Posts Tagged ‘radio free europe’
British MP Urges Russia Visa Restrictions Over Magnitsky Case
British Member of Parliament (MP) Denis MacShane has called on the British government to place visa restrictions on Russian officials accused of involvement in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison in 2009.
“What the United States government has done is to list 60 Russian officials who are named in connection with Mr. Magnitsky’s death and I’m urging the British prime minister, as our other British MPs, to do the same thing,” MacShane told RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
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Interview With Boris Nemtsov On August 1991 Putsch: ‘We Were Romantic…We Were Very Naive’
Boris Nemtsov has played many roles in post-Soviet Russia. He was a reformist member of the Russian Republic’s Soviet-era parliament in 1991, served as governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, and as first deputy prime minister in the late 1990s. More recently, he has been one of the most visible faces of the opposition. RFE/RL correspondents Robert Coalson and Pavel Butorin spoke to Nemtsov on the 20th anniversary of the failed putsch in August 1991 that precipitated the fall of the USSR.
RFE/RL: It’s been 20 years since the anti-Gorbachev coup attempt and I’d like to start by asking you to take us back to that moment in your life. Where were you, and what were you doing, and what were your hopes and expectations at the that time?
Nemtsov: During those historic days I was in the White House [the Russian parliament building at the time]. I was a deputy of the Russian parliament and I was with [Russian President Boris] Yeltsin as a protector of the White House and freedom in Russia. Really, those were very interesting days and very dramatic days, I want to tell you.
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Doctors’ NGO Says Magnitsky’s Death Documentation Incomplete
The U.S.-based organization Physicians for Human Rights says it is concerned by the official documentation related to the death in jail of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.
Magnitsky, an attorney for the investment firm Hermitage Capital, died in pretrial detention in November 2009. Officials said he died of heart failure. Human rights activists and his former colleagues, however, say he died because he was denied medical treatment.
On July 19, Physicians for Human Rights issued its report on Magnitsky’s death based on 44 documents provided by his relatives. The documents include Magnitsky’s letters to his family and his written requests to the management of the detention center to provide him with medical treatment.
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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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Medvedev Admits Lawyer Died From ‘Criminal Actions’
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has admitted the death in prison of a Russian lawyer who accused officials of corruption was the result of “criminal actions.”
Medvedev said the case of Sergei Magnitsky, who died in November 2009 after nearly a year in Russian prisons, was a “sad one.”
“Magnitsky’s case is a very sad one,” Medvedev said. “Ailing people shouldn’t die in prison. If they fall ill, they must be taken out for treatment before a court decides their fate.”
Medvedev made his remarks at a meeting with top Russian human rights officials in the southern city of Nalchik, the hometown of Magnitsky, who worked for Russia’s top equity fund, Hermitage Capital.
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In U.S.-Russia Dialogue On Human Rights, A Tougher Tone Comes Through
The latest session of a high-ranking U.S.-Russia dialogue on human rights included frank exchanges on press freedom and corruption, according to a senior U.S. official who participated in the talks.
Michael McFaul, senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs on the U.S. president’s National Security Council, described the talks in an interview with RFE/RL.
The U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission’s Civil Society Working Group, established two years ago as part of the “reset” in U.S.-Russia relations, brings together officials and representatives of nongovernmental organizations from both countries. McFaul, who will reportedly be nominated by President Barack Obama to be America’s next ambassador to Russia, holds the chair for the U.S. side. His Russian counterpart, Vladislav Surkov, is first deputy chairman in the administration of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
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A Year Before Elections, What About Russia’s Corruption Fight?
The highly publicized cases of Sergei Magnitsky — a 37-year-old lawyer who died in pretrial detention in November 2009 after exposing a multimillion-dollar fraud against the Russian taxpayer — and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed business magnate who was sentenced at the end of 2010 to remain in prison through 2017, have again put the international spotlight on corruption in the Russian state.
By the time of his death, the ailing Magnitsky had been complaining for weeks that he was being denied adequate medical treatment for acute stomach pain. The subsequent inquiry into his demise represented a serious miscarriage of justice. Khodorkovsky’s latest case gained notoriety for the brazenly irregular manner in which he was charged and convicted of embezzling his own company’s oil, apparently with the predetermined goal of keeping him behind bars at all costs.
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Interview: Browder Sees ‘Tipping Point’ In Western Attitudes To Russia
Bill Browder’s Hermitage Capital Management fund was the biggest foreign investor in Russia until he was kicked out of the country in 2005.
Once one of the Kremlin’s biggest public supporters, Browder is now spearheading a campaign to enact international sanctions against 60 Russian officials after a lawyer for Hermitage, Sergei Magnitsky, died in prison last year.
Browder spoke to RFE/RL correspondents Irina Lagunina and Gregory Feifer about that campaign and the reasons behind it.
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UN Launches Investigation Into Russian Lawyer’s Prison Death
The United Nations has launched an investigation into the death of Russian anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky under what have been described as torturous pretrial jail conditions.
According to a statement released by Hermitage Capital Management, the investment advisory firm that Magnitsky represented, the UN special rapporteurs on extrajudicial executions, the independence of lawyers and judges, and torture have initiated an “unprecedented investigation” into the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky’s death in late 2009.
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