Russian whistle-blower beaten to death in jail

A Kremlin panel found Monday that Moscow prison guards used rubber batons to beat to death a Western investment fund lawyer who enraged Russian officials by alleging mass embezzlement by the tax police. The case of Sergei Magnitsky -- a whistle-blowing attorney who was jailed shortly after making his accusations -- has been highlighted by the West as one of the most flagrant abuses of human rights in Russia in recent years. The 37-year-old's death in 2009 also raised alarm over the Russian justice system's impartiality and the ability of the police to manipulate the courts. Magnitsky's Hermitage Capital firm campaigned to prove that the lawyer was killed for accusing top interior ministry officials of embezzling $230 million by obtaining false tax returns on payments made by the fund. The fund published a 75-page report on Monday featuring what it said was a photocopy of an internal Moscow prison document authorising the use of handcuffs and batons against Magnitsky the day he died. "A rubber baton was used against the suspect," the standard form prison document said. It then had Magnitsky's name written down in pen in the space provided for the inmate's identification and was dated November 16, 2009. Magnitsky died later that evening. Members of President Dmitry Medvedev's rights panel said they had been recently granted access to the same documents and now believed that physical harm rather than negligence was behind Magnitsky's death. "I do not think that (prison officials) wanted to kill him, but I do think that they beat him in order to force him to admit guilt" to false charges that led to Magnitsky's arrest, panel member Valery Borshchyov told reporters. Hermitage Capital also published a separate document showing an investigator urging his superiors three days after the incident to open a formal murder probe. That request was denied and subsequent state reports concluded that Magnitsky had died from complications of medical ailments he had prior to being jailed. Investigators have charged two prison doctors with neglect. But Hermitage Capital -- founded by the US-born investor William Browder and now based in London -- said the state was only trying to cover up its crimes. "It is really shocking. You have the situation where Sergei Magnitsky was beaten by eight guards at 8:00 pm and he was dead at 9:00 pm," Browder said in a telephone interview from London. The fund chief said he would present the findings to the European Commission in Brussels on Wednesday in an attempt to force European capitals to introduce a blanket ban on entry to the dozens of Russian officials involved in the case. "We are not hopeful that there is going to be any justice in this case in Russia," said Browder. The United States has already placed a slate of mid-ranking officials involved in the case on a visa blacklist and similar measures arenow being considered in Europe. Medvedev responded to a preliminary Magnitsky report released by his panel this summer by instructing judges to permit outside treatment for suspects who develop serious medical problems in jail. But the same Moscow judge who kept Magnitsky in prison also recently extended the jail stay of a Russian businesswoman who accuses the authorities of trying to steal her property and jailing her under false pretenses. The case of 52-year-old Natalia Gulevich prompted the European Court of Human Rights to order the Russian authorities to move her to hospital for treatment for kidney failure. But Gulevich is expected back in prison after her treatment and the Moscow City Court on Monday upheld a lower court's decision to extend her stay in jail through December 2.