EU Council chief Herman Van Rompuy has said in a letter to outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that Russia’s internatioinal reputation is at stake over the murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The one-page note, dated 18 April and seen by EUobserver, says: “The case of Mr Magnitsky has come to symbolise the state of the rule of law and judiciary in the Russian Federation for Russia’s friends and observers abroad. Bringing this emblematic case to credible and thorough conclusion before the end of your term would be of symbolic relevance and send a very important signal for the future of Russia.”
It comes one week before Russian investigators on 24 April are to say if a prison doctor caused Magnitsky’s death in custody in 2009 by “negligence.”
It also comes before Medvedev steps down in early May, four years after taking up office and promising to end “legal nihilism” in the country.
Magnitsky was jailed, starved of pancreatic medication and beaten to death after he exposed a tax-embezzling mafia involving top people in the interior ministry and the state security service, the FSB.
Nobody in Brussels believes that a prison doctor is responsible for the affair.
A spokesman for foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton told EUobserver this week: “Two prison doctors have been held to account … The case is however much wider.” A spokesman for home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom on Friday (20 April) told media: “Magnitsky was beaten to death and tortured … nothing has been done to resolve it.”
Andrew Rettman