Report Confirms Russian Lawyer Subjected to Inhumane Conditions in Prison before Death

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia - A twenty page report issued Monday by the Moscow Public Oversight Commission has confirmed allegations that investment-fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was subjected to inhumane conditions and denied necessary medical care before his death. The Moscow Public Oversight Commission is a nongovernmental group empowered under Russian law to monitor human rights conditions in jails and prisons.

Magnitsky,the father of two, died on November 16, 2009 of pancreatitis at the age of thirty seven after he was denied medical treatment during his pre-trial detention in Moscow's notorious Butyrskaya prison.

The Commission reported that authorities deliberately "organized physical and psychological pressure on Sergei Magnitsky." The report also stated that Magnitsky was subjected to conditions tantamount to torture, even by the brutal standards of Russia's prison system. Commission panel member Andrei Babushkin said that Magnitsky was murdered in order to conceal the fraud that he had exposed.

In court filings and notes before his death, Magnitsky alleged that during his eleven months of detention he was subjected to increasingly worsening conditions. He also claimed that he was denied medical care in an effort to force him to testify falsely against William Browder, the U.S.-born British head of Hermitage Capital.

Russian investigators had charged both Browder and Magnitsky with tax evasion. Both men denied the claims against them and publicly accused investigators and other senior officials of stealing $234 million in taxes paid by Hermitage to the Russian government.  Russian authorities have repeatedly denied the allegations. Days before his arrest, Magnitsky named high-ranking Russian interior ministry officials that he claimed participated in the fraud.

After Magnitsky's death and in the wake of public and international outrage, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a criminal probe into the lawyer's death, and fired twenty top prison officials. On Friday, Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov told President Medvedev that Magnitsky's death was "the apotheosis" of the problems regarding the medical treatment of prisoners, and vowed prison reform.

When he was initially imprisoned in November 2008, Sergei Magnitsky was in good health. Diagnosed with gall stones in July, he was transferred to Butyrskaya a week before he was to have undergone a pre-surgery ultrasound. At Butyrskaya, Magnitsky received no medical treatment. He died several hours after he was finally transported back to the hospital by ambulance in mid-November.

The report also exposed the responsibility of a judge at a Moscow court who prolonged Magnitsky's detention by four days before his death, refusing to accept written evidence of his deteriorating medical condition.

In a televised interview last week, Medvedev called for an end to pre-trial detention for persons charged with economic crimes, including tax-related offenses.

He said: "It is necessary to conduct investigations in accordance with the law to seek to obtain quality evidence and not to extract it by other means."

For more information, please see:

AP - Moscow commission slams treatment of jailed lawyer - 28 December 2009

Financial Times - Watchdog slams prisons over Magnitsky death - 28 December 2009

WSJ - Report Slams Treatment of Dead Russian Lawyer - 28 December 2009

Telegraph - Sergei Magnitsky: independent investigation into death of lawyer slams Russia - 28 December 2009