Head Of Russian President's Human Rights Body Welcomes Report On Lawyer's Death
Moscow, 4 July: The head of the presidential council for human rights, Mikhail Fedotov, has said that rights campaigners agree with the conclusions reached by the Russian Investigations Committee (RIC) that Heritage Capital foundation lawyer Sergey Magnitskiy had died in a Moscow remand centre because of the failure to provide him with medical care.
"The conclusions announced by the RIC today were reflected in our documents too. I am satisfied with the fact that our conclusions fully coincide with those of the Investigations Committee," Fedotov told Interfax on Monday (4 July).
On Tuesday 5 July the presidential council for human rights will present its preliminary report on the Magnitskiy case to (President) Dmitriy Medvedev.
"Our preliminary findings do not deal with medicine alone, and not only with the Magnitskiy case. We raise the issue of the state of prison medicine in general," Fedotov said.
He said that the Magnitskiy case should be investigated on all tracks, including the corruption-related aspect. "One should deal with all the aspects, (including) the corruption-related aspect of the Magnitskiy case. As far as we know, the Investigations Committee is probing into this," Fedotov said.
Independent human rights campaigners blame Magnitskiy's death not only on the prison doctors but also on the security structures (vernacular: siloviki). Activists say that there has been so real investigation into Magnitskiy's death.
("Our report also contains names and personal data, so we to not deem it possible to publish our report until it has been presented to the president," Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Fedotov saying. He also said that the only after courts had delivered verdicts in the Magnitskiy case would it "be possible to say that this part of the work has been completed". He said that it was necessary to eliminate all the factors that had led to Magnitskiy's death in custody: "This means eliminating problems in the system for providing medical care in the institutions of the Federal Penal Service, and gaps in the legislation," RIA Novosti quoted him saying.
Another RIA Novosti report quoted Anatoliy Kucherena, head of the Public Chamber commission for control and reform of law-enforcement bodies, as saying that the investigator who had asked the court to remand Magnitskiy in custody should also be made personally responsible: "Before taking a person into custody, one should be very attentive to the medical reports provided by the suspect," he said.)
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