‘Blasphemous’ Posthumous Trial Against Magnitsky Begins with the Forced Appointment of a State Sanctioned Lawyer to Magnitsky

February 18, 2013

Today at 11 am at the Moscow Tver­skoi Dis­trict Court, a closed pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing will be held in the posthu­mous tri­al of the late whis­tle-blow­ing lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky. At the pre­vi­ous hear­ing, the judge ordered the appoint­ment of a state sanc­tioned lawyer to rep­re­sent and give ‘legal advice’ to Sergei Mag­nit­sky who has been dead for more than three years. The for­mal pur­pose of tomor­row’s hear­ing is for the judge to deter­mine if Mag­nit­sky has been ‘prop­er­ly noti­fied’ of the tri­al and if pros­e­cu­tor has ‘obtained the con­fir­ma­tion of noti­fi­ca­tion in writ­ing’ from Magnitsky.

“The fact that this posthu­mous tri­al is going ahead, indi­cates that jus­tice in Rus­sia is turn­ing into raw and out­right ble­sphamy. The only place where a notice to Sergei Mag­nit­sky can be deliv­ered is to his grave at the Pre­o­brazhen­skoye ceme­tery, and any writ­ten con­fir­ma­tion would need to be obtained from his corpse. There is a spe­cial place in hell for the peo­ple orga­niz­ing this,” said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

Sergei Mag­nit­sky’s moth­er has writ­ten to the head of the Moscow Bar Asso­ci­a­tion request­ing that all Moscow lawyers boy­cott any requests from the court to par­tic­i­pate in the tri­al as state appoint­ed lawyers. Arti­cle 6 of the Russ­ian law On Attor­ney Activ­i­ty and Attor­neys states that a lawyer must refuse an instruc­tion if the instruc­tion is clear­ly against the law and they сan­not act against the inter­ests of the client.

“Nei­ther I, nor any of our rel­a­tives intend to par­tic­i­pate in this act being orches­trat­ed in the Tver­skoi Dis­trict Court of Moscow… Any lawyer asked [by the author­i­ties] to appear at the hear­ing may not be aware of the cir­cum­stances of the case and may not real­ize the unlaw­ful­ness of the posthu­mous pros­e­cu­tion of my son. How­ev­er, any lawyer’s pres­ence will allow the court to indi­cate the absence of vio­la­tions of the right to defence, and thus through his pres­ence the lawyer will serve as an unwit­ting accom­plice to this crime,” Magnitsky’s moth­er said in her statement. 

“The reopen­ing of a pros­e­cu­tion against my dead son with­out my con­sent and with­out the con­sent of oth­er close rel­a­tives and against their will, is con­trary to the aims and the legal mean­ing of the judge­ment of the Russ­ian Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court… It dis­torts its legal pur­pose, vio­lates the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of my son, and espe­cial­ly in light of recent inter­na­tion­al events, is polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed,” said the moth­er of Sergei Magnitsky.

“With the help of my son, crimes of per­sons occu­py­ing high posi­tions in gov­ern­ment were exposed, and because of these crimes, those offi­cials have become enor­mous­ly rich. These indi­vid­u­als, espe­cial­ly at the present time, are inter­est­ed to com­pro­mise my son. With this pur­pose, they have orga­nized this posthu­mous pros­e­cu­tion in order to obtain a know­ing­ly unjust judg­ment and posthu­mous­ly defame the hon­est name of my son,” said Natalia Magnitsky.

Russ­ian leg­is­la­tion does not stip­u­late any pos­si­bil­i­ty to appoint a lawyer to a dead person.

At the pre­vi­ous hear­ing on 28 Jan­u­ary 2013, Judge Igor Alisov ordered the state to appoint a lawyer to Sergei Mag­nit­sky against the will of his rel­a­tives. The instruc­tion was sent to the 5^th Cham­ber of the Moscow Bar.

“This is sim­i­lar to the Stal­in purges of 1937 where vic­tims were oblig­ed to sign that they have read their accu­sa­tion before they were exe­cut­ed by deci­sions of the ‘troikas’ ”, — said a Her­mitage Cap­i­tal representative.

Ear­li­er, the same judge Igor Alisov refused to con­sid­er the com­plaint from Mag­nit­sky’s moth­er against the posthu­mous pros­e­cu­tion of her son. The same judge was also respon­si­ble in March 2011 for for­mal­ly exon­er­at­ing all Russ­ian offi­cials involved in the theft of $230 mil­lion which Sergei Mag­nit­sky exposed. Through his judge­ment sen­tenc­ing a job­less ex-con­vict Vyach­eslav Khleb­nikov for that crime, he accept­ed that the Russ­ian tax offi­cials were ‘tricked’ into giv­ing him the enor­mous tax refunds and for­mal­ly released them from responsibility. 

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