Posts Tagged ‘Ezekiel Pfeifer’
PACE Draft Report Slams Russia on Magnitsky Case
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Tuesday released a draft version of a report on the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in which the advisory body slammed Russia for failing to punish anyone in connection with the case and recommended that European nations pressure Russia to investigate it further.
The 41-page report, written by PACE rapporteur Andreas Gross of Switzerland, is highly critical of the Russian government’s handling of the investigation into Magnitsky’s 2009 death in prison and calls on authorities to explain such circumstances as “the unavailability of CCTV footage of the arrival of Mr. Magnitsky to Matrosskaya Tishina prison on the day of his death” and “the existence of two different versions of the ‘death report'” on Magnitsky.
But the draft stops short of recommending that European member states follow the United States’ lead in enacting sanctions against Russians implicated in Magnitsky’s death or in a $230 million tax fraud that Magnitsky said he discovered.
“The Assembly invites all other member states of the Council of Europe to consider ways and means of encouraging the Russian authorities to hold to account those responsible for the death of Mr. Magnitsky and to fully investigate the crime he had denounced, in the interests of Russia and of all her hard-working and tax-paying citizens,” the draft report says.
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Investigators Close Case Into Magnitsky’s Death
Investigators said Tuesday that they had closed the case into the 2009 death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose name is attached to a U.S. law that has caused tension in U.S.-Russian relations by seeking to punish Russians implicated in human rights violations.
An inquiry into Magnitsky’s treatment and death in a Moscow jail, where he was awaiting trial on tax evasion charges brought after he accused government officials of a fraudulent $230 million tax rebate scheme, revealed no evidence of wrongdoing, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
The committee’s findings contradict a 2011 investigation by the Kremlin human rights council, which said Magnitsky was pressured by prison authorities over his testimony in the tax fraud case and was left to die of pancreatitis in an isolation cell. The council’s investigation also found that Magnitsky had been beaten in prison and that there was insufficient evidence to jail him.
William Browder, head of Magnitsky’s former employer Hermitage Capital, said that the Investigative Committee’s action was not a surprise to him and that it was “a result of basically politically motivated intervention by [President Vladimir] Putin to change the narrative of what really happened to Sergei,” Radio Free Europe reported.
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