Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

The Dead Man’s Trial

Foreign Policy

Without a word, a gloomy cleaning lady in a blue apron and pink rubber slippers over long woolen socks pushed a mop down the narrow corridor. A crowd of tired and quiet reporters shuffled aside to let her pass. Her mop rubbed the dirt from the wet floor of the waiting area of the Tverskoi Courthouse, only to be immediately muddied again by hundreds of boots. Five hours had passed since the scheduled start of the latest hearing in the trial of a dead suspect, the first such trial in Russia’s history. The suspect in question was Sergei Magnitsky, who died in jail at age 37, three years ago. Inside Courtroom Number 4, the benches and chairs remained empty. So did the suspect’s cage (shown above).

“Get out of here!” an annoyed security officer in black uniform shouted at reporters, pushing people away from the court door. Silence filled the stuffy space. People looked lost, trying to understand the true meaning behind the man’s statement. Did it mean that the trial would be once again delayed for many hours, or cancelled entirely? Nothing has made any sense so far. “Is there any scenario, any purpose for making journalists wait for so long?” I asked Vera ?heilsheva, an experienced court reporter for the Russian investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta. “Clearly they want us to lose interest in Magnitsky,” she answered. And today she had no expectations of witnessing the miracle of justice in Russia.

Not one foot budged from the wet floor of the court door. From the day of his arrest in November 2008 to the day of his death in prison in November 2009, the young lawyer never had a chance to have his day in court. But he believed in justice and a fair trial, his family and supporters say, and continued to accuse senior Russian police and tax officials in organizing a $230 million fraud. “He was angry to see evidence of stupid falsifications, stupid lies at his preliminary court hearings, but he believed that somewhere there had to be some heroic judge of dignity and courage,” Magnitsky’s mother, Natalya Magnitskaya, said in a phone interview. Along with Sergei’s family members, friends, and civil society activists, Mrs. Magnitskaya boycotted the trial of her dead son and stayed at home today.