Russian NGO Names Officials Responsible for the Death of Anti-Corruption Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky

December 28, 2009

28 Decem­ber 2009 – Today the Moscow Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion, a Russ­ian NGO that is man­dated by law to mon­i­tor human rights in Moscow deten­tion facil­i­ties, has released a detailed report about the grue­some cir­cum­stances that lead to the death of 37-year old anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky in a Moscow pre-trial deten­tion facil­ity where he was kept with­out trial for 12 months.

The 20-page report con­cludes that inves­ti­ga­tors from the Russ­ian Inte­rior Min­istry, and the admin­is­tra­tion and med­ical staff at Butyrka prison, were respon­si­ble for the cre­ation of “tor­tur­ous” deten­tion con­di­tions for Sergei Mag­nit­sky. The report con­cludes that Sergei Mag­nit­sky was delib­er­ately sub­jected to phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure and denied urgent med­ical care in order to coerce him to com­mit per­jury and give false tes­ti­mony. The report high­lights the respon­si­bil­ity of judge Stashina of the Tver­skoi dis­trict court of Moscow who, four days prior to Sergei Magnitsky’s death, refused to accept doc­u­ments evi­denc­ing his dire med­ical con­di­tion and instead pro­longed his deten­tion. Finally, the report draws the con­clu­sion that the Russ­ian Pros­e­cu­tor Office failed to inter­vene to address the seri­ous legal breaches of the deten­tion con­di­tions of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, despite a detailed com­plaint addressed to Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor, Yuri Chaika.

With regards to the role of Inves­ti­ga­tors from the Russ­ian Inte­rior Min­istry, the Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion states:

“Dur­ing the course of our inves­ti­ga­tion of the con­di­tions of Mag­nit­sky in Butyrka deten­tion facil­ity, we have come to the con­clu­sion that the cir­cum­stances that have lead to the death of detainee S.L.Magnitsky can­not be viewed sep­a­rately from the course of the inves­ti­ga­tion of the crim­i­nal case. He believed that the con­di­tions cre­ated for him in Butyrka prison are evi­dence of the pres­sure on him to sup­press his will by tor­tur­ous deten­tion con­di­tions and force tes­ti­monies admit­ting guilt…Of par­tic­u­lar con­cern are two facts. First, on 16 Octo­ber 2009, Mag­nit­sky made a state­ment about the large-scale fraud involv­ing theft of state bud­get money by high-ranking offi­cials of the Russ­ian Inte­rior Min­istry. He gave a detailed descrip­tion of the fraud­u­lent scheme and named names. Sec­ond, on 24 Novem­ber, the one year in pre-trial deten­tion was due to expire. The inves­ti­ga­tors did not have suf­fi­cient evi­dence to prove his guilt.”

The report fur­ther refers to the out­right refusal by senior inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko of the Inte­rior Ministry’s Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, of the peti­tion from Mr Magnitsky’s lawyers for his ultra­sound exam­i­na­tion and calls the refusal of med­ical care “cyn­i­cal” and “show­ing the fail­ure of inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko to com­ply with Arti­cle 11 of the Russ­ian Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dural Code” that requires of the inves­ti­ga­tor to explain an accused per­son their rights and ensure the pos­si­bil­ity to exer­cise those rights. The Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion states that the actions by inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko “evi­dence either his neg­li­gence or a delib­er­ate intent to con­ceal the moti­va­tion of his refusal to pro­vide a med­ical examination.”

The refusal by Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko to carry out a med­ical exam­i­na­tion of Sergei Mag­nit­sky clearly demon­strates that the pub­lic state­ment last week by Mr Anichin, head of the Russ­ian Inte­rior Ministry’s Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, that the Inte­rior Min­istry never received any com­plaints about Sergei Magnitsky’s health prob­lems, was patently untrue.

The report also cites the refusal by inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko of the Inte­rior Min­istry to allow Sergei Mag­nit­sky to see his fam­ily for 11 months in detention.

With regards to the unlaw­ful pres­sure exerted on Mag­nit­sky in deten­tion, the Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion reports: “Based on con­di­tions of Mag­nit­sky at Butyrka deten­tion facil­ity, mem­bers of the Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion have come to the con­clu­sion that in fact psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal pres­sure was exerted upon him.”

The report cites evi­dence of phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure with the involve­ment of inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko of the Russ­ian Inte­rior Ministry’s Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee. This includes unjus­ti­fied trans­fer of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, ordered by Silchenko, to a tem­po­rary deten­tion facil­ity with extreme con­di­tions in Feb­ru­ary 2009. It also includes the trans­fer on 25 July 2009 from Matrosskaya Tishina deten­tion facil­ity to Butyrka prison. The grounds for the trans­fer remain unex­plained, given that on 1 July 2009 Sergei was diag­nosed with pan­cre­ati­tis and ordered to have a repeat ultra­sound exam­i­na­tion and a pos­si­ble oper­a­tion by 1 August 2009. Yet a week prior to a planned exam­i­na­tion and surgery, Sergei was trans­ferred to Butyrka, which did not even have an ultra­sound machine and where the med­ical exam­i­na­tion and the oper­a­tion could not have taken place. The report indi­cates that accord­ing to prison offi­cials, the trans­fer from Matrosskaya Tishina to Butyrka was based on the need to carry out repairs on the entire floor where Sergei was kept. How­ever, accord­ing to the same prison offi­cials, only five detainees were trans­ferred and the repairs have never begun.

The report calls “unprece­dented” the fact that Sergei Mag­nit­sky had been trans­ferred between three deten­tion cen­ters (in addi­tion to two tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ters) and numer­ous cells while he was await­ing trial for 12 months.

The report describes the sys­tem­atic denial of med­ical care to Sergei Mag­nit­sky by offi­cials and med­ical staff at Butyrka prison and con­cludes that “the actions of med­ical staff at deten­tion cen­ter was not just neg­li­gence, it was not just ‘non-provision of med­ical care’. These actions raise the ques­tion of the vio­la­tion of his right to life.”

The Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion ques­tions the offi­cial expla­na­tion of the cause of death being heart fail­ure stat­ing: “The inflamed stom­ach and an echocar­dio­gram heart exam­i­na­tion con­ducted shortly prior [to his death] do not sup­port this version”.

The report describes shock­ing details of the non-provision of urgent med­ical care to Sergei Mag­nit­sky dur­ing the sev­eral days and hours pre­ceed­ing his death. The Com­mis­sion did not receive an ade­quate answer why, given that Sergei Mag­nit­sky began to com­plain about grave stom­ach pains and vom­it­ing on 13 Novem­ber, for three days he was seen only by a nurse and not a doc­tor. The Com­mis­sion notes that it became known to prison and med­ical staff at Butyrka that Sergei required urgent med­ical atten­tion for the acute pan­cre­ati­tis on the morn­ing of 16 Novem­ber, only in the evening he was trans­ferred to Matrossskay Tishina, which has a med­ical care unit, and where nev­er­the­less he did not receive any med­ical care at all.

The Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion specif­i­cally ques­tions the behav­ior of sur­geon Gauss of Matrosskaya Tishina who left Mag­nit­sky alone in an iso­la­tion ward with­out med­ical care in spite of the need for urgent med­ical care and as a result, “an ill per­son in severe con­di­tion was effec­tively left with­out med­ical atten­tion (for 1 hour 18 min­utes) to die in an iso­la­tion ward.”

The report indi­cates that shortly after the arrival to Matrosskay Tishina, Sergei Mag­nit­sky stated to the staff of deten­tion cen­tre that some­one was try­ing to mur­der him. On that basis, the staff decided that he was hav­ing a “psy­chotic episode” and never tried to ascer­tain what were the grounds for Sergei’s state­ment, which could have been accu­rate por­trayal of real­ity. Accord­ing to the Com­mis­sion: “As for his psy­chosis – based on him [Sergei] say­ing that some­one wants to mur­der him…- it could have been an appro­pri­ate response to what was hap­pen­ing to him.”

The Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion cites the sus­pi­cious refusal by head of Butyrka prison Kom­nov to name the guard who escorted Sergei Mag­nit­sky sev­eral hours prior to his death in an ambu­lance car from Butyrka to Matrosskaya Tishina. Mr Kom­nov jus­ti­fied his refusal say­ing: “I don’t want him [the guard] to be killed.” The Com­mis­sion did not find this expla­na­tion sat­is­fac­tory.
The Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion points out glar­ing con­tra­dic­tions in the tes­ti­monies of var­i­ous offi­cials and med­ical per­son­nel, as well as the unavail­abil­ity of cer­tain key med­ical staff for inter­views at both Butyrka and Matrosskaya Tishina deten­tion cen­ters, and the appar­ent fear to speak openly of detainees who wit­nessed Sergei’s sit­u­a­tion. The report indicates:

“Many state­ments [by prison offi­cials and med­ical staff] hardly match. The emer­gency ambu­lance doc­tor appears to be ‘miss­ing’, the sto­ries by [Dr] Gauss and [nurse] Sasha [at Matrosskaya Tishina] about the tim­ing of injec­tion before or after he [Sergei] allegedly devel­oped symp­toms of psy­chosis con­tra­dict each other. State­ments by var­i­ous peo­ple are con­flict­ing about every detail of the tim­ing of events, his [Sergei’s] behav­ior dur­ing the psy­chotic episode, and every­thing what hap­pened to him after plac­ing him in iso­la­tion ward.”

The Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion points out that such con­flict­ing and con­tra­dict­ing reports are par­tic­u­larly strange given that all those offi­cials had been already ques­tioned by the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tors. It con­cludes that the med­ical staff of deten­tion cen­ters is con­ceal­ing the truth: “Reports by doc­tors con­tra­dict each other. It is obvi­ous that they are delib­er­ately con­ceal­ing the truth.”

In the con­clud­ing remarks of the report, the Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion calls for a probe into “the role of the inves­ti­ga­tors in cre­at­ing con­di­tions and sub­ject­ing S.L. Mag­nit­sky to them in deten­tion, and the degree of their responsibility.”

Refer­ring to the role of judges, the Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion cites the rejec­tion by judge Stashina of Tver­skoi dis­trict court to accept doc­u­ments about Sergei Magnitsky’s med­ical con­di­tion, and her refusal to release him from pre-trial deten­tion, say­ing that if not for this, “he could have stayed alive,” and “we believe that the Supreme Court and the legal com­mu­nity must review the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion not only with judge Stashina, but also in gen­eral with seri­ously ill detainees.”

With regard to the role of the pros­e­cu­tor office, the report also states that “the pros­e­cu­tor office who are respon­si­ble for over­see­ing adher­ence of con­di­tions in deten­tion to law, did not per­form their functions.”

The Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion is a body formed under the Russ­ian Law “On Pub­lic Con­trol of Human Rights in Deten­tion and Assis­tance to Per­sons in Deten­tion” from 10 June 2008.

Valery Borschev, the chair­man of the Moscow City Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion, is a well-known human rights defender, for­mer mem­ber of the Russ­ian par­lia­ment, and mem­ber of the Moscow Helsinki Group, the old­est Russ­ian human rights orga­ni­za­tion active in Rus­sia today. He was one of the authors of the law on the pub­lic over­sight of deten­tion cen­ters intro­duced in the lower cham­ber of the par­lia­ment in late 1990’s but blocked by the parliament’s upper chamber.

The report was signed by Mr Bor­shev, and the fol­low­ing other mem­bers of the Moscow City Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion: Ms Volkova, Ms Flerova, Ms Alpern, Ms Dubikova, and Ms Svetova.

For more infor­ma­tion please contact:

info@lawandorderinrussia.org
info@hermitagefund.com
Phone: +44 207 440 1777

http://www.onk-moskva.hrworld.ru

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