Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

The final act of the Magnitsky farce

The Independent

The Magnitsky affair has plenty of rivals for “most shameful moment since Stalin”. But, as far as is known, not even the Soviet Union put dead men on trial.

Predictably, the farce of the Sergei Magnitsky trial has ended in absurdity. The lawyer who exposed epic corruption in Russia’s bureaucracy before being beaten to death in police custody has himself now been convicted – posthumously – of corruption.

Perhaps the only surprise is that Mr Magnitsky’s embalmed corpse, or a simulacrum of it, was not propped up in the dock, in a ghastly parody of El Cid. Even so, it is hard to disagree with the judgement of William Browder, the head of the investment firm which Mr Magnitsky represented before he died, that the guilty verdict was “one of the most shameful moments for Russia since the days of Joseph Stalin”. The Magnitsky affair has plenty of rivals for that distinction. But, as far as is known, not even the Soviet Union put dead men on trial. Mr Browder himself was convicted in absentia, and sentenced to nine years in jail.