MOSCOW: A Moscow court convicted late investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on Thursday of tax evasion after Russia’s first posthumous trial, a ruling that will further undermine President Vladimir Putin’s reputation in the West.
The court also convicted Magnitsky’s former client William Browder, a Briton who has spearheaded an international campaign to expose corruption and punish Russian officials he blames for Magnitsky’s death in a Moscow jail while awaiting trial in 2009.
Browder was tried in absentia in the case, which has underscored the dangers faced by Russians who challenge the authorities and deepened US and European concern over human rights and the rule of law in Russia.
Magnitsky died after a year in jail during which he said he was mistreated and denied medical care in an effort to get him to confess to tax evasion and give evidence against Browder, the head of investment fund Hermitage Capital Management. The Kremlin’s own human rights council has said there was evidence suggesting Magnitsky was beaten to death, but Putin has dismissed allegations of torture or foul play and told the nation last year that he died of heart failure. (Agencies)
Boston bomb suspect pleads not guilty
Boston: In his first court appearance, Boston Marathon bomb suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to charges of killing four people and wounding more than 200, as blast victims looked on.
Tsarnaev, 19, faces 30 counts of using a weapon of mass destruction in the two 15 April blasts that killed three, including an eight-year-old boy. Prosecutors could press for the death penalty for 17 counts, CNN reported.
The suspect has also been charged over the death of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police officer, who was allegedly shot dead by Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan three days after the attack. He is also charged in a carjacking incident and with downloading internet material from Islamist radicals some time before the blasts.
Tsarnaev was dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, his hair long and shaggy, his left arm in a cast, the news channel said. He was wounded in the pursuit-during which his brother, Tamerlan, was killed-and he appeared to have an injury to the left side of his face. MIT police lined up outside the courthouse as the hearing neared its end Wednesday afternoon in a show of solidarity with their fallen comrade, Sean Collier. (IANS)
