Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Magnitsky Case Goes to Strasbourg Court

The Moscow Times

The mother of Sergei Magnitsky, the anti-corruption lawyer who died in pretrial detention in 2009, has filed a complaint in the European Court of Human Rights.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Natalya Magnitskaya by the Open Society Justice Initiative, a George Soros-founded human rights group, accuses Russian law enforcement agencies of manipulating the criminal justice system to silence her son after he exposed a $230 million tax fraud involving Interior Ministry officials.

“Sergei Magnitsky was wrongly detained and tortured because he unearthed evidence of grand theft at senior levels of the Russian government, then refused to back down,” said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative and the lead lawyer on the case.

“Though Mr. Magnitsky’s courage was unusual, his fate is not. His case shines a spotlight on the corruption and abuse which pervade Russia’s justice system,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

The complaint, filed Wednesday, says Magnitsky’s death was the result of deliberate abuse while he was moved between five Moscow detention centers over the course of a year. It says he was persistently denied medical treatment for a life-threatening illness and was beaten by guards just before he died.