Russian Government Drops Criminal Charges Against Doctor Responsible for the Torture and Death of Sergei Magnitsky

April 12, 2012

Russ­ian Gov­ern­ment Drops Crim­i­nal Charges Against Doc­tor Respon­si­ble for the Tor­ture and Death of Sergei Magnitsky
9 April 2012 – On the eve of the 24 April 2012 dead­line of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee has announced that they have dropped charges against Lar­isa Litvi­no­va, one of the two doc­tors who were defen­dants in this case due to the expiry of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions. For 20 months after the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, the Russ­ian author­i­ties made pub­lic state­ments say­ing that there was no wrong­do­ing on the part of any offi­cials. Only after inter­na­tion­al pres­sure and the pub­lic dis­cus­sion of visa sanc­tions did the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee open a crim­i­nal case into two low lev­el doc­tors from the Butry­ka prison for neg­li­gence. They charged Ms. Litvi­no­va with “unin­ten­tion­al acts caus­ing death” know­ing that the statute of lim­i­ta­tions would expire 4 months after the case was opened.
In a legal doc­u­ment giv­en to Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s moth­er, the Inves­tiga­tive Committee’s lead Inves­ti­ga­tor Mari­na Lomonoso­va said: “Here­by I order to ter­mi­nate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings in rela­tion to Lar­isa Litvi­no­va for the crime of caus­ing death inad­ver­tent­ly, as a result of the improp­er con­duct of pro­fes­sion­al duties due to the expiry of the statute of limitations.”
Lar­isa Litvi­no­va was the doc­tor in charge at Butyrka’s max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison in Moscow, where Sergei Mag­nit­sky was kept for near­ly four months, from 25 July 2009 until his death on 16 Novem­ber 2009. Dur­ing the entire peri­od of his deten­tion Ms. Litvi­no­va refused to pro­vide him with any med­ical care to treat the pan­cre­ati­tis and gall­stones which Sergei Mag­nit­sky devel­oped in pre-tri­al deten­tion and had been diag­nosed in anoth­er deten­tion center.
From 7 Octo­ber 2009, Sergei Mag­nit­sky was direct­ly under the care of Ms. Litvi­no­va. Ms Litvi­no­va car­ried out no ultra­sound exam­i­na­tions or basic lab­o­ra­to­ry blood and urine tests, which would have been expect­ed with his symp­toms. Under Ms. Litvinova’s care, Sergei Mag­nit­sky was also deprived of the med­ical oper­a­tion, which was pre­scribed to him pri­or to his trans­fer to Butyr­ka. Ms. Litvi­no­va refused all med­ical treat­ment in spite of 20 writ­ten com­plaints by Sergei Mag­nit­sky and his lawyers to the Inte­ri­or Min­istry, Prosecutor’s Office, Fed­er­al Pen­i­ten­tiary Sys­tem and courts request­ing urgent med­ical attention.
In drop­ping charges against Ms. Litvi­no­va, the Russ­ian inves­ti­ga­tors have refused to acknowl­edge that Sergei Mag­nit­sky had been tor­tured in cus­tody, a crime that has a 10-year statute of lim­i­ta­tions. Instead, they only found “short­com­ings in the pro­vi­sion of med­ical care”, which has a 2‑year statute of lim­i­ta­tions. The inves­ti­ga­tors refused to study the motives of the prison med­ical offi­cials to deny Mag­nit­sky med­ical care or to rec­og­nize the link between the tor­tur­ous con­di­tions Mag­nit­sky was sub­ject­ed to and the pres­sure applied to him by the Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials to with­draw his tes­ti­monies against them and sign a false confession.
“The crime com­mit­ted by the defen­dant [Litvi­no­va L.A.] is an inad­ver­tent crim­i­nal act, for which the max­i­mum sen­tence does not exceed three years… Cur­rent­ly, the crime com­mit­ted by Litvi­no­va L.A. is con­sid­ered by law as a crime of insignif­i­cant sever­i­ty, for which the statute of lim­i­ta­tion con­sti­tutes two years…L.A. Litvi­no­va expressed her con­sent to the ter­mi­na­tion of pros­e­cu­tion on that ground,” stat­ed Inves­ti­ga­tor Lomonoso­va in her decree.
The decree releas­ing Ms. Litvi­no­va from crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty is the lat­est exam­ple of the reluc­tance with­in the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment to hold any­one account­able for Sergei Magnitsky’s death. Inves­ti­ga­tors refuse to admit that Sergei Mag­nit­sky was delib­er­ate­ly denied med­ical care and then beat­en to death in the last hour of his life by eight prison guards with rub­ber batons in Matrosskaya Tishi­na prison. Instead they insist that he died due to “dia­betes” which was “care­less­ly undi­ag­nosed” by Ms. Litvi­no­va and led to the “irre­versible aggra­va­tion” of his heart function.
In their decree releas­ing Ms. Litvi­no­va, inves­ti­ga­tors failed to ver­i­fy an appar­ent­ly false doc­u­ment pro­vid­ed by Ms. Litvi­no­va claim­ing to have med­ical­ly exam­ined Mag­nit­sky and con­firm­ing he was fit to stay in cus­tody on 12 Novem­ber 2009, four days before his death. Dur­ing that day, Sergei Mag­nit­sky was in court for the entire day, and there­fore could not have been med­ical­ly exam­ined. The deten­tion center’s report of him being “fit to stay in cus­tody” was used on that day to pro­long his deten­tion with­out tri­al. Judge Stashina refused all com­plaints from Sergei Mag­nit­sky seek­ing to sub­mit evi­dence that he had been denied all med­ical treat­ment for the diag­nosed pancreatitis.
Doc­tor Kra­tov from Butyr­ka deten­tion cen­ter is now the only Russ­ian offi­cial charged from the 60 offi­cials on the U.S. Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion list nam­ing those involved in the tor­ture and mur­der of Sergei Mag­nit­sky and the $230 mil­lion cor­rup­tion he had uncov­ered. The “List of 60” includes senior Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials from the Inte­ri­or Min­istry, Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice, Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office, and Pen­i­ten­tiary Sys­tem, and fed­er­al court judges.
The Russ­ian inves­ti­ga­tion into Magnitsky’s death has been extend­ed 11 times, most recent­ly until 24 April 2012. While acqui­esc­ing to inves­ti­gat­ing “death from care­less­ness” in cus­tody, the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee has repeat­ed­ly refused to inves­ti­gate offi­cials impli­cat­ed by Sergei Mag­nit­sky in the cor­rupt scheme of steal­ing bud­get funds and their motives to repress and mur­der him, in spite of the peti­tion from the Moscow Helsin­ki Group from 26 March 2010, find­ings of the Pres­i­den­tial Human Rights Coun­cil from 5 July 2011, and the peti­tion from the Magnitsky’s moth­er from 13 Sep­tem­ber 2011, among many others.

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