Sergei Magnitsky’s Mother Accuses Russian General Prosecutor of Murder

September 26, 2011

Natalia Mag­nit­skaya, the moth­er of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, has filed a crim­i­nal com­plaint against Russ­ian Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Yuri Chai­ka, senior offi­cials of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry, Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice, Pen­i­ten­tiary Ser­vice and 11 judges for the con­spir­a­cy to mur­der her son (http://russian-untouchables.com/rus/docs/D275.pdf).

“These indi­vid­u­als and oth­ers orga­nized the repres­sive per­se­cu­tion of my son based on trumped-up charges and using fal­si­fied doc­u­ments in vio­la­tion of Arti­cles 6 and 7 of the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dur­al Code of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and tor­tured him and urged him to incrim­i­nate him­self and his client, and retract his ear­li­er sworn tes­ti­monies made before his arrest against the Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials,” said Natalia Mag­nit­skaya in her petition.

In the peti­tion filed last week with the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, Mrs Natalia Mag­nit­skaya and her lawyer Niko­lai Gorokhov, have dis­closed new evi­dence of the vio­lent death of her son in custody.

The mur­der com­plaint expos­es new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence from Russ­ian gov­ern­ment case files. The new doc­u­ments show that three days after Sergei Mag­nit­sky died in police cus­tody, the lead inves­ti­ga­tor from the Inves­tiga­tive Committee’s branch for Pre­o­brazhen­sky dis­trict of Moscow con­clud­ed that there was strong evi­dence that Sergei Mag­nit­sky was mur­dered (http://russian-untouchables.com/rus/docs/D276.pdf). The offi­cer rec­om­mend­ed open­ing a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion. How­ev­er, no inves­ti­ga­tion was opened, and his con­clu­sions were cov­ered up until today.

The mur­der com­plaint filed by Mrs Mag­nit­skaya also high­lights the cir­cum­stances of Sergei Magnitsky’s murder:

“For a peri­od of one and a half to two hours, Mag­nit­sky – who was in acute and excru­ci­at­ing pain – instead of being giv­en med­ical atten­tion, was put in an iso­la­tion cell by eight riot troop­ers, direct­ed by the assis­tant chief of the deten­tion cen­ter togeth­er with his deputy. The emer­gency room physi­cians were giv­en access to him only after one and a half hours, and only to con­firm his death.”

The com­plaint then refers to spe­cif­ic details of the phys­i­cal injuries that Sergei Mag­nit­sky suf­fered (includ­ing injuries to his knuck­les on both hands and deep lac­er­a­tions on the lit­tle fin­ger of his left hand, injuries on his wrists from hand­cuffs and a large hole in his tongue). None of these injuries have been addressed in any of the offi­cial post-mortem exam­i­na­tions done by the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Committee.

The com­plaint also cites a num­ber of text mes­sages which con­tained explic­it death threats which were sent to Sergei Magnitsky’s col­leagues at rough­ly the same time as his death.

Since Magnitsky’s death, the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee has failed to address any of the avail­able evi­dence of his false arrest, tor­ture and mur­der, includ­ing deten­tion cen­ter guards using hand­cuffs and rub­ber batons on Mag­nit­sky in the last two hours of his life.

“The inves­ti­ga­tion, which has con­tin­ued for more than 21 months, has still not giv­en a prop­er assess­ment of the evi­dence of direct vio­lence against Mag­nit­sky, and the inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cials con­tin­ue to refuse to estab­lish the rea­sons for his phys­i­cal injuries…Investigators rely on as “estab­lished facts” the tes­ti­monies of deten­tion cen­ter offi­cials who are inter­est­ed in con­ceal­ing their role in Magnitsky’s death,” says the petition.

Final­ly, the mur­der com­plaint describes the motives of Russ­ian offi­cials to tor­ture and ulti­mate­ly silence Sergei Mag­nit­sky. One month before Magnitsky’s death, in sworn state­ments to the Inte­ri­or Min­istry, he con­firmed the names of five Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers and their role in the theft of $230 mil­lion of pub­lic funds. Three days before his death, in fur­ther court fil­ings, Mag­nit­sky pro­vid­ed addi­tion­al evi­dence of how Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cers fab­ri­cat­ed and fal­si­fied doc­u­ments in his case file in order to retal­i­ate against him for pro­vid­ing his pre­vi­ous testimony.

Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka and for­mer Deputy Inte­ri­or Min­istry Anichin are named as co-con­spir­a­tors in the crim­i­nal complaint.

“Due to either gross neg­li­gence or the pur­suit of their per­son­al inter­ests, Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Chai­ka Y. Y. and the Head of the Inte­ri­or Ministry’s Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee Anichin A.V. refused or left with­out ade­quate con­sid­er­a­tion my son’s and his attor­neys’ com­plaints, peti­tions and appeals, despite the fact that they were addressed to them and detailed gross vio­la­tions of his rights,” says the complaint.

“With the com­plic­i­ty of senior gov­ern­ment offi­cials, includ­ing Deputy Chief of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs Logunov O.V. and Deputy Head of the Fed­er­al Pen­i­ten­tiary Ser­vice of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion Semenyuk V.I. and Petrukhin E.V., my son was repeat­ed­ly trans­ferred between the deten­tion facil­i­ties with the pur­pose of exert­ing fur­ther phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure on him,” fur­ther says the petition.

The mur­der com­plaint also demands to inves­ti­gate the role of 11 judges in autho­riz­ing an ille­gal arrest and deten­tion of a know­ing­ly inno­cent indi­vid­ual and the denial of jus­tice and an objec­tive review of his com­plaints, lead­ing to his death.

Sergei Mag­nit­sky, act­ing as out­side coun­sel for the Her­mitage Fund, once the largest port­fo­lio investor in Rus­sia, uncov­ered a cor­rupt scheme through which Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials and crim­i­nals stole over $230 mil­lion that had been paid to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment by the Her­mitage Fund’s com­pa­nies in tax­es. One month after Mag­nit­sky tes­ti­fied about the involve­ment of gov­ern­ment offi­cials in the cor­rupt scheme, he was arrest­ed by those same offi­cials, kept in deten­tion in tor­tur­ous con­di­tions for 358 days with­out tri­al and died on 16 Novem­ber 2009.

From deten­tion, Sergei Mag­nit­sky wrote over 450 peti­tions and com­plaints about the vio­la­tion of his rights and denial of access to jus­tice. His com­plaints were reject­ed by Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials, pros­e­cu­tors and courts. Despite the evi­dence of crim­i­nal con­duct of offi­cials pre­sent­ed in July by the Russ­ian President’s Human Rights Coun­cil, and near­ly two years after Magnitsky’s death in cus­tody, not a sin­gle Russ­ian offi­cial has been pros­e­cut­ed and tried for his false arrest, tor­ture and murder.

Offi­cials Named In the Mur­der Complaint

The fol­low­ing offi­cials have been named in the complaint:
 — Inte­ri­or Min­istry of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion: Anichin A.V., Logunov O.V., Matveev A.N., Vino­grado­va N.V., Karlov G.V., Silchenko O.F., Kuznetsov A.K., Droganov A.O., Krechetov А.А., Tolchin­sky D.M., Oleinik S.V., Sapuno­va M.О., Dmitrie­va N.I. and oth­er mem­bers of the inves­tiga­tive team and offi­cials of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Ministry;
 — Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion: Chai­ka Y.Y., Peche­gin A.I., Burov А.V., Altukho­va M.E., Sivozhelez V.А.;
 — Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion: Loguntsov А.Е.; and
 — Fed­er­al Pen­i­ten­tiary Ser­vices of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion: Petrukhin E.V., Semenuk V.I., Prokopenko I.P.., Kom­nov D.V., Kra­tov D.B., Tagiev F.G.”

The fol­low­ing judges have been named:
 — Judges of Tver­skoi Dis­trict Court of Moscow: Stashina E.V.; Podoprig­orov S.G.; Ukhnal­e­va S.V., Krivoruchko A.V., and Nevero­va T.V.,
 — Judges of the Moscow City Court: Vodopy­ano­va L.M., Markov S.M., Andree­va S.V., Nikolenko L.I., Shara­po­va N.V., Rol­geyz­er O.V.

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