ECHR Court Finds Multiple Convention Violations by Russia in the Magnitsky Case

August 27, 2019

PRESS RELEASE

For Imme­di­ate Distribution

ECHR Court Finds Mul­ti­ple Con­ven­tion Vio­la­tions by Rus­sia in the Mag­nit­sky Case

27 August 2019 – Today, the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights (‘ECHR’) issued an award to the Mag­nit­sky fam­i­ly, hav­ing found mul­ti­ple vio­la­tions of the Human Rights Con­ven­tion by the Russ­ian state.

“The Mag­nit­sky fam­i­ly has had to wait for this deci­sion for ten years after the loss of their son, hus­band and father. In the mean­time, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment has lied at every domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al forum about the cir­cum­stances of the deten­tion and death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, and attempt­ed to defame his name and belit­tle his courage and his sac­ri­fice in uncov­er­ing and tes­ti­fy­ing about the largest pub­licly known cor­rup­tion and fraud by Russ­ian offi­cials and crim­i­nals. Most notably, imme­di­ate­ly after Sergei Mag­nit­sky died in cus­tody, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment claimed that there were ‘no signs of vio­lence’ on his body, despite vis­i­ble injuries seen by his fam­i­ly at the funer­al. When the fam­i­ly obtained state autop­sy pho­tos show­ing obvi­ous injuries, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment claimed that Sergei ’caused his own injuries’  — this is despite Russ­ian state experts find­ing his injuries to be con­sis­tent with the use of rub­ber batons. The Russ­ian author­i­ties repeat­ed this absurd and cyn­i­cal expla­na­tion to the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights, who has now ful­ly reject­ed it,” said William Brow­der, leader of the Glob­al Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice movement.

The court has found that the Russ­ian state vio­lat­ed Arti­cle 2 (Right to life); Arti­cle 3 (Pro­hi­bi­tion of tor­ture and degrad­ing treat­ment); Arti­cle 5 (Right to lib­er­ty); and Arti­cle 6 (Right to fair tri­al) and ordered a com­pen­sa­tion of €34,000.

The orig­i­nal com­plaint to the ECHR had been filed by Sergei Mag­nit­sky in 2009 — sev­er­al months before he was killed in cus­tody at the age of 37. After Sergei’s death, his wid­ow took over the case. In 2012, Sergei’s moth­er, Natalia Mag­nit­skaya, applied to the ECHR with an expand­ed com­plaint, sub­mit­ting infor­ma­tion avail­able at the time about Sergei’s arrest, deten­tion, death and the sub­se­quent fail­ure by Russ­ian author­i­ties to con­duct a prop­er inves­ti­ga­tion and bring to jus­tice those involved in the fraud Sergei had uncov­ered and in his sub­se­quent persecution.

In Decem­ber 2014, the Euro­pean court had list­ed the Mag­nit­sky com­plaint as a pri­or­i­ty case, and sought a response from the Russ­ian government.

In March 2015, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment replied to the court, fail­ing to address the con­flict of inter­est of police offi­cers who were exposed by Mag­nit­sky for their role in the fraud against his client, Her­mitage, and were then involved in his retal­ia­to­ry arrest and deten­tion on fab­ri­cat­ed evidence.

The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment failed to address the wit­ness evi­dence that in the last moments of his life Sergei Mag­nit­sky had in fact repeat­ed his accu­sa­tion of police offi­cers’ embez­zling mil­lions in funds, and demand­ed to see his lawyer and pros­e­cu­tor to pro­tect him­self, before he was found dead in an iso­la­tion cell by civil­ian doc­tors, who had been kept out­side and not allowed to enter the deten­tion cen­ter for more than an hour.

The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment admit­ted that hand­cuffs had been applied to Sergei Mag­nit­sky in the last hour before his death, at the time when he was expe­ri­enc­ing severe pain and had been ordered to be moved to a prison hos­pi­tal for urgent med­ical treat­ment. The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment pur­port­ed to explain Sergei’s injuries by ‘the need to stop his [Sergei’s] unlaw­ful actions’, his alleged ‘obstruc­tion of demands from deten­tion cen­ter offi­cials’, and alleged ‘attempts to cause harm to him­self and oth­ers’ and ‘inad­e­quate con­duct’, and claimed to the court that Sergei Mag­nit­sky caused his own injuries.

The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment sought to explain away the last Mag­nit­sky’s state­ments record­ed in cus­tody that he was about to be killed — which were heard by mul­ti­ple eye­wit­ness­es — as his ‘hal­lu­ci­na­tions.’

In respect of con­di­tions of Sergei’s deten­tion, the Russ­ian author­i­ties claimed to the court that key deten­tion records were destroyed despite the repeat­ed requests from the Mag­nit­sky fam­i­ly to pre­serve evidence.

The Russ­ian state also failed to explain the U‑turn by Russ­ian state pros­e­cu­tors who with­in four days of Pres­i­dent Putin’s pub­lic state­ment that Sergei Mag­nit­sky did not die of tor­ture, but from “nat­ur­al” caus­es, dropped charges and asked for the acquit­tal of a sin­gle deten­tion offi­cial brought to tri­al in Mag­nit­sky case.

The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment also failed to address the fact that three years after Mag­nit­sky’s death, the same inves­ti­ga­tors who were respon­si­ble for his arrest and per­se­cu­tion, were appoint­ed to the posthu­mous case against him, and tried to intim­i­date Mag­nit­sky rel­a­tives with sum­mons­es and appoint­ment of state lawyer in an attempt to try them in their son’s and hus­band’s stead — in the first ever posthu­mous pro­ceed­ing in mod­ern Russ­ian history.

Sergei Mag­nit­sky was killed on 16 Novem­ber 2009. The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment pro­mot­ed and gave state hon­ors to those involved in his per­se­cu­tion. Russ­ian offi­cials who were shown to have ben­e­fit­ed from the largest known fraud in mod­ern Russ­ian his­to­ry and kept for­eign accounts and for­eign prop­er­ties — were exon­er­at­ed and not brought to justice.

In 2012, the US Con­gress passed leg­is­la­tion, known as the Sergei Mag­nit­sky Rule of Law Account­abil­i­ty Act, which impos­es visa bans and asset freezes on those involved in the Mag­nit­sky case. Since then, sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion has been passed in five more coun­tries, includ­ing the UK, Cana­da, Esto­nia, Latvia, and Lithua­nia. Inves­ti­ga­tions into the mon­ey laun­der­ing of funds from the crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy uncov­ered by Sergei Mag­nit­sky are ongo­ing in mul­ti­ple countries.

In 2018, the US gov­ern­ment obtained over US$6 mil­lion in set­tle­ment from the fam­i­ly of Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial who was iden­ti­fied by the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice as one of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the $230 Mil­lion fraud uncov­ered by Sergei Magnitsky.

For fur­ther details, please contact:

Mag­nit­sky Jus­tice Campaign

https://www.russian-untouchables.com/eng/

Phone: +44 207 440 1777

Email: contact@russian-untouchables.com

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