Posts Tagged ‘amnesty’
London 2012 Olympics: Will Human Rights Abusers be Invited?
Dictators from oppressive regimes across the world could be welcomed to Britain for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, leaving campaigners calling on the government to put human rights higher up the agenda at the games.
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) told International Business Times U.K. that it was inviting the head of state and head of government of every participating country to the opening ceremony of London 2012 on 27 July.
Governments and leaders from countries with some of the world’s worst human rights records will attend the spectacle – unless the U.K. government steps in.
“The Olympic games is a fantastic celebration and an amazing event and it is no surprise that the world’s leaders would want to attend and some of those at the opening ceremony will represent governments with poor human rights records,” Niall Couper, Amnesty International spokesman, told IBTimes UK.
Read More →
Facebook
Twitter
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
del.icio.us
Google Bookmarks
Yahoo! Buzz
Tumblr
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed
NewsVine
Digg
Magnitsky verdict: trial denounced as ‘the height of absurdity’
The posthumous trial of the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been denounced as the “height of absurdity” after a court in Moscow pronounced Mr Magnitsky guilty of tax fraud offences earlier today.
Magnitsky died in detention in 2009 in circumstances suggesting that this was the result of torture or other ill-treatment, yet was put on trial by the Russian authorities after his death under special provisions in Russian law. These allow the family of a deceased person, who died while still under investigation, to request that the investigation is completed and the deceased person rehabilitated.
The Russian Prosecutor’s Office used the provision to put Magnitsky himself on trial, despite the lawyer’s family consistently objecting to this and refusing to testify as witnesses or attend the trial. Because of their refusal, a lawyer was appointed by the state to represent Magnitsky’s family in court. Even though the state-appointed lawyer himself raised concerns that the case was unacceptable, the court pressed ahead with the case.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
‘Farcical and sinister’ trial of lawyer in tax fraud case who died in prison
A macabre new chapter in legal history will begin in Moscow today when the Russian authorities put a dead man on trial for tax evasion.
Sergei Magnitsky’s mother, Natalya, said that the proceedings were immoral, illegal and designed to turn her son, a lawyer and anti-corruption whistleblower who died in prison three years ago, into a criminal.
Magnitsky’s co-accused, Bill Browder, a US-born British investor who was once one of the most vocal Western cheerleaders for the Putin Administration, said last night that the case would “bring Russia to an entirely new level of depravity; even during the worst moments of Stalin’s purges they never prosecuted dead people”.
Amnesty International has called the hearing — in a closed Moscow courtroom — “farcical but also deeply sinister”. According to Russian law, a criminal case can be restarted after a defendant’s death but usually only if the deceased’s relations are seeking his or her rehabilitation. Natalya Magnitskaya has written repeatedly to the authorities to say that neither she nor any of her son’s relations want the process to go ahead.
Last week Magnitsky’s brother-in-law was summoned for questioning by the Interior Ministry and then given a gag order. A scheduled pre-trial hearing in January was twice postponed because the family refused to recognise the case. The State has had to find its own defence lawyers as well as a prosecution team.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Russia set for posthumous Magnitsky trial
Russia will press ahead tomorrow with its highly unusual posthumous prosecution of a whistleblowing lawyer who revealed how members of the government’s powerful Interior Ministry were part of a gang that stole £230m from Russian taxpayers.
The trial of Sergei Magnitsky, who died in November 2009 after months of neglect and torture in a Russian jail cell, will begin behind closed doors with the chairs of the two defendants left empty. His co-accused – the British hedge-fund manage William Browder – is banned from entering Russia and has refused to take part in what he has described as a “Stalin show trial”.
The case has become a source of international embarrassment for Moscow with America recently banning any officials involved in the arrest and death of Mr Magnitsky from holding assets in the US or travelling there. Moscow responded with a ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans.
Supporters of Mr Magnitsky say he was jailed and killed for daring to expose how a network of Russian officials and criminal underworld figures used complex tax frauds to steal money from the Russian people. Russian prosecutors admit the frauds occurred but after initially blaming a number of low- level crime figures (some of whom were dead before the scams took place) they have since switched to accusing Mr Magnitsky and Mr Browder of carrying out the crimes they say they uncovered.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Russia opens trial of dead lawyer Magnitsky
A Russian court has opened the fraud trial against Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after accusing state officials of a multimillion-dollar tax scam.
The posthumous trial on Monday was initially scheduled for last December, but the judge adjourned the hearing after his family’s defence lawyers refused to participate, saying trying a dead man was illegal.
Because no lawyer for the Magnitsky family showed up, the judge ordered the lawyers association to appoint a defense attorney for the next preliminary hearing on February 18.
“Participation in this process is illegal and immoral,” Nikolay Gorokhov said in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Emma Hayward.
“Sergei Magnitsky’s mother and I characterise it as dancing on the bones of a dead man because you can not prosecute someone who is dead.”
The whistleblowing lawyer’s family has also refused to participate saying it is politically motivated.
“I think it is inhuman to try a dead man,” Magnitsky’s mother Natalya told Reuters news agency by telephone. “This is not a court case but some kind of farce, and I will not take part in it.”
Magnitsky was 37 when he died after 358 days in jail, during which he said he was denied treatment as his health declined. The Kremlin’s own human rights council aired suspicions he was beaten to death.
Russian authorities said he died of a heart attack, but his former employer, investment fund Hermitage Capital, says he was killed because he was investigating a $230m theft by law enforcement and tax officials through fraudulent tax refunds.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Amnesty International urges Russian authorities to close Magnitsky’s case
Amnesty International, an international human rights organization, urges Russian authorities to terminate a criminal case against lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in the pre-trial detention center in November 2009, the organization reported on its website on Friday.
The Moscow’s Ostankinsky District Court affirmed the resumption of Magnitsky’s case on Tuesday, April 3. The posthumous investigation was ordered by Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin on July 30, 2011.
Meanwhile, human rights activists have repeatedly called on the Russian authorities to investigate the circumstances of Magnitsky’s death.
The court dismissed on April 3 the appeal filed by Magnitsky’s mother to cancel Grin’s order. His widow Natalia Zharikova filed a petition in which she supported Magnitsky mother’s appeal.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Can Enlightenment Come to Russia?
History is replete with tales of those whose enlightened view of the world became their ultimate undoing. It happened in the early 1400s to John Wycliffe who disregarded papal opposition and translated the Bible into the language of ordinary Englishmen. Wycliffe died of a stroke before he could be charged with heresy and burned at the stake, but that did not prevent a trial and conviction years later that resulted in his unearthed bones being cast into the River Swift. Unfortunately, two similar tales are playing out today in modern Russia, and we can only hope that the endings will be vastly different.
The first tale resurrected just last week when we learned that the Russian Ministry of Interior intends to put on trial the “bones” of Sergei Magnitsky, who suspiciously died in custody two years ago after he testified that Ministry officials embezzled $230 million dollars. This bizarre saga will break new ground as the first posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history. For those interested in rule of law, this is a particularly outrageous example of the “legal nihilism” that President Medvedev at first decried but has since accepted.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
Impunity and attacks silence Russian journalists
Overview
The photograph of a bespectacled, grey-haired woman, her head resting in her hands has become iconic to human rights campaigners worldwide. A symbol of the risks campaigning journalists in Russia face. Five years ago, Anna Politkovskaya – an investigative journalist who wrote highly critical reports of Russian military actions in Chechnya and of the Kremlin – was gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block. The killing drew worldwide attention to violence against journalists in Russia and raised widespread suspicions that public officials were responsible for ordering the murder.
Full Text
Five years ago, Anna Politkovskaya – an investigative journalist who wrote highly critical reports of Russian military actions in Chechnya and of the Kremlin – was gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
One Hour Eighteen Minutes
One Hour Eighteen Minutes
Date: Wed 16 November 2011
One Hour Eighteen Minutes is a documentary play which pieces together the final hours of Sergey Magnitsky’s life. Sergey was a corporate lawyer who sued the Russian government for one of the most blatant cases of tax fraud in Russian history. Out of retaliation, the police arrested Magnitsky and threw him into jail. Over the course of eleven months, he was held in pre-trial detention, without charge, and tortured. He died in prison on November 16 2009. On the second anniversary of his death, this play is a dark and intimate look at a corrupt system – the medieval side of modern day Russia.
Read More →
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google Buzz
- LinkedIn
- del.icio.us
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! Buzz
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- FriendFeed
- NewsVine
- Digg
