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The guilt for Magnitsky’s death at the detention center may be shouldered on doctors

On Tuesday, the main investigation department in the Russian Investigative Committee reported that a criminal case against a doctor of the Butyrka detention center Larisa Litvinova and the deputy chief of the detention center Dmitry Kratov was singled out from the death case of an auditor of the Hermitage Capital Foundation Sergei Magnitsky in the detention center. The investigation is already over. The parties to the trial are examining the case files, after that the criminal case will be passed to court.

The investigation into the main Magnitsky death criminal case continues, the Novye Izvestia reported. The Investigative Committee does not rule out new suspects in the criminal case. The human rights activists are concerned that the guilt of other people may be shouldered on Kratov and Litvinova. The guilt of those who exerted pressure on them and hampered the medical aid to Magnitsky may be shifted on them. Their names are known. They were voiced in a report, which the Presidential Human Rights Council presented to Dmitry Medvedev last July. The chairman of the Public Supervisory Committee Valery Borshchev hoped that Kratov and Litvinova will testify against them. However, the suspects did not give testimony, the human rights activist said.

The Rossiiskaya Gazeta recalled that the criminal case versus Dmitry Kratov and Larisa Litvinova was instituted on July 18, 2011. Then, the direct connection between their actions and the death of Sergei Magnitsky was found, the detectives said. Kratov was charged under Article 293 Part 2 of the Criminal Code for the failure to perform or the improper performance of his duties by an official that entailed the death of a person through negligence.

The Kommersant quoted Valery Borshchev as saying that the completed investigation of the criminal case against Larisa Litvinova and Dmitry Kratov does not seem optimistic to him. “When the criminal case was opened over Sergei Magnitsky’s death, we were glad that the state authorities just indirectly admitted their guilt in his death. But when Litvinova and Kratov were declared the main defendants, we became less optimistic, because the main culprits in Magnitsky’s death – a detective of the Investigative Committee Oleg Silchenko, who prevented Magnitsky from being moved to the Matrosskaya Tishina detention center” and a doctor of the detention center Alexandra Gauss escaped justice. It was Gauss who diagnosed Magnitsky’s acute disease and only called up the psychiatric aid for him.