Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Persecution beyond the grave

The Moscow News

One of the bizarre anomalies of the Russian legal system is the possibility to prosecute, charge and sentence people who are already dead.

First we had the grotesque spectacle of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky being investigated for tax fraud 18 months after his death.

Now have an even more obscene case.

Olga Alexandrina, a 36-year-old pediatrician who died with her mother, also a doctor, last year when the small Citroen they were traveling in on Moscow’s Leninsky Prospekt was in a head-on collision with a chauffer-driven Mercedes carrying Lukoil vice-president Anatoly Barkov. (Some witnesses said that Barkov’s Mercedes swerved into oncoming traffic in an attempt to overtake, but Barkov’s driver, Vladimir Kartayev, denied this.)