Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Sergei Magnitsky: sanctions in the name of justice, Zoya Svetova

Open Democracy – Russia

It is nearly two years since Sergei Magnitsky died a shocking death in Moscow’s Matrosskaya tishina prison. Since then, an imaginative campaign by friends and colleagues has kept his case in international spotlight. For Zoya Svetova, the recent decision by US authorities to impose visa sanctions against sixty Russian officials may prove the campaign’s most crucial success yet.

On 6 August, President Barack Obama signed an order imposing travel restrictions on some sixty Russian officials associated with the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Magnitsky, who had been working for the Hermitage Capital investment fund, died in controversial circumstances in the Matrosskaya tishina detention centre on 16 November 2009. Compiled by US Democratic senator Benjamin Cardin approximately one year ago, the “Magnitsky list” includes prosecutors, judges, a Moscow police chief, tax inspectors, employees and doctors who were working in the Moscow detention centres where Magnitsky spent his final hours, and where he was condemned to an agonizing death without a corresponding sentence.