Russian justice minister promises 'serious probe' into lawyer's death in custody
Interfax
Moscow, 19 November: Russian Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov has asked human rights activists to provide information about prisoners who are denied timely medical assistance.
"I would be grateful to human rights activists for providing specific information," Konovalov told Interfax on Thursday (19 November).
Commenting on the death in a pre-trial detention centre of Sergey Magnitskiy, a lawyer with the Hermitage Capital Management investment fund, the minister said: "We will carry out a serious probe."
He said that, as a rule, medical assistance in places of detention was rendered "to the necessary extent and in a timely manner". "Deaths do occur, of course, for various reasons, including the same reasons that apply to people at large," Konovalov noted.
At the same time the minister stressed the need for a thorough probe into every instance of death in detention. "In every case where there are doubts that assistance was timely and of good quality, there has to be a
probe," he added.
As reported, 37-year-old lawyer with the Hermitage Capital Management investment fund, S. Magnitskiy, died on 16 November this year at the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention centre.
The Moscow directorate of the Investigations Committee under the prosecutor's office of the Russian Federation (SKP) is conducting a probe into Magnitskiy's death; so far it has found no reasons to institute criminal proceedings, directorate chief Anatoliy Bagmet told Interfax yesterday. (Passage omitted: quoted from Bagmet)
Marina Gridneva, official spokeswoman for the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office, has also told Interfax that the Moscow prosecutor's office was carrying out a prosecutor's probe into the lawyer's death at the pre-trial detention centre.
