#17 - JRL 2009-237 - JRL Home
Rights Commission Blames Russian Jail Inmate's Death on Justice Officials
MOSCOW. Dec 28 (Interfax) - A nongovernmental human rights commission was cited on Monday as blaming last month's death of a company lawyer in a Russian remand jail on his "inhuman, humiliating conditions of detention."
Hermitage Capital company lawyer Sergei Magnitsky "was deliberately put under physical and psychological pressure and was denied medical assistance in a bid to force him to give false evidence," Hermitage Capital cited the commission, whose members represented major Russian human rights groups, as saying in a report.
"The 20-page report prepared by the commission describes circumstances that led to Magnitsky's death. The commission comes to the conclusion that a senior investigator at the Investigation Committee of the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Federation, a judge at the Tverskoi Court of Moscow, and some prosecution service officials were involved in the creation of inhuman, humiliating conditions of detention that were essentially similar to torture and led to the lawyer's death," Hermitage Capital said in a statement.
"Responsibility for his death must be laid both on the administration and medical personnel of the remand jail and on investigators of the Criminal Investigation Committee of the Ministry of the Interior," the statement said.
"The commission's report also points to the conduct of a judge of the Tverskoi Court of Moscow, who, four days before Magnitsky's death, refused to give consideration to documents certifying the serious illness of the accused and extended his term of custody," Hermitage Capital said.
"The report points to the outrageous fact that, in response to an August 19 appeal from Magnitsky's lawyers for an ultrasound test of his abdominal cavity, an investigator of the Criminal Investigation Committee of the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Federation issued a resolution in which he flatly refused to satisfy it," the company said.
Magnitsky died in a prison hospital on November 16.
The rights organizations represented by the commission included Memorial, the Moscow Helsinki Group and For Human Rights.
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