Russian court clears prison official in Magnitsky case
A Moscow court has acquitted the only official charged with the death of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky. Meanwhile, Russia’s president has signed a bill banning Americans from adopting Russian children.
A court in Moscow on Friday found prison doctor Dmitry Kratov not guilty of negligence causing Magnitsky’s death.
Magnitsky blew the whistle on what he claimed was a scheme in which police investigators had stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the state through fraudulent tax refunds. He was imprisoned on tax evasion charges.
The lawyer, whose family denounced the result as a sham, died in jail in 2009 after his pancreatitis went untreated.
An investigation by Russia’s Presidential Council on Human Rights had found that Magnitsky was brutally beaten and denied medical treatment. The council accused the government of failing to prosecute those responsible.
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Acquitted: the only man charged over Sergei Magnitsky death
A Moscow court has exonerated the only person to be put on trial for the death of the Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, days after President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that the lawyer was not tortured in prison and in fact died of natural causes.
Mr Magnitsky died in Moscow’s Butyrka prison in 2009, after being refused treatment for a pancreatic illness. The court found that Dmitry Kratov, a doctor at Butyrka who allegedly signed medical records detailing Mr Magnitsky’s complaints but then refused treatment, had no case to answer.
Nobody has been charged for the fraud that Mr Magnitsky uncovered, despite evidence that a group of Russian officials conspired to defraud the state of around 5.4 billion roubles (£140m). Instead, he was locked up by the officials he was investigating.
The only case to have been opened with regard to the crimes Mr Magnitsky was investigating or to his death, aside from a posthumous inquiry into the lawyer himself, was the negligence case against Mr Kratov. In a highly unusual move, the prosecutors said they did not feel there was a case to answer and asked the judge to announce an innocent verdict.
At a press conference last week Mr Putin said Mr Magnitsky died of natural causes, a statement that could have been interpreted as a signal to halt investigations into his death. “There is no doubt that people responsible for Magnitsky’s death are being protected by the President of Russia,” said a representative of Hermitage Capital, the London-based investment fund for which Mr Magnitsky worked. “Russia normally has a 99 per cent conviction rate. In this case, there was overwhelming evidence of Kratov’s involvement and his acquittal goes against any logic or concept of justice.”
“I am sincerely sorry that Sergei Magnitsky died,” Mr Kratov told the court yesterday. “But I had no possibility to affect his fate.” The court said Mr Kratov could file for compensation for the unfair accusations.
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Russian court clears doctor over Sergei Magnitsky’s death in custody
A Russian court has cleared the only person charged in the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer whose death in custody three years ago has driven a wedge between Russia and the US.
American outcry over the death in 2009 led to US legislation aimed at punishing those responsible. Russia retaliated with a ban on Americans adopting Russian children, which President Vladimir Putin signed into law on Friday morning.
Dmitry Kratov, a doctor in the prison where Magnitsky was held, was the only person charged over the death. Several other officials accused of involvement have been awarded promotions.
On Friday a judge in Moscow found Kratov not guilty of negligence. Fewer than 1% of Russians on trial each year are acquitted.
Magnitsky, a lawyer for the London-based investor William Browder, was arrested in 2008 while investigating state corruption and died in prison the following year after developing pancreatitis that was left untreated. An investigation by the Kremlin’s human rights council also found that he had been severely beaten.
Pointing to the absence of a full investigation in Russia, Browder helped lobby for a new US law that forbids Russians allegedly involved in the death from travelling to or keeping bank accounts in the US, dubbed the Magnitsky Act.
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The History of Russia’s Future
Putin hopes that harsh policies will allow him to maintain a stranglehold on Russia. But they have merely ensured the country’s decline.
Strategic vision has never been a Russian attribute, and it certainly was absent in 2012. Russia’s vast territory continually seems to obscure for its leaders the need to plan for the future, while its seemingly infinite supply of natural resources convinces them that the country can handle any contingency.
As a result, Russia is perpetually unprepared for the future. Indeed, just as its leaders failed to prepare for the fall of communism, the softening of the Russian economy shows that they are poorly equipped for the coming decades, which will be characterised by depleted resources, a declining population, and shrinking territory.
Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency this year marked a new low for Russian strategic vision. After all, the past is the only future that Putin has ever wanted for the country. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Kremlin lost not only control of vast portions of territory, but also half of the USSR’s nearly 300 million people. Since then, the population has fallen by millions more, owing to Russia’s high mortality rate, especially among men. Over the same period, the population of the US has grown from 248 million to more than 300 million.
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Magnitsky Play at Teatr.doc Hits Harder Than Ever
Some things remain relevant longer than you would expect.
Take the death of Sergei Magnitsky. This muck-raking attorney was allowed to die in a Moscow prison in November 2009. That story was still making news when Teatr.doc opened a show called “One Hour Eighteen” in the early summer of 2010. The show examined the actions of several people in close proximity to the prisoner when he mysteriously was allowed to die, apparently handcuffed, on a cold floor in a prison cell.
Teatr.doc has just reopened a second, renewed version of the play with several scenes added to respond to events of recent years. In fact, at the performance I attended last weekend there were lines drawn from that very day’s biggest news — the passing by the Russian Duma of the so-called “anti-Magnitsky” law. This measure banning Americans from adopting Russian children is widely seen as a response to the so-called Magnitsky Act, passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Barack Obama two weeks ago. This act bans Russian officials suspected of being involved in the death of Magnitsky from traveling to the United States.
In short, unlike most stories entering the endless news cycle, the Magnitsky case is not going away. Mikhail Ugarov, who co-directed “One Hour Eighteen” with Talgat Batalov and who performs a scene in the new version, told me ruefully minutes before curtain time last week that he suspects a third version of the play is not far away.
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Putin Says He Will Sign Law Barring U.S. Adoptions
President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday that he would sign into law a ban on adoptions of Russian children by American citizens, retaliating against an American law that punishes Russians accused of violating human rights and dealing a potentially grave setback to bilateral relations.
Mr. Putin announced his decision at a meeting with senior government officials on Friday, including cabinet members and legislative leaders. The adoption ban, included in a broader law aimed at retaliating against the United States, was approved unanimously by the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Parliament on Wednesday.
Mr. Putin also said that he would sign a decree, calling for improvements in Russia’s deeply troubled child welfare system that the Federation Council also adopted Wednesday. “I intend to sign the law,” Mr. Putin said, “as well as a presidential decree changing the procedure of helping orphaned children, children left without parental care, and especially children who are in a disadvantageous situation due to their health problems.”
United States officials have strongly criticized the measure and urged the Russian government not to involve orphaned children in politics.
Since Mr. Putin returned to the presidency in May, Russian officials have used a juggernaut of legislation and executive decisions to curtail United States influence and involvement in Russia, undoing major partnerships that began after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The adoption ban, however, is the first step to take direct aim at the American public and would effectively undo a bilateral agreement on international adoptions that was ratified this year and that took effect on Nov. 1. That agreement called for heightened oversight in response to several high-profile cases of abuse and deaths of adopted Russian children in the United States.
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Russia puts dead lawyer Magnitsky on trial
Russia on Thursday opened a fraud trial against Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer whose prison death in 2009 led to the biggest US-Russia row in years, despite protests by the defence it was illegal to try a dead man.
The Magnitsky family defence lawyers refused to participate in an “unconstitutional” process against a dead man and the judge was forced to adjourn the hearing until the new year.
“The preliminary hearing into Magnitsky’s case has been moved to January 28 due to the absence of the lawyers from the defence,” the press service of the Tverskoy district court in Moscow told AFP.
Magnitsky was arrested in 2008 and spent nearly a year in squalid prison conditions, dying at the age of 37 of untreated illnesses. A report by the Kremlin human rights council last year said he was tortured and handcuffed in his final hours.
Before his arrest, the lawyer said he uncovered a tax scam worth 5.4 billion rubles ($235 million) against the company he worked for, investment fund Hermitage Capital, which involved interior ministry officials.
But he was then charged with the very crimes he claimed to have uncovered and was placed in pre-trial detention. The case was closed after his death but then reopened in August 2011.
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Russia set to advance ban on US adoptions
Russia’s upper house of parliament was due Wednesday to vote for a bill barring Americans from adopting the country’s children, in retaliation for a new piece of human rights legislation in the US.
The highly contentious bill has inflamed tensions between the two former Cold War rivals at a time when Washington needs Moscow’s help to convince President Bashar al-Assad to quit power in Syria.
The draft legislation has already passed the three required readings in the State Duma lower house and is due to reach President Vladimir Putin’s desk before the end of the year.
The Federation Council upper chamber — comprised exclusively of Putin allies and ruling party members — is expected to overwhelmingly approve the measure after it was backed in a committee meeting on Tuesday.
“This will not lead to any infringement of international rights,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
“Russia is fully implementing the rights it has under international law,” he added in comments that reinforced speculation that Putin would sign the bill into law.
The bill also includes a provision banning Russian political organisations that receive US funding.
The legislation came after US President Barack Obama this month signed into law the Magnitsky Act — a measure paying tribute to a Russian lawyer who died in police custody in 2009 after exposing a $235 million police embezzlement scheme.
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Russia: Magnitsky Retaliation Bill Approved
A controversial law banning Americans from adopting Russian children has won final approval from the parliament in Moscow.
The bill – in retaliation for a US law intended to punish Russian human rights abusers – will now go to President Vladimir Putin for his signature.
Putin has strongly hinted he will sign the bill, which also outlaws some US-funded NGOs and hits back at sanctions by imposing visa bans and asset freezes on Americans accused of violating the rights of Russians.
The Federation Council, Russia’s upper parliament, voted unanimously to approve the bill, which has clouded US-Russian relations and outraged liberals who say lawmakers are playing a political game with the lives of children.
The bill has drawn unusual criticism from some government officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Olga Golodets, a deputy prime minister who said it may violate an international convention on children’s rights.
Putin has described it as an emotional but appropriate response to US legislation he said was poisoning relations.
US President Barack Obama this month signed off on the Magnitsky Act, which imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russians accused of human rights violations, including those linked to the death in custody of a lawyer in 2009.
The ban on American adoptions takes Russia’s response a step further, playing into deep sensitivity among Russians – and the government in particular – over adoptions by foreigners, which skyrocketed after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
The bill is named for Dima Yakovlev – a Russian-born toddler who died of heat stroke when his adoptive American father forgot him in a car.
“It is immoral to send our children abroad to any country,” Federation Council deputy Valery Shtyrov said in a one-sided debate before the 143-0 vote.
Child rights advocates say the law, due to take effect on January 1 if signed by Putin, will deprive children of a way out of Russia’s overcrowded orphanage system.
Opposition activist Boris Nemtsov said: “This is the most vile law passed since Putin came to power. Putin is taking children hostage, like a terrorist”.
Police said they had arrested seven people protesting against the law on Wednesday outside the Federation Council.
Nevertheless, lawmaker Gennady Makin said the Magnitsky Act demanded a tough response. “He who comes to Russia with a sword dies by that sword,” he said.
The dispute adds to tension in US-Russia ties already strained over issues ranging from Syria to the Kremlin’s treatment of opponents and restrictions imposed on civil society groups since Putin, in power since 2000, began a new six-year term in May.
The Russian bill would outlaw US-funded “non-profit organisations that engage in political activity”, which Putin accuses of trying to influence Russian politics.
Russia ejected the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which funds Russian non-governmental groups, in October, and Putin has signed a law forcing many foreign-funded organisations to register as “foreign agents” – a term that evokes the Cold War. займ на карту онлайн unshaven girl https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php https://www.zp-pdl.com займы на карту срочно
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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
