Sergei Magnitsky’s Mother Slams the Russian Authorities Refusal to Investigate the Murder of Her Son on the 5^th Anniversary of His Death

November 19, 2014

Sergei Magnitsky’s moth­er has spo­ken of the suf­fer­ing she has been sub­ject­ed to in her calls to seek jus­tice for her mur­dered son in Russia.

In an exten­sive inter­view to the Open Rus­sia web­site, Natalia Mag­nit­skaya spoke of her grief of the way that Russ­ian offi­cials have dealt with her complaints.

“All our appli­ca­tions and com­plaints to all gov­ern­ment bod­ies are being reject­ed. I can’t read these rejec­tions any more. It is clear that they are sim­ply mock­ing us. For exam­ple, they sent us mate­ri­als to read, but the copies are so poor it was impos­si­ble to read them. My lawyer filed a com­plaint to the high­er-lev­el body, but his com­plaint was reject­ed. They said essen­tial­ly that all is ok, there is no need for you to read them.”

Natalia Mag­nit­skaya also depict­ed her anguish at the lies offi­cial­ly issued by the Russ­ian Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office, which jus­ti­fied the posthu­mous tri­al of her son by claim­ing that the fam­i­ly had asked for it:

“Recent­ly, one of the doc­u­ments from the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office said that they had ini­ti­at­ed the case against Mag­nit­sky on the request from his moth­er. But we had stat­ed in writ­ing on so many occa­sions that we do not want the posthu­mous pros­e­cu­tion. Howcouldthisbe?”

Natalia Mag­nit­skaya described the strug­gle to seek jus­tice for her son in Rus­sia as “fac­ing a wall,” but said she con­tin­ues to chal­lenge the rejec­tions nev­er­the­less and seek jus­tice and is not pre­pared to give up:

“So far every­thing has been with­out effect. In spite of this we try to chal­lenge every­thing, but it gives you the feel­ing that you are fac­ing a wall…But we should not stop…It is impos­si­ble to give in.”

In anoth­er report on the Open Rus­sia web­site in mem­o­ry of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, Russ­ian jour­nal­ist and human rights activist Zoya Sve­to­va recalled how she and oth­er mem­bers of the Moscow Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ed the cir­cum­stances of his mur­der in detention.

“We wrote a report and sent it on 31 Decem­ber 2009 to the Pres­i­dent of Rus­sia, the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office and the Min­istry of Jus­tice. In our report, we wrote that we do not trust the tes­ti­mo­ny of deten­tion offi­cials and are con­vinced that the right to life of Mag­nit­sky was vio­lat­ed. In oth­er words, the lawyer was murdered.” 

Also on the Open Rus­sia web­site, Russ­ian play­wright Ele­na Grem­i­na, author of the play, “One Hour Eigh­teen Min­utes,” which depicts the last hours of Sergei Magnitsky’s life, spoke of how work­ing with the Mag­nit­sky sto­ry changed her and those who worked on the play with her:

“It was decid­ed, as usu­al­ly hap­pens with new ideas, to gath­er doc­u­ments and mate­ri­als about Sergei Mag­nit­sky to see if his sto­ry had poten­tial for a play. I did not know then that the gath­er­ing of mate­ri­als for this prospec­tive play would change us, would intro­duce us to new ideas and new peo­ple, that it would change a lot in me.”

Mate­ri­als to Com­mem­o­rate the 5^th Anniver­sary of Sergei Magnitsky’s Killing in Cus­tody can be found on Open Rus­sia web­site.

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