Moscow Court Reveals Secret FSB File of Operational Activities Against Sergei Magnitsky While he Was in Prison

October 3, 2012

Niko­lai Gorokhov, the lawyer for Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s moth­er, announced in Moscow court that evi­dence has sur­faced of a secret FSB file which indi­cat­ed a series of oper­a­tional activ­i­ties con­duct­ed by the FSB (the Russ­ian secret police) inside the prison while Sergei Mag­nit­sky was held in pre-tri­al deten­tion. The files have been kept con­fi­den­tial and the Mag­nit­sky fam­i­ly lawyer beleieves these activ­i­ties and the files doc­u­ment­ing them could shed light on the cir­cum­stances of his mur­der in police cus­tody and who was behind it. 

Mr Gorokhov said that he had filed a request for dis­clo­sure of these file on behalf of the Mag­nit­sky fam­i­ly with the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice, and request­ed the court’s assis­tance in obtain­ing it. All pre­vi­ous requests to the Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice from the Mag­nit­sky fam­i­ly for access to infor­ma­tion in rela­tion to Sergei Mag­nit­sky have been reject­ed on the ground that no rights have been vio­lat­ed, and the fam­i­ly had no right to request this information.
“From the mate­ri­als of the case into the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, his moth­er, Natalia Mag­nit­skaya, and her rep­re­sen­ta­tive, we became aware that there was an oper­a­tional case opened in rela­tion to Sergei Mag­nit­sky under which oper­a­tional and intel­li­gence activ­i­ties had been car­ried out…Please pro­vide to the vic­tim copies of the oper­a­tional file con­cern­ing her son, Sergei Mag­nit­sky; please pre­serve the file in full intact and pre­vent its destruc­tion; in case of reluc­tance to pro­vide the file to the vic­tim, please pro­vide them direct­ly to the court,” says a peti­tion filed by Mrs. Magnitskaya’s lawyer. 

The peti­tion is based on Arti­cle 24 of the Russ­ian Con­sti­tu­tion that guar­an­tees the right for access to infor­ma­tion about cit­i­zens’ rights gath­ered by state orga­ni­za­tions, and Arti­cle 5 of the Russ­ian Law on Oper­a­tional and Intel­li­gence Activ­i­ty which enti­tles cit­i­zens to appeal oper­a­tional and intel­li­gence activ­i­ties if they have grounds to believe that those activ­i­ties breached their rights.

No answer is avail­able yet on the out­come of this petition.

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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