Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Dead Before Trial

Russia Profile

Two Deaths in Pretrial Detention Show that Little Has Changed Since the Magnitsky Case.

Andrei Kudoyarov, a former principal of a school in Moscow, was facing 12 years in prison for attempting to solicit bribes, when he died of a massive heart attack in a Moscow pretrial detention center last week. With an eye to the drawn-out investigation and international furor over the earlier death of Firestone Duncan lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, investigators responded quickly by opening an inquiry into the death on Tuesday. Yet when a second prisoner in a Russian pretrial detention center died on the same day, rights activists cried foul, claiming that substandard care in detention centers has led to an “epidemic” of prisoner deaths.

Kudoyarov was arrested in May on charges that he had taken a bribe of 240,000 rubles in exchange for giving a student a spot in the first grade at Moscow School 1308. Other parents came forward with similar claims, some voiced as recently as this week, yet Kudoyarov’s lawyers and many at the school continued to claim he had been set up. It all became moot when he died on Saturday in pretrial detention of a fatal heart attack. An article published in Moskovsky Komsolets claimed he waited 43 minutes for an ambulance to arrive at the scene.