Translated material
Conclusions about death
The human rights council under the President of Russia and an American senator were involved in the investigation into the death of Sergei Magnitsky
The head of the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), Lyudmila Alekseeva, who is a member of the Presidential Council for Promoting the Development of Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights, initiated an independent investigation into the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died last year in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center .According to Ms. Alekseeva, at Monday’s meeting of the council, a working group was created, which, in addition to the head of the MHG herself, included human rights activists Irina Yasina and Mara Polyakova, the head of the Russian branch of the international organization Transparency International Elena Panfilova, as well as the chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee Kirill Kabanov and a journalist Svetlana Sorokina. “We will check how the instructions given by the president are being carried out,” Ella Pamfilova, head of the Council for Promoting the Development of Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights, told Vremya Novostey.
Let us recall that on November 24 last year, Dmitry Medvedev instructed Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika and Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov to understand the causes of the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for the British investment fund Hermitage Capital Management. “The point is not only about Magnitsky, but also about the general conditions of detention of citizens in pre-trial detention centers. Using this case as an example, the council members included in the working group, within their competence, will find out how the president’s orders to restore order in this area are being implemented,” Ms. Pamfilova said. The results of this public inspection will be reported to Dmitry Medvedev, she clarified.
“We want the president to pay attention to this problem again,” said Lyudmila Alekseeva, according to whom the investigation into the lawyer’s death is being carried out extremely slowly and so far “no one has been punished.” The head of the Moscow Helsinki Group recalled that her appeal to the head of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor General's Office (SKP) Alexander Bastrykin calling for a comprehensive investigation into Magnitsky's death remained unanswered. Last Friday, Ms. Alekseeva stated that she considered the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Penitentiary Service to be guilty. “The investigators who conducted the case of Sergei Magnitsky, as well as the heads of the pre-trial detention center where the lawyer was kept, must appear in court,” the human rights activist is confident.
Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old employee of the British firm Firestone Duncan, which provided legal services to the Hermitage Capital Management fund, was arrested in the fall of 2008. The lawyer was involved in a case of tax evasion, which was conducted by the Investigative Committee. The suspect was kept either in Butyrka or in Matrosskaya Tishina. According to representatives of the Investigative Committee, during the 11 months of his stay in the pre-trial detention center, neither the accused himself nor his lawyers applied to the investigation for release for health reasons. But on November 16, 2009, Sergei Magnitsky died in the Matrosskaya Tishina hospital. Initially, the administration of the pre-trial detention center reported that the cause of death was pancreatic necrosis, a disease of the pancreas, but later the main version became death due to acute cardiovascular failure. Mr Magnitsky's lawyers said they were informed that their client had died from a ruptured pancreas.
Lyudmila Alekseeva claims that the lawyer “died as a result of torture to which he was systematically subjected.” According to human rights activists, Magnitsky was “denied medical care, forcing him to give false testimony.” The situation is complicated by the fact that the Preobrazhensk prosecutor’s office refused to conduct a repeat forensic medical examination of the body, which also gives rise to alternative versions of the lawyer’s death.
Let us note that ten days after the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the leadership of the Federal Penitentiary Service admitted that the agency bears partial responsibility for what happened. Deputy Director of the Federal Penitentiary Service Alexander Smirnov said that “violations were identified” in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center, but noted that final conclusions could be drawn only after the completion of the “currently ongoing inspection.”
This week, the case of the death of Sergei Magnitsky gained international resonance. Yesterday it became known that American Senator Benjamin Cardin (in some way a colleague of Ms. Alekseeva - this representative of the Democratic Party heads the Helsinki Commission of Congress) called for a ban on entry into the United States for 60 high-ranking Russian law enforcement officers. All of them, according to Mr. Cardin, “bear direct or indirect responsibility for the death of Sergei Magnitsky.” “I call for the immediate cancellation and permanent ban on all individuals implicated in this crime, as well as their dependents and family members,” the senator wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In particular, Mr. Cardin called for blacklisting the head of the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia Alexei Anichin, Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin, heads of the Department of Economic Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and many other employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Tax Service, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Prosecutor General's Office and the FSB. According to Senator Cardin, the Russian officials he mentioned “participated in the corruption scheme of stealing 5.4 billion rubles discovered by Magnitsky, arrested him on trumped-up charges and used torture, which led to his death in a pre-trial detention center.”