PrintDecember 1, 2009
Putin's Folly
Recently, in separate incidents over the course of a single week, three Russian citizens died while in police custody. Two were brutally beaten to death by cops, the third even more savagely tortured to death by being denied medical treatment for a critical illness while behind bars.First, attorney Sergei Magnitsky perished while waiting to go on trial for alleged white-collar crimes -- charges he says were politically motivated after he launched a crusade against official corruption. His firm believes that the police denied him medical treatment to pressure him into giving false testimony about his employer, who was leading the crusade. Then a trio of cops in Moscow beat a man to death in the course of an arrest. Two days later, this time in St. Petersburg, a second man met the same fate.What is perhaps most disturbing about these events, however, is not the killings themselves. Russia has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for years, and its police force is infamous...(Read Full Article)
