Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Russia convicts lawyer Magnitsky in posthumous trial

Reuters

Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison in suspicious circumstances, was found guilty of tax evasion on Thursday in a posthumous trial that has further damaged President Vladimir Putin’s reputation in the West.

The Moscow court also convicted Magnitsky’s former client William Browder, a British investment fund boss who has led an international campaign to expose corruption and punish Russian officials he blames for Magnitsky’s death in 2009.

Browder, tried in absentia, was sentenced to nine years’ jail in the case, which deepened U.S. and European Union concerns over human rights and the rule of law in Putin’s Russia.

“Today’s verdict will go down in history as one of the most shameful moments for Russia since the days of Josef Stalin,” Browder, who is unlikely to be extradited from Britain to Russia, said in an emailed statement.

Amnesty International called Magnitsky’s prosecution – Russia’s first posthumous trial – “deeply sinister”, saying it “set a dangerous precedent that could open a whole new chapter in Russia’s worsening human rights record.”