Special Assistant to President Obama Meets with Mother of Sergei Magnitsky

May 28, 2010

U.S. National Security Adviser McFaul Meets Natalia Magnitskaya, Mother of Anti-Corruption Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky Unlawfully Detained and Killed in Russian Custody

28 May 2010 – Yesterday, Michael McFaul, Special Assistant to U.S. President Obama and Senior Director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, met in Moscow with Natalia Magnitskaya, mother of the late anti-corruption lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who was killed in a Moscow pre-trial detention center six months ago.

McFaul emphasized the case of Sergei Magnitsky among “atrocious, tragic things” during a discussion of human rights, prison reform and migration issues at a meeting yesterday of the US-Russia Civil Society Working Group, which he co-chairs with First Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration, Vladislav Surkov. The meeting took place yesterday in Vladimir, Russia.

McFaul also discussed the case of Sergei Magnitsky at a meeting with Valery Borschev, chair of Moscow Prison Oversight Commission (MPOC), on May 26. The MPOC issued a damning report earlier this year into the death of Sergei Magnitsky stating that during Magnitsky’s pre-trial detention he was subjected to physical and psychological pressure, torturous conditions and deprived of medical care by Interior Ministry investigators in order to obtain false testimonies from him. The report also indicated that prison officials and doctors gave entirely contradictory accounts of what happened to Magnitsky in custody in the last hours of his life. The MPOC concluded that those officials were deliberately concealing the truth.

Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for the Hermitage Fund, was arrested and held for 12 months in torturous conditions without trial by the Interior Ministry officers against whom he had testified for their involvement in the abuse of office and the theft of $230 million budget funds. One month after Magnitsky repeated his testimony against those officers and accused his captors from the Russian Interior Ministry of organising his unlawful arrest on false grounds, keeping him hostage in isolation from family and society, organising cruel and degrading treatment and depriving him of medical care, he was found dead in an isolation cell. His family was denied an independent autopsy. According to the MPOC, in the last hours of his life, Magnitsky stated that someone was trying to murder him. Bruises were seen on his body at the funeral.

Sergei Magnitsky was the only son of Ms Magnitskaya. He left a wife and two children.

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