Posts Tagged ‘Hermitage’
Prison doctors charged with causing Magnitsky’s death
Two former prison doctors have been accused of negligence resulting in the death of Sergey Magnitsky while he was on trial over large-scale tax fraud.
Among the accused are the doctor who was responsible for Magnitsky’s treatment, Larisa Litvinova, and the former deputy director of the detention center and Litvinova’s former boss, Dmitry Kratov. Both suspects were fired from the Butyrskaya prison soon after Magnitsky’s death in 2009.
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Congress Needs Human Rights Assurances To Support Russia MFN Vote
There is a growing sense in Washington that members of Congress will need assurances on human rights if they are to agree to grant Russia permanent most-favored nation (MFN) status, which is necessary if U.S. companies are to fully benefit from Russia acceding to the World Trade Organization.
In a July 7 statement, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) argued that extending permanent MFN and ushering Russia into the WTO is “simply not an option” until Russia is pressed to improve its human rights record. A congressional aide said this sentiment is shared by other members of Congress.
According to an informed source, the White House opposes directly linking improvements in Russia’s human rights situation to Russia’s WTO accession, but since January has nonetheless been advancing the idea that Congress should consider separate human rights legislation this year.
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Sergei Magnitsky: Russian officials named as suspects
Russian prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into two prison officials over the high-profile death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The deputy governor and chief doctor at Butyrskaya prison in Moscow are suspected of negligence causing death.
Magnitsky’s case has become a cause celebre. Arrested after accusing the police of corruption, he was reportedly beaten and denied treatment in jail.
A report has concluded he suffered deliberate neglect and torture.
The group Physicians for Human Rights, on the request of Magnitsky’s family, conducted the first independent medical evaluation of the case.
The report, released on Monday, concluded that he received “inadequate medical treatment”, and that his death was the result of “calculated, deliberate and inhumane neglect”.
It called on the Russian government to accept responsibility under the UN Convention Against Torture.
Different suspects
President Dmitry Medvedev’s human rights council produced a report earlier this month which concluded that there was reasonable suspicion that Magnitsky’s death was triggered by beatings while in police custody.
The report singled out senior interior ministry investigator Oleg Silchenko and prison chief Ivan Prokopenko as being at fault for neglect over the lawyer’s death.
However, these are not the same two officials named by prosecutors on Monday.
They are Larisa Litvinova, chief physician at Butyrskaya prison, and the prison’s deputy chief Dmitry Kratov.
Magnitsky’s former employer told the Associated Press that more powerful people were still being protected.
“The Russian government are desperately trying to create the appearance that they are doing something here, without going after the real guilty parties,” said William Browder, who runs Hermitage Capital Management, for whom Magnitsky was working.
Magnitsky had claimed to have unearthed evidence that implicated the police, officials and bankers in a massive fraud, which used Hermitage as a vehicle.
He was later arrested, himself accused of fraud, and investigated by some of the very same people he had accused of corruption.
He was imprisoned without trial in November 2008, developed pancreatitis in jail but was never properly treated, and died in November 2009, aged 37. займы на карту срочно займ онлайн на карту без отказа https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php займ на карту онлайн
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A Return Visit to Earlier Stories: The Trouble with Russia
Russia’s official version of the prison death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky got a sharp revision on July 5, when a human-rights council appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev reported that Magnitsky had been illegally detained and had probably died from a truncheon beating inflicted by eight guards in November 2009 — and not from heart failure, as claimed by prison doctors.
When Magnitsky’s family received the body of the 37-year-old lawyer, it was bruised and his fingers were broken, said the report (“Crime and Punishment in Putin’s Russia,” April 18).
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Inside Russia, new light shines on Magnitsky case
Investigators, prison doctors, prosecutors and judges are responsible for the death of the Hermitage Capital fund lawyer, the presidential council on human rights stated. The international community watches to see what happens next.
The Russian lawyer who once worked for a U.S. investment fund died after a brutal beating from prison guards, the presidential council on human rights confirmed last week. Investigators, prison doctors, prosecutors and judges are all responsible for the death of the Hermitage Capital fund lawyer, the Presidential Council on Human Rights also found.
Their findings have international implications, as the case is seen as another litmus test for how the Kremlin can handle cases of alleged official corruption and abuses of power. In death, Magnitsky has become an international cause celebre: The 37-year-old lawyer died alone in prison in November 2009. He had accused officials of tax fraud before his arrest.
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Podcast: Hitchens On Iran, Nightmare In An Egyptian Jail, Balalaikas, and Boney M — It’s The Best of ‘The Blender’!
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
“The Blender” is reaching its sixth-month mark, so for Episode 26, we decided to take a look back at some of the highlights of the first half-year.
All four of “The Blender” hosts — Daisy Sindelar, Pavel Butorin, Bruce Jacobs, and Grant Podelco — get together in the studio to talk about some of their favorite highlights so far.
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Report on Lawyer’s Death Provides a Chance for Medvedev to Redeem Himself
Russia’s president needs to do far more than just listen to the damning findings on the case of Sergei Magnitsky.
Even by the dubious standards of the Russian system of justice, the Sergei Magnitsky case is an outrage. Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison in November 2009 after 11 months in custody. He was arrested by senior police officials who had fraudulently seized control of assets of the U.K.-based Hermitage investment fund and had thereby secured a $230 million tax refund – the largest in Russian history. Magnitsky, an attorney, was working on behalf of Hermitage to recover the assets. In an appalling reversal of fate, Magnitsky himself was accused of tax fraud.
On 5 July President Dmitry Medvedev heard a report from his Council on Civil Society and Human Rights. The report covered a broad range of topics, from terrorism in the North Caucasus to children’s rights. Buried in the middle of the report, which was orally presented to Medvedev by council members, were their findings on the Magnitsky case. Their material was explosive. Not only did they confirm that Magnitsky had been illegally detained and denied medical treatment, they also revealed that immediately before his death he had been beaten by eight guards in the medical facility to which he had been transferred – and where he had again been denied medical treatment. This final tragic detail had not previously been known. It is an almost unbelievably cruel footnote to an already horrific tale.
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Russia’s Summer of Fire, Intrigue, Political Mystery: World View
Bloomberg
Is lightning striking twice in the same place? Kommersant has sounded the tocsin, warning that once again peat bogs around Moscow are burning: “According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, on Sunday in the region around Moscow sixteen wildfires broke out simultaneously.”
Authorities said that the fires have been extinguished, but Kommersant quoted Grigory Kuksin, of Greenpeace Russia, who refuted the good news. “In the Gus-Khrustalny district alone, five fires are burning,” Kuksin said. “The situation in the region is bad. There aren’t enough resources to put out fires or even contain them.”
The bogs currently ablaze may prefigure a return of the catastrophic wildfires that last summer coincided with a record-shattering heat wave and raged for weeks, generating lethal smog that blanketed the capital, wrought billions of dollars worth of damage and, at least indirectly, caused tens of thousands of deaths.
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Report Blames Prison Officials In Magnitsky Death, Russian President Cites ‘Criminal Actions’
Nearly two years after Sergei Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev called his treatment “criminal” in the wake of a damning report blaming prison officials for the hedge fund lawyer’s death.
A report issued yesterday by Medvedev’s investigative council concluded that Magnitsky, who represented Hermitage Capital Management, “was completely deprived of medical care. Additionally, there are grounds to suspect that Magnitsky’s death was the result of a beating,” and not merely the pancreatitis he contracted during the year he spent behind bars on suspicion of tax evasion.
One member of the investigative committee went even further, telling The Telegraph, “we have concluded he died of a beating. It was real torture to beat an ailing man with truncheons.”
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