by Bill Browder
One hour and eighteen minutes later, a civilian doctor arrived and found Sergei Magnitsky dead on the floor.
His wife would never hear his voice again, his mother would never see his easy smile, his children would never feel the squeeze of his soft hands.
“Keeping me in detention,” Sergei had written in his prison diary, “has nothing to do with the lawful purpose of detention. It is a punishment, imposed merely for the fact that I defended the interests of my client and the interests of the Russian state.”
Sergei Magnitsky was killed for his ideals. He was killed because he believed in the law. He was killed because he loved his people, and because he loved Russia. He was thirty-seven years old.
31
The Katyn Principle
In April 1940, at the beginning of the Second World War, a Soviet NKVD1 officer stationed in Belarus named Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin was assigned the task of executing as many Polish POWs as he could. To do this efficiently and without alerting the prisoners to their fate, Blokhin had a special shed built at the POW camp. It had an entry door and an exit door and was surrounded on all sides by sandbags. Prisoners were taken into the shed by the entry door one at a time and told to kneel. Blokhin would then hold his pistol to the back of the prisoner’s head and shoot. The corpse would be dragged out the exit door and put into a truck. When the truck was full, it was driven into a forest, where the bodies were dumped into mass graves.
Blokhin was good at his job. He was a night owl and worked tirelessly from sunset to sunrise. When he first started his assignment, he used his standard-issue Soviet service revolver, but later switched to a German-made Walther PPK. It had less recoil and didn’t hurt his hand as much. Over twenty-eight days, and only taking time off for the May holidays, Blokhin murdered some seven thousand Polish prisoners. A prolific executioner, he was nevertheless just one man in a vast Soviet-sponsored and Stalin-directed massacre of Polish servicemen and officers that saw the deaths of twenty-two thousand men. The vast majority of these men were buried in the Katyn forest.
When the war was over and the mass graves were discovered, the Soviets claimed the Germans were responsible for this atrocity. The world knew of all the terrible and unthinkable things the Germans had done during the war, so this lie was eminently plausible. To back it up, the Soviets manufactured evidence, issued official reports, and repeated their allegations so many times and in so many places, including at the famous Nuremberg trials, that their version of events became unchallenged. Only decades later, in early 1990, when the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse and no longer had the fortitude to maintain the cover-up, did they admit the truth of what had happened in the Katyn forest.
One might think that as Russia entered the twenty-first century, the government would have stopped this type of behavior. But when Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, instead of dismantling this machine of lying and fabrication, he modified it and made it all the more powerful.
Sergei Magnitsky’s murder would become the prime example of this approach, and we had a unique opportunity to see how every gear and piston in this machine worked.
• • •
On the morning of November 17, 2009, hours before sunrise, Sergei’s mother, Natalia, made her weekly trip to the Butyrka detention center to deliver a parcel of food and medicine to her son. She assembled with the other prisoners’ family members at a small side entrance at 5:30 a.m. They arrived early because the prison accepted items only between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. on Tuesdays. If Natalia missed that window, she would have to wait until the following week. Since most prisoners couldn’t survive without these parcels, Natalia was never late.
The line moved slowly that morning. Natalia jostled with the fifty or so other family members in the narrow, dank passageway that led to the desk where two prison officers accepted the parcels. She finally made it to the front of the line at 9:40 a.m. She handed the prison officer a form listing the items she was delivering.
The woman looked at the form and shook her head officiously. “That prisoner is no longer at this facility. He was moved to Matrosskaya Tishina last night.”
“To the hospital there?” Natalia asked nervously. Given Sergei’s frail appearance at the court hearing a few days before, she was worried about his health and hoped that he hadn’t had some kind of emergency.
“I don’t know,” the officer said sternly.
Natalia tucked Sergei’s parcel under her arm and hurried out. She hopped on the Metro and arrived at the parcel desk at Matrosskaya Tishina at 10:30 a.m. Fortunately, only three people were in line there. When she got to the desk, she said to the attendant, “I was told my son Sergei Magnitsky is here.”
Without looking at a logbook or typing his name into a computer, the prison official responded, “Yes, he was transferred here last night in very bad condition.”
Natalia started to panic. “Is he okay? What’s happened to him?”
The attendant didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then she said, “I’m afraid not. He died at nine last night.”
Natalia shrieked. “W-w-what? What happened?”
“He died of pancreonecrosis, rupture of the abdominal membrane, and toxic shock,” the attendant said in a monotone. “I’m very sorry for your loss.” Natalia started to shake, but she couldn’t move her feet. She leaned against the desk as this news hit her. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Woman, please step aside. I need to take care of the next person in line,” the attendant said coldly.
Natalia couldn’t even look at her.
“You need to step aside,” the attendant repeated, and pointed to a hard plastic chair against the wall. Natalia followed her finger and shuffled to the chair, the other people in line staring at her, none of them sure what to do.
Natalia collapsed into the seat and broke down. After a few minutes she pulled herself together just long enough to call Sergei’s lawyer, Dmitri, whose office was nearby. When Dmitri got there fifteen minutes later, Natalia was no longer able to speak. Dmitri took charge and asked for the doctor on duty. A few minutes later, a man in a lab coat appeared. He repeated the cause of death and said that Sergei’s body had been transferred to Morgue No. 11, and if they wanted to know anything more, they should go there.
• • •
That morning my home phone rang at 7:45, 10:45 a.m. in Moscow. I picked up. It was Eduard, speaking in hasty Russian. I passed the phone to Elena. She listened. She gasped. Tears filled her eyes. Then she began to scream. Not in Russian, not in English, just a primal howl. I had never heard anyone make a sound like that in my life.
When she told me that Sergei had died, I jumped up and turned circles like a wild animal caught in a cage.
Sergei’s death was so far beyond my worst nightmares that I had no idea how to cope. The pain I felt was physical, as if someone were plunging a knife right through my gut.
After a few minutes of hyperventilating, pacing, and choking back tears, I regained enough composure to make some calls. My first was to Vladimir. He always knew what to do, what to say, whom to approach—but not this time. When I told him the news, there was just silence on the other end of the phone. There was nothing he could say. Eventually he whispered meekly, “Bill, this is terrible.”
Without showering, I pulled on my trousers, grabbed a shirt, rushed out the front door, and hopped in a cab to go to the office. I was the first to arrive, but within twenty minutes everyone else was there, disheveled and grief-stricken.
In any major crisis, what you do in the first few hours defines it forever. We quickly drafted a press release in English and Russian. With it, we included a forty-page, handwritten document that Sergei had prepared detailing his torture, the withholding of medical attention, and the intense hardship to which the prison authorities had subjected him. We then hit send, hoping and praying that this time people would care.
And this time, everyone did.
Most major newspapers took up the story, and they put calls i
n to the Russian authorities for comment. The press officer at the Interior Ministry was a plump blond woman in her early forties named Irina Dudukina. Shortly after the calls started coming in, she released the Interior Ministry’s version of events. According to her, Sergei hadn’t died of pancreonecrosis and toxic shock as the prison official had told Natalia earlier, but rather of “heart failure, with no signs of violence.”
Later that day Dudukina went further, posting an official statement on the Interior Ministry’s website saying, “There has not been a single complaint from Magnitsky about his health in the criminal case file” and “his sudden death was a shock for the investigators.”
This was completely untrue. Not only were there many complaints in his case file, but there were also specific refusals from Major Silchenko and other senior officials denying him any medical attention.
Dudukina also lied about the time and place of Sergei’s death. She claimed that Sergei died at 9:50 p.m. on a bed in Matrosskaya Tishina’s emergency room as doctors tried to resuscitate him. This was directly contradicted by the civilian doctor who was first on the scene, who said that Sergei had died around 9:00 p.m. on the floor of an isolation cell.
I had never known Sergei’s mother or wife. My contact had always been either with Sergei directly or, during his imprisonment, with his lawyer, but now his family and I were about to become inextricably linked forever.
I made my first call to his mother, Natalia, on November 17. Vadim translated. I not only wanted to express my most profound condolences, but also to tell her that I felt responsible for what had happened to her son and that she wasn’t alone. It remains one of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever had in my life. Natalia was inconsolable. Sergei was her only child and meant everything to her. Every time she started talking, she would break down in tears. I didn’t want to cause her more pain, but I wanted her to know that I was going to step into Sergei’s shoes and look after her and the family. More importantly, I needed to tell her that I was going to make sure that the people who tortured and killed Sergei would face justice, and I wouldn’t rest until they did.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t be in Moscow to help them, so the family had to deal with the grim aftermath of Sergei’s death on their own. The day after he died, they requested that an independent pathologist attend the state autopsy, but the prosecutor immediately denied their request, saying, “All our pathologists are equally independent.”
Two days later, Natalia asked for his body to be released so the family could conduct their own autopsy. This was also denied on the grounds that “there is no reason to doubt the results of the state autopsy.”
Later that day, Natalia went to Morgue No. 11. When she arrived, she was told that Sergei’s body wasn’t being stored in a refrigeration unit because the morgue had too many corpses, and that Sergei’s body would decompose if he wasn’t buried immediately. When Natalia asked whether Sergei’s body could be released to the family so they could conduct a religious service with an open casket, the official categorically refused: “The corpse will only be released to the cemetery.”
Sergei’s family had to organize the burial for the next day. Natalia, along with Sergei’s widow and aunt, went to the morgue to deliver a dark suit, a crisp white shirt, and a striped blue tie. They hoped they would be able to see Sergei one last time. The coroner reluctantly agreed. He led them down a flight of stairs and along a hallway to a room in the basement. The room was dark and had an overpowering and nauseating smell of formaldehyde and death. Fifteen minutes later, the coroner wheeled in Sergei’s body on a gurney and said, “Now you can say good-bye.”
Sergei was covered to the neck in a white sheet. Natalia had a candle that she wanted to put between his fingers in the Orthodox tradition for his burial. When she pulled back the sheet, she was shocked to see dark bruises on his knuckles and deep lacerations on his wrists. At the sight of this, all three women lost their composure and broke down.
They kissed Sergei on the forehead, cried, and squeezed his injured hands. They gave the coroner Sergei’s clothing and left.
On November 20, 2009, a brown wooden casket emerged from Morgue No. 11 and was put in a van. The family followed the van to the Preobrazhensky Cemetery in northeast Moscow. Sergei’s friends pulled the casket from the transport and placed it on a cart. The procession went to the burial plot, many of his friends and family members carrying large bouquets of flowers. Once the casket was resting safely near the plot, the lid was pulled back and leaned against the foot of the box. Sergei was perfectly dressed. He was covered with a crisp cotton shroud that came up to his chest. His color was good. Even though everyone there could see the signs of violence on his wrists and knuckles, he looked at peace, and that was how he would be buried.
His family and friends took turns to say good-bye and lay red roses at his feet. Natalia and his widow, Natasha, placed a garland of white roses around his head. They cried and cried and cried and put the lid back on and lowered him into the ground.
• • •
The cover-up blossomed at every branch of Russian law enforcement from the moment that Sergei died. On November 18, the Russian State Investigative Committee announced, “No ground has been identified to warrant launching a criminal investigation following Magnitsky’s death.” On November 23, three days after his burial, the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office issued a statement saying it had found “no wrongdoing by officials and no violations of the law. Death occurred from acute heart failure.” Finally, on November 24, the head of Matrosskaya Tishina declared, “No violations have been found. Any investigations into Magnitsky’s death should end and his case be filed in the archive.”
But Sergei’s case would not just go away. Every prisoner has his own way of dealing with the adversity of being in jail, and Sergei’s had been to write everything down. In his 358 days in detention, he and his lawyers filed 450 criminal complaints documenting in granular detail who did what to him, when, how, and where. These complaints and the evidence that has since surfaced make Sergei’s murder the most well documented human rights abuse case to come out of Russia in the last thirty-five years.
I completely suppressed my emotions in the week following Sergei’s death. I’d tried to do as much as possible to achieve some sort of justice in Russia, but the consistent chorus of denial was demoralizing. When I came home on the evening of November 25, I sat at the dinner table with Elena. I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. I hoped she might rub my neck or say something to make it all better, just as she had so many times before. But at that moment, she was distracted.
I looked up to find her intensely reading an email on her BlackBerry. “What’s going on?”
She held up a hand, read some more, then said, “Medvedev just called for an investigation into Sergei’s death!”
“What?”
“President Medvedev is going to launch an investigation!”
“Truly?”
“Yes. It says that he was briefed about this case by his human rights commissioner and that he asked the general prosecutor and the justice minster to launch a probe.”
My mobile phone rang almost as soon as Elena had told me. It was Vladimir. “Bill, have you seen the Medvedev news?”
“Yes, Elena and I are reading it right now. What do you think?”
“You know, Bill, I never believe a word these people say—but how can this be bad?”
“I suppose it can’t,” I said. Although nothing could change the fact that Sergei was dead, this at least indicated that there might be some crack in Russia’s evil foundation. Maybe, just maybe, Russia wouldn’t operate on the Katyn principle of lying about everything in Sergei’s case.
Two weeks later, on December 11, Medvedev’s spokeswoman announced that twenty prison officials were to be fired “as a result” of Sergei’s death. When I heard this, I started to picture Sergei’s torturers being arrested at their homes and thrown into the same cells to which Sergei had been consigned
.
Unfortunately, later that day, Vadim approached my desk with a grim look, clutching a handful of papers.
“What’s this?” I pointed my chin at the paperwork.
“The names of the fired prison officials. Nineteen had absolutely nothing to do with Sergei. Some worked in prisons as far away as Vladivostok and Novosibirsk”—both of which were thousands of miles from Moscow.
“Were any associated with him in any way at all?”
“One. But this is bullshit. It’s a complete smoke screen.”
On top of the denials and fake firings was the reaction to the Moscow Public Oversight Commission (MPOC) report that came out on December 28. The MPOC is a nongovernmental organization whose mandate is to investigate brutality and suspicious deaths in Moscow prisons. Shortly after Sergei died, it launched its own independent investigation into his death, headed by an incorruptible man named Valery Borschev. He interviewed guards, doctors, and inmates who had had anything to do with Sergei. He and his team also read Sergei’s complaints and the official files written about him. Their conclusions were definitive. The MPOC report stated that Sergei “was systematically denied medical care”; that he “was subjected to physical and psychological torture”; that his “right to life was violated by the state”; that “investigators, prosecutors, and judges played a role in his torturous conditions”; and finally, that “after his death, state officials lied and concealed the truth about his torture and circumstances of his death.”
Borschev filed this report with five different government agencies, including the Presidential Administration, the Ministry of Justice, and the General Prosecutor’s Office.
