Magnitsky’s Mother Slams the Government’s Cover-Up in Prosecution of Prison Doctor Kratov

October 2, 2012

Natalia Mag­nit­skaya, the moth­er of the late Russ­ian lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky, today called on the Russ­ian court to accept new evi­dence show­ing the com­plic­i­ty of a large group of Russ­ian law enforce­ment offi­cials in the tor­ture and killing of her son, and to send the case back to prosecutors. 

In her tes­ti­mo­ny at the Tver­skoi Dis­trict Court in Moscow this morn­ing, Mrs. Mag­nit­skaya gave evi­dence that the indict­ment issued by Russ­ian inves­ti­ga­tors against Dmit­ry Kra­tov, a for­mer deputy head of Butyr­ka prison, does not con­tain cer­tain crit­i­cal fac­tu­al and doc­u­men­tary evi­dence link­ing oth­er offi­cials to the crime against her son. Under the Russ­ian crim­i­nal pro­ce­dur­al code, the court is bound by the scope of the indict­ment in issu­ing its sen­tence and this ommi­sion by the pros­e­cu­tors would lead to a dras­ti­cal­ly more lenient sentence.

In her court tes­ti­mo­ny against Kra­tov, Natalia Mag­nit­skaya made the fol­low­ing statements:
“In accor­dance with the law, the vic­tim is enti­tled to rep­re­sent and sup­port the pros­e­cu­tion, but in this sit­u­a­tion, I am deprived of this right because I can­not sup­port this accu­sa­tion — the infor­ma­tion con­tained in the case files avail­able to the inves­ti­ga­tors make it clear that Dmit­ry Kra­tov was not the only cul­prit as the indict­ment sug­gests. In these cir­cum­stances I ask the court to make the only pos­si­ble just and law­ful deci­sion — to return this crim­i­nal case back to the pros­e­cu­tor and re-open the inves­ti­ga­tion in light of the new fac­tu­al cir­cum­stances iden­ti­fied by my rep­re­sen­ta­tive and which the indict­ment does not include.”

Judge Nevero­va refused the peti­tion on the grounds that a sim­i­lar peti­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly been refused from Mrs. Mag­nit­skaya’s lawyer.
“Last time I saw my son alive in the Tver­skoi Dis­trict Court, there were no signs of his fatal con­di­tion. That was four days before his death… Who will tell me the truth, what hap­pened to my son dur­ing these 4 days? It is in these days and the last hours of his life, which was con­firmed by experts, that Sergei suf­fered injuries from vio­lence,” said Mrs. Magnitskaya.

“My son died not on a desert­ed street, and not in a dark hall­way, he died in a state facil­i­ty in the pres­ence of many wit­ness­es, and such wit­ness­es were not pris­on­ers, but they were the state offi­cials, doc­tors and secu­ri­ty guards. How­ev­er, the inves­ti­ga­tion has been con­duct­ed for almost three years by now, and is still very far from com­ple­tion,” said Mrs. Magnitskaya. 

Mrs. Mag­nit­skaya drew atten­tion to the role of the head of Butyr­ka deten­tion, Mr Kom­nov, and his deputy in charge of oper­a­tional and intel­li­gence activ­i­ties in cus­tody, Mr Gor­chakov, nei­ther of whom have been charged, and instead these offi­cials will be called as wit­ness­es for the prosecution.

“The head of Butyr­ka deten­tion cen­ter Mr Kom­nov and his deputy Mr. Gor­chakov were both respon­si­ble for estab­lish­ing tor­tur­ous con­di­tions for my son by arrang­ing for numer­ous ille­gal trans­fers between dif­fer­ent cells in Butyr­ka deten­tion cen­ter, how­ev­er, no charges have been brought in rela­tion to them and they now have been invit­ed to the court as wit­ness­es,” said Mrs. Magnitskaya.

Mrs. Mag­nit­skaya also not­ed the role of offi­cials at Matrosskaya Tishi­na deten­tion cen­ter and doc­tor on duty, Alexan­dra Gaus, who left Mag­nit­sky with­out any super­vi­sion for over an hour when deten­tion cen­ter guards used hand­cuffs and rub­ber batons on Magnitsky.

“With­out any doubt, direct respon­si­bil­i­ty for the tor­ture of my son and for his bru­tal mur­der stays with Dr. Gaus and she should be held crim­i­nal­ly liable for this. Despite all of this, inves­ti­ga­tor Mrs Lomonoso­va of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee and Deputy Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al Grin called her to the court as a wit­ness for the pros­e­cu­tion. There have been no changes brought for the com­mit­ted crime in rela­tion to Dr. Gaus or her accom­plices,” said Mrs. Magnitskaya.

Mrs. Mag­nit­skaya recount­ed her meet­ing with Dmit­ry Kra­tov two months before her son’s death when she request­ed him to pro­vide med­ical treat­ment for her son which he had been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly denied in custody.
“Based on my per­son­al meet­ing with Mr Kra­tov in Sep­tem­ber 2009, i.e. two months before the death of my son, I have every rea­son to state that Mr Kra­tov knew and was aware that by his crim­i­nal actions and omis­sion, tor­tur­ous con­di­tions were cre­at­ed for my son. He was part of this con­spir­a­cy and there­fore ful­filled his role in the tor­ture of Sergei,” said Mrs. Magnitskaya.

“A young, healthy man who had no med­ical his­to­ry in local clin­ics after being in cus­tody for about a year became sick and had an incred­i­ble large num­ber of fatal illnesses…Less than a year after the arrest, state rep­re­sen­ta­tives asked me to pick up my son’s man­gled body from the morgue, doing it in a way that I was unable to have an inde­pen­dent med­ical exam­i­na­tion of the caus­es of his death,” added Mrs. Magnitskaya.

Mrs Mag­nit­skaya also high­light­ed the role of the senior lead­er­ship of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry and high rank­ing offi­cials from the Russ­ian penal sys­tem in orga­niz­ing Magnitsky’s six trans­fers between deten­tion cen­ters in less than a year.

“Maybe Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko, act­ing now as “wit­ness for the pros­e­cu­tion”, will be able to explain what his motives were when he signed an ille­gal decree request­ing to exe­cute the force­ful deliv­ery of my son to him? On Novem­ber 24, 2008 the state offi­cials who were the mem­bers of inves­ti­ga­tion group of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry, Mr Ryabinin, Mr Droganov and Mr Krech­tov came to my son’s apart­ment and took him away — young and healthy — for­ev­er from his fam­i­ly under a pre­text of a crim­i­nal case brought by inves­ti­ga­tor Kar­pov and the FSB offi­cials,” said Mrs. Magnitskaya.

“Maybe Inves­ti­ga­tor Silchenko will be able to tell us why my son was trans­ferred six times between dif­fer­ent deten­tion facil­i­ties with­in less than one year. Deci­sions on each such trans­fers were tak­en at the fed­er­al lev­el, per­son­al­ly by act­ing Direc­tor of the Fed­er­al Pen­i­ten­tiary Ser­vice of Rus­sia Lt-gen­er­al Petrukhin, his deputy Gen­er­al Seme­niuk, with direct par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Deputy Chief of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry Gen­er­al Logunov and inves­ti­ga­tor of this com­mit­tee Mr Silchenko… In total, dur­ing his ille­gal deten­tion, my son was trans­ferred between dif­fer­ent cells at least twen­ty-one times, some trans­fers were con­duct­ed dur­ing nights,” said Mrs. Magnitskaya.

“Sergei died due to vio­lence and tor­tur­ous con­di­tions that were specif­i­cal­ly cre­at­ed for him. This is con­firmed by doc­u­men­tary evi­dence which those who were involved in his death will not be able to hide,” said Mrs. Magnitskaya.

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 hon­ored posthu­mous­ly with 2010 Integri­ty Award by Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al, for his fight against offi­cial corruption.

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