The answer: «Sergei Magnitsky was not arrested».
Of course he was arrested. He was in their prison. I couldn’t imagine what the Russians were thinking when they said this to her.
Her second question was, «Why was he arrested by Interior Ministry officer Kuznetsov, who he testified against before his arrest?»
She got an equally ridiculous answer. «The officer with such a name doesn’t work in the Moscow Interior Ministry».
We had proof that Kuznetsov had worked in the Interior Ministry for many years! They must have thought Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger was stupid.
Nearly all the other answers were similarly absurd and untrue.
Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger would put all of these lies and absurdities in her final report, but a draft wouldn’t be ready until August, and Sergei didn’t have the luxury of time. I continued to canvass other organizations and found two powerful legal groups that might get involved: the International Bar Association and the UK Law Society. After hearing Sergei’s story and reviewing our documentation, each organization sent letters to President Medvedev and to General Prosecutor Yuri Chaika, asking for Sergei’s release.
Again, I had high hopes that these interventions would help, but again they fell flat. The General Prosecutor’s Office replied to the Law Society by saying, «We considered your application and found no grounds for prosecutorial intervention». The Russian authorities didn’t even bother to reply to the other letters.
Continuing my search, I looked to America. In June 2009, I was invited to Washington, DC, to testify in front of the US Helsinki Commission, an independent government agency whose mission is to monitor human rights in former Soviet Bloc countries. At the time, it was headed by the first-term Democratic senator from Maryland, Ben Cardin. The purpose of the hearing was to decide which cases would go into President Obama’s briefing package for an upcoming summit with President Medvedev.
This was the first opportunity I’d had to share Sergei’s case with such a high-profile group in the US political arena. I made my presentation, and the senators and congressmen were appropriately shocked by Sergei’s ordeal. Unfortunately, one of the staffers at the Helsinki Commission, a young man named Kyle Parker, decided not to include Sergei’s story in the commission’s letter to President Obama. Parker thought too many other issues were more pressing.
After this I realized that what we needed most to get Sergei’s story above the fray was media attention. Only a handful of articles about Sergei had appeared, and all of them were written shortly after his arrest. As much as I tried, journalists simply weren’t interested. With all the evil going on in Russia, they didn’t see the newsworthiness of a story about a jailed lawyer. Any attempt to share the complicated details of Sergei’s case just made journalists’ eyes glaze over.
I’d exhausted my list of Russia correspondents when I hit upon a young Washington Post reporter named Philip Pan. Unlike the others, he was new to Moscow and wasn’t jaded. He immediately recognized the resonance of Sergei’s story.
From early July until August 2009, he interviewed members of our team, verified our documents, and tried as best as he could to get the Russian authorities to respond. By early August, he had put together a truly damning exposé.
On August 13 the Washington Post published his feature story, entitled «3 Lawyers Targeted After Uncovering Seizure of Firms». He accused the Russian government of a major financial fraud and explained how it had targeted Sergei, Eduard, and Vladimir to cover up the crime.
Normally, a corruption exposé like this would cause a big stir, but in this case, there was dead silence. The Russians were totally unmoved and unashamed. Even worse, the Russian press didn’t pick it up at all. Journalists in Russia seemed too scared to write about anything to do with me. I was simply radioactive.
At roughly the same time that the Washington Post article came out, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger published her report. Like Pan, she went step-by-step through all of the Russian lies, the tax-rebate fraud, and how Sergei had been falsely arrested and mistreated in Russian custody. She concluded, «I cannot help suspecting that this coordinated attack must have the support of senior officials. These appear to make use of the systemic weaknesses of the criminal justice system in the Russian Federation».
Her report was definitive and damning, but it also had no impact whatsoever. The Russians met it with more deafening silence. The people tormenting Sergei simply didn’t care.
We had a big debate internally about what to do next. We were getting nowhere with traditional advocacy tools and running out of ideas. But then our twenty-four-year-old secretary popped her head in my office and said, «Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. Have you guys ever thought of doing a YouTube video?»
I barely knew what YouTube was in 2009, so she brought in her laptop and showed us how it worked.
Given our lack of success elsewhere, it seemed worth a try. We organized our information about the fraud, wrote a script, and produced a fourteen-minute video. It explained in simple terms how the police and criminals had succeeded in stealing $230 million from the Russian Treasury, and how they’d arrested Sergei when he exposed the crime. We made two versions — one in Russian and one in English. It was clearer and more understandable than anything we’d done before, and I suspected it would make a big impression when we released it.
I was keen to get it online as quickly as possible, but first I needed Sergei to approve it, since he was the one who was most exposed to any repercussions. I passed a copy of the script to his lawyer and waited anxiously to hear whether I had his blessing.
But Sergei was dealing with more pressing issues.
By the summer of 2009, Sergei’s health had seriously deteriorated. The doctors in the medical wing of Matrosskaya Tishina diagnosed him with pancreatitis, gallstones, and cholecystitis. They prescribed an ultrasound examination and possible surgery for August 1, 2009.
One week before this scheduled exam, however, Major Silchenko made the decision to move Sergei from Matrosskaya Tishina to Butyrka, a maximum-security detention center that in Soviet times had been a way station to the gulags. The place was infamous throughout Russia. It was like Alcatraz, only worse. Most significantly for Sergei, Butyrka had no medical facilities that could deal with his illnesses.
What Sergei was forced to endure at Butyrka was worthy of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.
As soon as he passed through the doors of Butyrka on July 25, Sergei asked the prison authorities to arrange for the medical treatment he was supposed to receive. But they simply ignored him. For weeks, he languished in his cell, the pain growing steadily with each passing day.
Then, at 4:00 p.m. on August 24, the pain in his stomach became so acute that he couldn’t lie down. Every position sent fiery pains through his solar plexus and chest. The only respite came when he pulled up his knees and rolled into a ball, rocking from side to side.
At 5:30 p.m. that day, his cellmate, Erik, returned from an interrogation. Sergei was on the bed in this balled-up position, whimpering quietly. Erik asked what was wrong, but Sergei was so consumed with pain that he couldn’t respond. Erik shouted for a doctor. The guard heard him and promised to find one, but nothing happened. Half an hour later, Erik banged on the bars to get the guard’s attention, but still there was no response.
An hour later, Erik heard some male voices: «Which cell?»
Erik shouted, «Two sixty-seven! Please come now!» But no one came.
Sergei’s pain became even more excruciating over the next few hours. He was holding himself tight, tears streaming down his face, when, finally, at 9:30 p.m. two guards showed up, opened the cell door, and took him to the infirmary.