Human rights activists demand reopening investigation of Magnitsky death
MOSCOW. March 19 (Interfax) - Human rights activists will demand that the investigation of the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow detention facility be reopened, member of the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, Valery Borshchyov, said.
"We will insist on further investigation. We will appeal to the president and other officials because this defiant fact threatens basic and fundamental human rights in Russia," Borshchyov told Interfax.
Borshchyov said that he intended to appeal to his colleagues in the Moscow Helsinki Group, other human rights activists, who had investigated independently the Magnitsky death within the Human Rights Council, and to the Moscow Public Monitoring Committee.
"There are documents stating that a truncheon and handcuffs were used - he was beaten. There is a death certificate stating that he had sustained a closed head injury," Borshchyov said.
"We are entering a legal era when virtually anyone could be in danger and it is not certain that other cases of people's deaths in detention facilities will not be closed tomorrow and that investigation will not be dismissed for no reason, regardless of much evidence," Borshchyov said.
