Posts Tagged ‘euobserver’
European MPs call for international enquiry into Magnitsky affair
26.04.12 @ 18:13
BY ANDREW RETTMAN
BRUSSELS – Sixty nine MPs from across Europe have called for an international enquiry into the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The deputies – who hail mostly from EU countries, but also Croatia, Iceland, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland – signed the motion at the human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe (CoE), in Strasbourg on Wednesday (25 April).
If the council’s steering group at its meeting on Friday gives the green light, the motion will trigger an in-depth investigation on the model of previous enquiries into CIA renditions, organ smuggling in Kosovo and death squads in Belarus.
“The competent authorities have … failed to properly investigate and prosecute those responsible for Mr Magnitsky’s death,” the motion says.
“For the sake of its own credibility and that of the Russian Federation, the [CoE] should now engage in co-operation with Russia, through the preparation of a dedicated report, in order to fully elucidate this landmark case.”
The man behind the initiative, Dutch centre-right MP Pieter Omtzigt, said the level of political support for his proposal “suggests the truly emblematic nature of the Magnitsky case.”
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EU president: ‘Magnitsky case is emblematic for Russia’
EUobserver
20 April 2012, BY ANDREW RETTMAN
BRUSSELS – 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, five 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 when he exposed a tax-embezzling mafia involving top people in the interior ministry and the state security service, the FSB. Prosecutors have so far postponed the outcome of the probe 11 times. Last year – in a legal first – they launched a new case against the dead man himself.
Nobody in Brussels believes that a prison doctor is responsible.
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