British-based Hermitage Capital, had filed a 2008 lawsuit alleging a $230 million tax fraud by a number of top Russian law enforcement officials. Within weeks, he was arrested by some of those same officials, charged with fraud, and taken to Matrosskaya Tishina, a notorious Moscow pretrial detention center.
A year later, Magnitsky died of heart failure in prison after apparently being denied medical treatment. The case, which seemed to exemplify the worst of Russia’s corruption-ridden justice system and violence-plagued prisons, attracted widespread attention. At the time, Medvedev promised a full investigation.
But the official inquiry presented Monday found no fault with prison officials and merely blamed unnamed doctors for not acting efficiently in his case.
“The experts identified deficiencies in the medical care given to Magnitsky during his detention, which may have prevented a timely diagnosis of his chronic illness,” a spokesman for the official Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, told journalists. “In this regard, he was not provided with timely and appropriate treatment.”
But the report given to Medvedev the next day by the Kremlin human rights panel provided evidence that Magnitsky’s original arrest was unlawful, that his detention was marked by beatings and possibly torture aimed at extracting a confession of guilt, and that prison officials instructed doctors not to treat him.
“It is clear that Magnitsky, who was in a critical state of health, was beaten in prison,” says Mr. Borshchev.
On the night he died “he was delivered to Matrosskaya Tishina in serious condition. But the doctor on duty, instead of treating him, allowed eight guards to take him into a small cell in handcuffs. The doctor also called an ambulance, but it was not allowed to enter the prison gates for over an hour. When [medical personnel] were able to enter, Magnitsky was already dead. It is a recorded fact that he had been beaten by truncheons,” he says.
“We insist that several members of the [official] Investigation Committee be made to answer for their conduct, as well as certain judges who abetted his illegal arrest, prolonged his detention and denied his relatives permission to visit him in prison …
“It is clear that the system swept down on Magnitsky and destroyed him,” he adds. “The lesson here is that a person is defenseless against the system.”
Signs of reform
Some members of the commission say that the fact that Medvedev has defied the official investigation and admitted that “criminal actions” played a role in Magnitsky’s death means that the system can be reformed.
“I think Magnitsky’s case is proof that our society, supported by the president, can force the system to be accountable,” says Kiril Kabanov, head of the official National Anti-Corruption Committee. “Right now we have a lot of other cases similar to Magnitsky’s, which means that what happened to him is not that unusual.”
He says there is a lot of institutional resistance to revealing and punishing abuses, and dealing with it will require a big push from the Kremlin.
“Officials tend to cover up and protect their workers [who commit abuse], and seem ready to accuse anybody else – even international conspiracies – for the allegations against them, rather than own up to the real state of affairs,” he says.
Another commission member, former judge Mara Polyakova, says reform will not be easy.
“This case spotlights all the defects of our law enforcement organs and courts which we’ve long known about,” she says. “The fact that the Magnitsky case has attracted such resonance is good, but don’t imagine all the vice we’re dealing with can be eliminated at a single stroke. The system itself is vile, and change will be a long, hard struggle.”
International pressure
Last month Russia’s top prosecutor, Yury Chaika, slammed the US Senate for introducing a bill, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011, which would deny US visas and freeze the US-based assets of Russian officials accused of committing illegal reprisals against human rights activists. This week, the Dutch parliament unanimously passed a similar resolution.
“Investigative bodies and the Russian justice system are coming under pressure. I believe that this is unacceptable,” Mr. Chaika said.
But Masha Lipman, editor of the Moscow Carnegie Center’s Pro et Contra journal, says international pressure like that was probably a big factor in forcing Medvedev to make his public admission.
“What makes this case truly unique is the very diverse effort to compel the Russian government to investigate thoroughly, and not to let the perpetrators get away with it. The president was forced to say something he never would have said in public otherwise,” she says.
“Medvedev’s words suggest an effort by nervous Russian officials to try to soften their position, reconcile with the US, Holland, and other foreign countries. It’s a struggle, but the threat of sanctions against Russian officials, who like to stash their assets abroad and travel to foreign countries, is something that appears to be working,” she says.
“Now we must wait to see what happens next. Is this as far as Medvedev is prepared to go? People are waiting for more than words, they want to see something definitive, proceedings opened, charges laid against the perpetrators. That would be something,” she adds. онлайн займы unshaven girl female wrestling https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://www.zp-pdl.com hairy woman
Inquiry: Magnitsky Beaten by Guards
Eight prison guards severely beat lawyer Sergei Magnitsky shortly before his 2009 death in pretrial detention, an activist said Tuesday, providing a new twist to allegations that Magnitsky had been tortured in prison.
An account of the beating is included in a 40-page report on Magnitsky’s death that the Kremlin’s human rights council presented to President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday, said Valery Borshchyov, who headed an independent investigation into the death that formed the basis for the report.
The report also lays blame on prison hospital staff and the investigators who jailed Magnitsky for his death.
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Crusading Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky ‘beaten to death’
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The 9 Bedford Row International Annual Conference is on Saturday 1st October 2011 in London.
It reviews some of the cases and situations the 9BRi international criminal law team have dealt with in the last year at the ICC, ICTY, STL, Bangladesh Courts.
Steven Kay QC and Gillian Higgins of the ICLB will be speaking along with other members of 9BRi, Toby Cadman and John Cammegh.
The guest speaker is William Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital with whom 9BRi are collaborating to achieve justice in relation to the death of the Russian lawyer for Hermitage, Sergei Magnitsky, who was murdered in pre-trial detention in 2009 after having been falsely imprisoned by Russian Police Officers who had stolen the identity of Hermitage to benefit from a huge tax fraud. The conspiracy also involves Russian tax officials, the judiciary, prison officials and senior political figures.
The conference will provide an insight into the case management of international criminal cases and the diversity of opportunities in this fascinating area of the law.
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Report Calls for Prosecution of Officials in Death of Russian Lawyer
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.
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Medvedev: Criminal acts killed Russian lawyer Magnitsky
BBC
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said the death in police custody of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was likely the result of criminal actions.
A Russian government rights body reported to Mr Medvedev that police, prison officials and doctors all shared blame for Mr Magnitsky’s death.
Mr Magnitsky died in 2009, accused of fraud after himself accusing Russian officials of a huge tax fraud scheme. No-one has been charged over his death or the tax fraud he alleged.
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Police ‘illegally arrested’ lawyer who died in prison
The Times
A group of Russian detectives illegally arrested a lawyer who died in prison after accusing them of a $230 million (£143 million) tax fraud, an inquiry ordered by President Medvedev concluded yesterday.
In an apparent breakthrough in the scandal over the alleged torture and killing of Sergei Magnitsky, the President’s human rights council pointed the finger for the first time at police whom he had accused of corruption.
Mr Magnitsky, 37, died in agony in Matrosskaya Tishina prison, Moscow, in November 2009 after being held for a year in pre-trial detention and being denied medical treatment for serious illnesses. He repeatedly complained that he was tortured in jail to try to force him to withdraw testimony against a group of Interior Ministry police whom he had accused of stealing $230 million.
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A death in a Russian prison; Rights panel calls for inquiry on treatment of jailed lawyer
He was chained to a cot, a lone prisoner in a small cell facing eight guards who beat him while a summoned ambulance crew was kept waiting outside. When the doctors were finally admitted to the prison, they found Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky dead, his body bruised, most of his knuckles smashed, one of his arms dark blue from a grip of the handcuffs lying nearby.
The attorney’s death in Moscow’s infamous Sailor’s Silence prison was described Tuesday in a report delivered to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev by his advisory human rights council. The panel called for an investigation of possible corruption on the part of officials involved in the nearly yearlong imprisonment of Magnitsky on tax evasion charges.
Medvedev, who had ordered the official investigation shortly after the Nov. 16, 2009, death of Magnitsky, met with members of the council in the southern city of Nalchik.
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To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky