Greg White's article in the Wall Street Journal today on the the Moscow Public Oversight Commission report on the death of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky is essential reading. It is an absolutely devastating, criminal, and impossible to ignore situation. See the Hermitage press release over here for extensive excerpts from the report.But Monday's commission report goes further than that, charging that authorities deliberately "organized physical and psychological pressure on Sergei Magnitsky." It cites frequent changes of jails and cells, as well as conditions that amounted to "torture" even by the standards of Russia's harsh prisons. Citing case records, the panel also dismissed claims by investigators and police that Mr. Magnitsky hadn't filed complaints about the conditions and lack of medical care.
"The behavior of the medical personnel at Butyrskaya prison wasn't 'negligence.' It wasn't just 'not providing medical assistance,' but the question can be raised of violating the right to life," the report said. Prosecutors at present are investigating possible charges of negligence and failure to provide medical aid in the case.
Some members of the panel went further in comments at a news conference. One, Zoya Svetova, said, "as horrible as it sounds, this was an intentional death." Another, Andrei Babushkin, said Mr. Magnitsky was murdered in order to conceal the fraud that he had exposed.
Mr. Magnitsky, who was in good health when he was jailed in November 2008, was diagnosed in a prison hospital in July with gall stones. But less than a week before he was to undergo a follow-up ultrasound that could have led to him having surgery, he was transferred to Butyrskaya, where that medical service wasn't available. After months of being denied care, he was transferred back to the hospital at the other prison by ambulance. He died there within hours, in a holding cell despite a diagnosis of acute pancreatitis, the report said.
Panel members accused prison officials of attempting to obstruct their investigation. "It was clear that we were lied to and lied to a lot," said Valery Borshchev, head of the commission, which visited all the cells where Mr. Magnitsky was held and interviewed officials who dealt with him.
A spokesman for the prison service said he hadn't received the report and couldn't comment. Interior Ministry officials couldn't be reached.
