Magnitsky’s Mother is Expected to Testify Tomorrow in the Trial of the Prison Doctor Charged With Her Son’s Death

October 1, 2012

Natalia Mag­nit­skaya, the moth­er of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, is expect­ed to tes­ti­fy against Dmit­ry Kra­tov, the doc­tor at Burtry­ka Prison who denied her son med­ical atten­tion at his tri­al in Moscow tomorrow.

The court hear­ing will take place at Tver­skoi Dis­trict Court (25а Tsvet­noi Boule­vard, Moscow) at 10:30 am, Tues­day Octo­ber 2^nd. 

After three years of inves­ti­ga­tion, the Russ­ian author­i­ties charged Dmit­ry Kra­tov, for­mer deputy head of Butyr­ka deten­tion cen­ter respon­si­ble for med­ical care. He is the only offi­cial being pros­e­cut­ed for the death of Mr Mag­nit­sky. Russ­ian author­i­ties charged Kra­tov with neg­li­gence as opposed to tor­ture or homi­cide. The charges were made ignor­ing the find­ings of the Russ­ian President’s Human Rights Coun­cil and peti­tions from Mag­nit­sky’s fam­i­ly show­ing evi­dence that Mag­nit­sky was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly with­held med­ical care, tor­tured and ulti­mate­ly beat­en to death in cus­tody in an effort to force him to change his tes­ti­monies against cor­rupt Russ­ian gov­ern­ment officials.

In the pre­vi­ous hear­ing on this case on 13 Sep­tem­ber 2012, Judge Nevero­va reject­ed all peti­tions filed by Mag­nit­sky’s fam­i­ly seek­ing to return the case to pros­e­cu­tors to take into con­sid­er­a­tion new evi­dence show­ing that Kra­tov was act­ing in con­cert with oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials as part of a con­spir­a­cy involv­ing the theft of $230 mil­lion from the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. The judge also refused to allow a video record­ing or live inter­net broad­cast­ing of the hear­ing. She refused to move the hear­ing to a court­room large enough to allow press and oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties to attend the hear­ing. And final­ly, she refused peti­tions to call new wit­ness­es and seek doc­u­men­tary evi­dence from gov­ern­ment organisations. 

When Sergei Mag­nit­sky was still alive, the same Judge Nevero­va also refused his own peti­tions from cus­tody to stop his rights being vio­lat­ed by the Inte­ri­or Ministry.

Sergei Mag­nit­sky, an out­side lawyer for the Her­mitage Fund, was killed in Russ­ian police cus­tody at the age of 37 after he exposed the $230 mil­lion theft impli­cat­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials. He was hon­oured posthu­mous­ly with 2010 Integri­ty Award by Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al, for his fight against offi­cial corruption.

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