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2011年7月5日星期二

Poor Care Led to Death of Lawyer, Russia Says

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

Mr. Magnitsky was drawn into a feud between his employer, an international investment company, and Russian law enforcement authorities, testifying that senior Interior Ministry officers had used his employer’s companies to embezzle $230 million from the Russian treasury. He was arrested and held without bail on charges of evading about $17.4 million in taxes. He died in 2009 after 11 months in custody.

Mr. Magnitsky’s aunt, Tatyana N. Rudenko, said Monday that the statement was good news. But she said she worried that only prison doctors would be held responsible, absolving investigators who had made crucial decisions about Mr. Magnitsky’s confinement.

“Of course, it gives us some hope, but we still don’t know what will be next,” she said. “We don’t believe that the responsibility ends with the doctors.”

She added: “I am afraid it will stop with the doctors.”

In May, the Investigative Committee, Russia’s top investigative body, announced that it had cleared Oleg F. Silchenko, the lead investigator in the case against Mr. Magnitsky, of any wrongdoing. Mr. Silchenko approved Mr. Magnitsky’s transfer to a prison with minimal medical facilities and refused repeated requests for follow-up treatment that had been prescribed by a doctor.

The new announcement comes amid increasing pressure for action in the investigation, now 18 months old.

A presidential advisory commission is expected to deliver a tough report on the case to President Dmitri A. Medvedev on Tuesday. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Western Europe and the United States are considering banning visas for and freezing the foreign assets of 60 officials his employers say contributed to Mr. Magnitsky’s death. The Dutch Parliament on Monday passed a resolution urging the government to impose sanctions.

The statement released Monday by the Investigative Committee said Mr. Magnitsky died because he had heart disease and active hepatitis; though he suffered from other ailments, it says, they were not connected to his death. It says adequate medical care would have allowed these diseases to be diagnosed before he was critically ill, and that on the day of his death he received no treatment despite being in grave condition.

These shortcomings, the statement says, “deprived Mr. Magnitsky of a benign outcome.”

“Thus, the shortcomings in the provision of medical assistance to Mr. Magnitsky have a direct cause-and-effect relationship with his death,” the statement said, adding that charges will be announced soon.

The statement released on Monday contradicts previous expert findings, one of which flatly concluded that “the drawbacks in medical aid given to Magnitsky have no connection to his death.”

The official response to the case has been inconsistent from the outset, with some officials — most notably the president — urging both reforms and prosecution. Law enforcement bodies, meanwhile, have bestowed public honors on police officials who handled the case and announced new accusations against Mr. Magnitsky on the anniversary of his death.

William F. Browder, the owner of Hermitage Capital, the company Mr. Magnitsky represented, said prosecuting only doctors would be “a farce of criminal justice,” and said he would continue to lobby for the prosecution of all 60 officials, including judges, prosecutors and investigators.

“To somehow isolate it to the last night of his life — to a bunch of doctors — is an amazingly cynical way to circle the wagons and protect the government figures who played a role in this thing,” he said.


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Russia Meets With NATO in New Push for Libyan Peace

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

At the same time, the president of the World Chess Federation, who is acting as Moscow’s informal go-between with Libya’s embattled leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, made his second trip to Tripoli.

On his last visit, the chess official, Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, played a game with Colonel Qaddafi while discussing whether he would consider stepping down and leaving Libya. During the match, Mr. Ilyumzhinov said later, he maneuvered Colonel Qaddafi close to checkmate but then offered him a draw instead.

But in their conversation, Mr. Qaddafi said he intended to die on Libyan soil and would not consider any negotiated settlement that called for his departure from the country.

On Monday, Mr. Ilyumzhinov told Russian news agencies that he had met with Muhammad el-Qaddafi, the colonel’s eldest son, and had again been told that Colonel Qaddafi would not leave Libya. But the Libyan government acknowledged that its emissaries had met on numerous occasions in Europe with representatives of the Libyan opposition, and that the talks were continuing, Reuters reported.

The Russian diplomatic effort to open a channel of communication with the Libyan leader, who has been a major buyer of Russian weapons for years, began after President Dmitri A. Medvedev met with President Obama on the sidelines of a Group of 8 gathering in France in May.

At that meeting, Mr. Medvedev offered to serve as a mediator, and to use what leverage Russia has in Libya to persuade Colonel Qaddafi to cede power. To date, with the colonel refusing the Libyan rebels’ demands that he leave the country, none of Moscow’s forays have borne fruit.

Russia has sharply criticized the NATO bombing campaign as overstepping the United Nations’ mandate to protect civilians, instead apparently aiming to oust Colonel Qaddafi. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also condemned a recently confirmed French weapons airdrop to the Libyan rebels, saying this, too, violated the United Nations resolution. Mr. Medvedev has, however, said that Colonel Qaddafi must step down.

Sergei A. Karaganov, dean of the department of international economics and foreign affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said Russia is appealing to two constituencies. Its mediation efforts gains Moscow points with the West, while its criticism of the NATO campaign plays well in the developing world.

“It might bring results, but nobody knows,” Mr. Karaganov said. “The game, of course, includes Qaddafi. And if he has proven one thing, it is that he is not an easy person to deal with. He doesn’t respond to threats.”

“And by the way,” Mr. Karaganov added of Colonel Qaddafi and Russia, “he is profoundly distrusted here. We know him better than others.”

After Monday’s meeting with the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, at a Russian government retreat surrounded by palm trees in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Mr. Medvedev offered encouraging words but no specifics.

“I think all of us are inspired with the results,” he said, the Interfax news agency reported. “The meeting was rather productive, and I hope we made progress.”

Mr. Medvedev also met Monday with Jacob G. Zuma, the president of South Africa, who has negotiated on behalf of the African Union and proposed that an interim government take power in Libya, Russian state television reported. At a meeting over the weekend, the African Union called on its members to disregard an arrest warrant for Colonel Qaddafi issued by the International Criminal Court, saying the warrant could hinder any settlement that included Mr. Qaddafi seeking asylum outside of Libya.


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