Press Release
Hermitage Capital
1 March 2013 – Ahead of the 4 March hearing in Moscow in the first ever posthumous trial in the history of Russia of dead whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, ten French lawmakers published an open letter calling on the Russian authorities to cease this “grim comedy” echoing of “repression” and take steps to bring Magnitsky killers to justice and protect his family from intimidation.
“Magnitsky killers should not be above the law, and the grim comedy of his posthumous trial must stop. Similarly, the ongoing harassment and suffering caused to his mother and widow must stop,” said French lawmakers.
The open letter published yesterday in the weekly French magazine Marianne (http://www.marianne.net/Monsieur-le-President-les-droits-de-l-Homme-en-Russie-c-est-maintenant-_a226954.html) is signed by Bruno Le Roux, President of the ruling Socialist group in the National Assembly, Senator Jean-Vincent Place, chairman of the Green faction in the Senate, Senator Andre Gattolin, Deputy Axelle Lemaire and other lawmakers from both the French Senate and National Assembly.
“Those whom Magnitsky sought to prove complicit with the impunity denounce him today and accusing him of fraud. His trial reopened in a closed court in Moscow a few days ago sounds like an echo of repressive mobilization,” said French parliamentarians.
French lawmakers urge Russia to return to the values of Enlightenment and the European Human Rights Convention which bars posthumous proceedings as being contrary to the principle of fair trial where people cannot obviously defend themselves.
“In ancient times the dead were sometimes judged – in ancient Egypt, in medieval Italy or in France of the Ancien Régime. But in the legal tradition of the Enlightenment, “it does not suit the corpses or the memory of the dead,” and the post-mortem condemnation of an accused is precluded by the European Court of Human Rights under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights ratified by the Russian Federation,” said French deputies and senators in their open letter.
In making their point about the Magnitsky case being symbolic of human rights violations, French lawmakers drew parallels between the Magnitsky’s ordeal and his prison diaries with the poignant description by Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn of the Soviet Gulag.
“Fifty years ago Alexander Solzhenitsyn published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a literary narrative of the daily life of a “zek”, a prisoner of the Gulag, describing fatalism with deprivation and torture. The same attention to detail in his presentation but with a revolt of an alive was applied by the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky to explain in the hundreds of letters from prison in Moscow his ordeal and the reasons for his innocence. But after 358 days of detention, threats, isolation, cold and lack of care the determination of this young tax lawyer came to an end, when he died November 16, 2009 at the hands of his captors.”
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