View previous stories
	Prosecuting a Cadaver by Sadakat Kadri, Tom Parfitt Russia   July 2013   In prosecuting a cadaver the message to Russians was clear: cross us and we"ll nail you, dead or alive, by Sadakat Kadri.   It was an unusually bad week for Sergei Magnitsky. After a 16-month trial, the Russian accountant was found guilty of facilitating tax evasion by an investment fund for which he once worked, Hermitage Capital, to the tune of $17m. He was only charged because he had accused officials of a tax scam more than 13 times as lucrative, admittedly, but arbitrary legal processes are hardly unknown in Vladimir Putin"s Russia.   It was misfortunes of a more personal nature that made Magnitsky"s trial unusual. He was dead, having expired in official custody and entered his Moscow grave more than three-and-a-half years earlier.   The chief executive of Hermitage Capital, who was convicted in absentia with his dead colleague, was appalled. According to William Browder, "Putin has brought shame on Russia … for being the first western leader in 1,000 years to prosecute a dead man". As a statement of history, that happened to be wrong – but the precedents bring credit to neither Putin nor the Russian legal system.   Trials of the dead were actually endemic across Europe for much of the last millennium, born out of half-understood notions of Roman law, and two European rulers became particularly keen on posthumous condemnations.   The future James I resorted to them on several occasions in Scotland: in 1600, for instance, he had two alleged assassins pickled in whisky, vinegar and allspice, put on trial, and then mutilated. Seventy years later, France"s Louis XIV enacted a statute that required all dead duellists, traitors and suicides to be tried for their crimes. Such trials were considered so important that dead defendants were guaranteed the right to counsel (in a law that simultaneously obliged living ones to speak for themselves), while cadavers of limited means were made eligible for legal aid. Any corpses that were found guilty – after due consideration of the evidence – had to be drawn to a gibbet and hung there by the feet for 24 hours, before being hurled into the town cesspit.   Moscow"s prosecutors and judges did not produce Magnitsky"s remains in court, but that very small mercy should not obscure the parallels that link his trial to the ritualised desecrations of centuries past. James and Louis were committed absolutists: James imagined that God had given him the power to rule by Divine Right, while Louis saw no distinction between himself and the state ("l"état – c"est moi") – and their judicial pretensions arose directly from those quasi-totalitarian beliefs. The purpose of judging the dead was to "inflict terror on the living", explained a French jurist in 1784, and the message of the Magnitsky trial was similarly blunt: cross us and we"ll nail you, dead or alive.   It remains to be seen how the target audience will respond. State officials have long sought to portray the Magnitsky affair as part of a western plot – the dead man was working for a foreign-owned company, after all – and Putin has expressed his contempt for a US statute that imposes travel and banking restrictions on 18 named individuals who are allegedly implicated in his death.   But the government cannot simply deny all wrongdoing, because its own investigation had to acknowledge that the 37-year-old died as a result of inadequate medical treatment. Independent human rights groups have meanwhile found that he suffered serious psychological and physical violence, up to and including torture; while Natalia Magnitskaya is challenging her son"s detention, death and posthumous condemnation before the European court of human rights.   In the circumstances Magnitsky"s conviction may turn out to be one travesty of justice too many. The rule of law often seems an abstract principle, and the importance of things like the presumption of innocence is easily obscured by a defendant"s imperfections. But when the person on trial is dead, the issues become simpler. A state that pursues its enemies beyond the grave is clearly out of control – and the need for legal limits is all but self-evident.   The ease with which prosecutions can serve to express power rather than investigate guilt is illustrated by Russia"s own history. Stalin"s show trials offer the most notorious examples, but an older case is arguably more relevant still. On 15 May 1591, the nine-year-old son of Ivan the Terrible was found fatally stabbed in Uglich, a small town on the Volga. Rumours quickly spread that he had been murdered on the orders of the jealous prince regent, and the bell of Uglich cathedral sounded a call to insurrection. The regional rebellion was quickly crushed, but its leaders did not face trial alone. The cathedral bell was charged as a co-defendant – and after hearing evidence, judges formally condemned it to be flogged, deprived of its clapper, and sent to Siberia.   It seems unlikely that Russian prosecutors will revive the punishment of inanimate objects any time soon, but Magnitsky"s prosecution suggests that the clock has started to run backwards. The rule of law collapses into expediency unless judges are independent and self-confident, and the evidence of such judges in Putin"s Russia are scant indeed. It is all too late for Magnitsky, in any event. All that one can hope is that Russia"s rulers allow him now to rest in peace – no matter how tempted they might be to display their power by punishing him even more.   The Magnitsky ruling, by Tom Parfitt.   Russia has been accused of reverting to "Stalinist show trials" after a Moscow court passed a guilty verdict in the bizarre posthumous prosecution of Sergei Magnitsky, the crusading lawyer who died three years ago.   Magnitsky, who exposed a massive tax scam involving corrupt Kremlin officials, died from untreated pancreatitis in a squalid Moscow jail cell in 2009, having being arrested by the officials he had accused.   For the past four months, a court in the Russian capital has been hearing tax evasion charges against him, in what critics say is a clumsy Kremlin campaign to discredit his whistleblowing activities.   On Thursday, amid a chorus of anger and ridicule from human rights groups, a judge at Tverskoy District Court read out the guilty verdict to an empty dock.   Also found guilty in absentia was Magnitsky"s British-American boss, Bill Browder, whose London-based investment firm Hermitage Capital was the victim of the original tax scam. The court sentenced Mr Browder, who lives in London, to nine years in jail, but conceded that it could take no further action against Magnitsky as he was dead.   The outcome of the macabre trial prompted renewed calls for Britain to pass its own version of America"s "Magnitsky Law", in which a list of Kremlin officials suspected of involvement in the scam have been blacklisted from the US.   Britain is thought to be reluctant to follow suit for fear of jeopardising efforts to improve trade relations with Russia, already damaged by claims of Kremlin involvement in the London murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB spy.   Dominic Raab, a Conservative MP who has led calls for such a law, said: "This sham court case was reminiscent of the worst days of Stalin"s show trials."   Magnitsky, 37, was brought in by Hermitage, which was one of Russia"s biggest foreign investors, after corrupt tax officials raided its offices in 2007 and seized subsidiaries of the company.   The officials allegedly used stolen company documents to claim some £140 million illegally in tax rebates.   Known for his relish for tough cases, Magnitsky compiled a detailed dossier of suspects, only to find himself flung in jail by the policemen he had accused.   Held for a year in freezing, rat-infested cells, he died in a pool of his own urine, having been denied repeated requests for medical attention.   Mr Browder responded by successfully lobbying Washington to introduce the Magnitsky Law. So far it has been applied to 18 names on a list of 60 alleged suspects.   It has also prompted one of the biggest diplomatic rows in recent years with Moscow, which in response has passed legislation prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian children.
	Peoples under Threat 2013 by Minority Rights Group International   July 2013   Peoples under Threat is Minority Rights Group’s annual rankings table which highlights those countries around the world where the risk of mass killing is greatest.   Peoples under Threat is created by compiling data on the known antecedents to genocide or mass political killing. While the individual indicators describe the current situation – what is happening – the index as a whole seeks to predict what may happen.   As an early warning tool, Peoples under Threat has been widely used by UN officials and other human rights and conflict prevention practitioners. Almost all the significant episodes of civilian killing that occurred over the last year took place in countries which were near the top of, or major risers in, 2012’s Peoples under Threat table.   Sectarian killing between Sunni and Shi’a muslim faiths has risen dramatically and presents an urgent threat to life across much of the Middle East and into Asia, according to the 2013 Peoples under Threat ranking. Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and Egypt have all risen significantly in the table, with religious minorities at particular risk.   ‘Muslim groups, of various denominations, are now at risk of mass killing in nine out of the top ten states in the index. They may find themselves targeted because of their religion, but more often on account of their sect, or their ethnicity,’ says Mark Lattimer, MRG’s Executive Director.   Eight out of ten states identified in the index as being most at risk have been subject to recent or decades-long foreign military interventions. Pakistan and Syria, the two states that have risen most prominently in the index this year, are both at the centre of intense controversy concerning international intervention.   The risk of mass killing has risen sharply in Libya and Mali, following recent foreign military intervention, and the threat to populations remains critical in other African states, such as the Central African Republic, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is a prolonged history of international military involvement.   According to indicators factored into the Peoples under Threat analysis, Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic have all risen significantly in the table.   The survey illustrates starkly just how little we know about the efficacy of international action to prevent atrocity. While it is possible that foreign military action may halt an episode of mass civilian killing or decrease its intensity, it may also prolong or intensify killing, or even initiate a conflict where there was none before. In some cases, it may have the effect of shifting violence away from one people or population group onto another or others, says MRG.   ‘Foreign armed intervention is now the norm in states with peoples at risk, but there is a widespread failure to track the effect on civilians,'' says Mark Lattimer. ‘If we fail to count the dead, how can we be sure that interventions are not doing more harm than good?''   Libya and Mali are recent cases where success has been cited for large-scale foreign military interventions, the first in support of rebels and the second in support of the government. Both countries were major risers in the index last year too.   Although NATO air power helped topple Libya''s President Gaddafi in 2011 and led to democratic elections in 2012, large areas of the country remain under the effective control of different militia groups. Security for the population has worsened and dark-skinned Libyans, including former residents of Tawergha, are vulnerable to racist attacks and arbitrary detention.   In Mali, French President François Hollande''s decision to send troops to regain the north of the country from Islamist rebels led to the looting of Arab properties in Timbuktu and much of the Arab population being forced to flee, as were Tuaregs who were perceived to have initiated the rebellion. The UN estimates that some 470,000 people have fled the fighting, with Arabs and Tuaregs remaining at risk of reprisal attacks as well as inter-ethnic clashes in the north.   In the Central African Republic, despite benefitting from military support from both neighbouring Chad and France over the years, the eventual overthrow of the government of President François Bozizé in a rebellion in March 2013 has seen the victorious fighters of the Séléka alliance commit a wave of human rights abuses. Tens of thousands of people remain displaced and the humanitarian situation in the country has deteriorated markedly in one of the world''s forgotten crises.   MRG urges the international community to first consider peaceful means of influencing a state''s human rights performance before engaging in military intervention.   ‘Foreign military intervention lies at one end of a spectrum of possible international engagement, such as diplomatic pressure, expulsion from international organisations, severance of diplomatic relations, economic sanctions, arms embargoes, international prosecutions of military or political leaders, and travel bans or asset freezes,'' says Mark Lattimer.   Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, countries that have perennially been among the top ten in the rankings, have all been subject to multiple military interventions by both foreign armies and by inter-governmental organisations, over the course of decades.   Nigeria re-entered the Peoples under Threat top ten this year, as the threat rose from conflict between Christian and Muslim communities, much of it over land, in Plateau and neighbouring states and in the north-east.   The Islamist group Boko Haram issued an ultimatum calling on Christians to leave in January 2012 and then launched a campaign of attacks on Christians in the north-east, killing hundreds and displacing thousands. Following the imposition of a state of emergency in three states in north-eastern Nigeria in May 2013, accompanied by a media blackout, the Nigerian army has been accused of serious human rights violations in its operations against Boko Haram.   Elsewhere on the continent, Kenya is among the significant risers in this year''s global rankings.   * The Peoples Under Threat survey seeks to identify those peoples or groups that are most under threat of genocide, mass killing or other systematic violent repression in 2013.   (The international community has an obligation known as the "Responsibility to Protect" to act to protect peoples from immediate threat of genocide, and mass killings if national authorities fail to adhere to international norms and responsibilities).   http://www.minorityrights.org/11989/peoples-under-threat/peoples-under-threat-2013.html Visit the related web page
	View more stories