Swedish Police Have Removed the Russian Arrest Warrant Against Mr Browder from their Databases

November 1, 2013

The Swedish police have informed William Brow­der, the leader of the glob­al jus­tice cam­paign for Sergei Mag­nit­sky, that they have removed the Russ­ian arrest war­rant in rela­tion to him from Swedish police databases.
Fol­low­ing Mr Browder’s suc­cess­ful cam­paign to impose finan­cial and visa sanc­tions on the Russ­ian offi­cials who killed Sergei Mag­nit­sky in the Unit­ed States, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment retal­i­at­ed by launch­ing polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against him in Rus­sia, which end­ed in the con­vic­tion of Mr Brow­der in absen­tia for nine years along with Mr Browder’s mur­dered lawyer, Sergei Mag­nit­sky, posthu­mous­ly in the first ever posthu­mous tri­al in Russ­ian history. 
Mr Brow­der was plan­ning to trav­el to Swe­den in Sep­tem­ber to make a pre­sen­ta­tion to the Swedish Par­lia­ment at the invi­ta­tion of Mats Johans­son MP on the progress of imple­ment­ing Mag­nit­sky sanc­tions in Europe. Pri­or to his vis­it, Mr Brow­der applied to the Swedish author­i­ties for a let­ter of safe pas­sage to gain assur­ances that he would not be arrest­ed on a Russ­ian arrest war­rant when he arrived in Swe­den. The Swedish gov­ern­ment refused to pro­vide him with that let­ter and his trip was cancelled.
Sweden’s deci­sion was con­trary to the deci­sions of Ger­many, France, the UK and Inter­pol not to act of Russ­ian requests against Mr Browder.
Fol­low­ing a loud domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al uproar over the Swedish government’s reluc­tance to guar­an­tee the free­dom for Mr Brow­der to cam­paign on this case in Swe­den, the Rik­skrim­i­nalpolisen, the Swedish police author­i­ty, has writ­ten to Mr Browder’s lawyers pro­vid­ing him with assur­ances that he would indeed be safe to trav­el to Sweden.
“We can there­fore assure you that your client would not have been detained on the grounds of the request for extra­di­tion from Rus­sia based on the dif­fu­sions which Inter­pol con­sid­ered con­trary to Interpol’s Con­sti­tu­tion,” said the Swedish police author­i­ty in their letter.
The let­ter went on fur­ther to say that it has delet­ed all data on Mr Brow­der from the Swedish police data systems.
“The infor­ma­tion in rela­tion to Mr Brow­der will be erased…This deci­sion is due to a mes­sage from Inter­pol Gen­er­al Secretariat…where a dif­fu­sion from the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion received in Stockholm…this year, con­cern­ing the above men­tioned per­son, is con­sid­ered a notice of polit­i­cal char­ac­ter and thus not autho­rised accord­ing to the Interpol’s Con­sti­tu­tion,” said Swedish police author­i­ty in their notification.
“I look for­ward to com­ing to Swe­den to car­ry on my cam­paign to get the Swedish gov­ern­ment to stop Sergei Magnitsky’s tor­tur­ers and killers from com­ing to Stock­holm and from keep­ing their blood mon­ey in Swedish banks. I’m pleased that the Swedish law enforce­ment agen­cies will allow me to trav­el safe­ly to Swe­den,” said William Browder. 

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