MOSCOW (AP) — Human rights activists said Thursday that an official probe into the prison death of a Russian lawyer should focus on investigators and prison officials, not just doctors.
The Federal Investigative Committee admitted earlier this week that Sergei Magnitsky’s death resulted from a lack of medical help, but didn’t immediately name any culprits and indicated only medical staff were to blame.
Magnitsky died in prison in November 2009 after the pancreatitis he developed there went untreated. He had been arrested by the same police officials he had accused of a $230 million tax fraud.
Rights activists, who presented their report on Magnitsky’s death to President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday, told reporters Thursday that police investigators and prison officials are to blame for the lawyer’s death — along with doctors — voicing hope that all culprits will be punished.
Kirill Kabanov, one of the report’s authors, said he and his colleagues "expect every official who is involved in this case must be held responsible" for Magnitsky’s death.
Kabanov said his hopes for a fair probe are backed by his cooperation with investigators.
Magnitsky worked for Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund owned and run by U.S.-born William Browder, who has since been barred from Russia as a security risk.
He was charged with tax evasion linked to his defense of Hermitage Capital.
Hermitage accused Interior Ministry officers of seizing ownership documents of three of its subsidiaries in 2007, then using those documents to register their own people as owners and directors.
The Interior Ministry officials then filed a tax claim, saying they made a much smaller profit than originally described and asked for a tax return, according to Hermitage.
The total return for the three subsidiaries was 5.4 billion rubles ($230 million at the time).
Lawmakers in the Netherlands on Monday voted in favor of a resolution demanding the government slap a travel ban on dozens of Russian officials whom Browder and his supporters consider complicit in Magnitsky’s death. The U.S. Senate is working on similar legislation.
