Russia is preparing to put lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on trial, even though he died in 2009, an unusual twist in a case that has become a byword for Russian corruption and severely strained U.S. relations with Moscow.
Russia's top court ruled in August 2011 that posthumous trials are allowed, with the intention of letting relatives clear their loved ones' names. In Magnitsky's case, family members say they don't want another trial, yet prosecutors refiled charges anyway.
The move has outraged human rights groups who see the whistleblower's situation as indicative of the rampant judicial abuse, skyrocketing graft, and blurred boundaries between the state and organized crime that have plagued Russia under President Vladimir Putin.
"The trial of a deceased person and the forcible involvement of his relatives is a dangerous precedent that would open a whole new chapter in Russia's worsening human rights record," Amnesty International said in a recent statement.
Magnitsky drew controversy in 2008 after claiming that an organized crime group colluded with corrupt Interior Ministry officials to claim a $230 million tax rebate through illegally obtained subsidiaries of Hermitage Capital Management, the company of Magnitsky's then-client, London-based investor William Browder.
Those same officials had him arrested and placed in pre-trial detention. Magnitsky and Browder were accused of evading $16.8 million in taxes.
A year later, the 37-year-old Magnitsky died in jail of pancreatitis, after what supporters claim was systematic torture. Russia's presidential human rights council found in July 2011 that Magnitsky had been repeatedly beaten and deliberately denied medical treatment.
A Moscow court on Monday set preliminary hearings in the case for February 18. Magnitsky's mother, Nataliya Magnitskaya, said she had no faith the officials who she believes are complicit in her son's death could give him a fair trial.
"What are they going to say? 'We're guilty and we should be punished?' It's obvious what's going to happen," she said. "They just want a conviction. Maybe they'll change the venue to the cemetery and try Sergei there."
The Russian court ruling allowing posthumous trials came after an appeal by the family of an obstetrician who was killed in a collision with a car of a top oil company executive. Prosecutors reopened Magnitsky's case just days after the 2011 ruling. His mother has since filed 25 appeals asking for the case to be closed.
