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PACE to prepare report on Magnitsky case

Slutsky call the decision “unprecedented from the legal point of view”

STRASBOURG, October 5 (Itar-Tass) — PACE’s bureau made a decision on preparation of a special report on the Sergei Magnitsky case, the Assembly’s Deputy Speaker and deputy head of the Russian Federation’s delegation Leonid Slutsky said on Friday.

“The decision was supported by nine votes, while seven were against it, which demonstrates an indicative split of the Bureau,” he said.

Slutsky call the decision “unprecedented from the legal point of view,” as the Assembly’s initiative emerged 3.5 years after the tragic events, where Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in a pre-trial prison. However, he continued, “we shall cooperate with the authors of report.”

Slutsky said the PACE Bureau’s decision is a clear demonstration of “political lobbyism.” “It is not a secret that on the margins of the autumn session the founder and head of Hermitage Capital William Browder was very actively influencing the Bureau members. It was clear lobbyism, which unfortunately is possible here at the European Council.”

The report will be drafted by PACE’s legal committee, which will specify the entire procedure of discussion and will appoint reporters during next meeting in Paris in November.

The initiative to draft a report and to have further debates and a resolution on the death of Magnitsky came from 70 members of the PACEA in spring of 2011. The petition’s first varioan was ready a year earlier, where 53 deputies signed it, including future Chairman of PACE Jean-Claude Mignon and Luca Volonte, head of the biggest political Group of the European People's Party at the Council of Europe.

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