Moscow: Russia on Monday was due to open a fraud trial against late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in prison in 2009 after accusing state officials of a multimillion-dollar tax scam.
His death of untreated pancreatitis in jail became a symbol of prison abuse in modern Russia and led to a fresh row between Moscow and Washington.
Moscow’s Tverskoi district court was initially scheduled to hear the case in late December but the judge adjourned the hearing after the Magnitsky family’s defence lawyers refused to participate, saying trying a dead man was illegal.
Critics say that with Russia’s decision to prosecute Magnitsky after his death, the case entered the realm of the absurd.
Amnesty International said the trial would set a “dangerous precedent” in Russia’s deteriorating rights record.
“This posthumous prosecution is farcical, but unfortunately also deeply sinister,” John Dalhuisen, the rights watchdog’s programme director for Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement.
But Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is a lawyer by training, defended the trial, saying authorities did not plan to accuse the dead lawyer of committing crimes.
“According to our criminal law as well as the law of most civilised countries, it is impossible to prosecute a person after his death, it is impossible to find him guilty or not guilty,” Medvedev told CNN.
“But there are posthumous procedures spelled out in criminal procedure law, every country has them. This has to be done,” he said in the interview posted on the government website on Sunday.
Ahead of Monday’s hearing, which was due to start at 0700 GMT, Magnitsky’s mother released a letter calling on Moscow’s lawyers to boycott the trial.
Before his arrest, Magnitsky said he had uncovered a $235 million (Dh 863 million) tax scam by state officials against Hermitage Capital Management, an investment firm for which he worked.
After he was detained, he was charged with the very crimes he claimed to have uncovered and was placed in pre-trial detention.
He died of untreated illnesses at the age of 37 after spending nearly a year in jail.
Late last year the United States passed the so-called Magnitsky Act which blacklists Russian officials believed to have been implicated in Magnitsky’s death.
Moscow retaliated by passing a bill that banned US citizens from adopting Russian orphans.
Head of Hermitage Capital William Browder, who was earlier refused a Russian visa, will on Monday be tried in absentia.
Putin in December said Magnitsky died of a “heart attack”.
Earlier this month, one of Russia’s most beloved animators Yury Norshtein became an Internet sensation when he publicly linked the Russian strongman to the lawyer’s death.
“Putin said Magnitsky died of heart failure. I think Magnitsky died of a failure of heart...on the part of both Putin and the prison’s chief,” Norshtein said at an awards ceremony in Moscow. His videotaped comments were drowned in a storm of applause.
