MOSCOW (AFP) - President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a probe into the prison death of a lawyer arrested in a high-profile tax case, the Kremlin said Tuesday, following allegations of "mediaeval" prison treatment in Russia.
Medvedev told the prosecutor general and the justice minister to investigate the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer working for Hermitage Capital Management, his spokeswoman told Russian news agencies.
Magnitsky, who represented Hermitage in a tax case closely watched by foreign investors in Russia, died in a prison hospital in Moscow on November 16, with the official cause of death stated as heart failure.
His lawyer, Dmitry Kharitonov, told the Interfax news agency last week that he had filed a complaint calling for a criminal inquiry into conduct by the investigators in the case, the head of the prison and its medical staff.
Officials however initially refused to open an investigation, while the influential business daily Vedomosti commented in a scathing editorial last week that Magnitsky "died in prison in the most mediaeval way."
The investigative committee of the prosecutor general's office announced Tuesday following Medvedev's order that it had opened a criminal probe.
The committee said it would look into whether there was a failure to provide medical care, which carries a maximum sentence of three years in jail, and a broader charge of negligence, punishable by up to five years in prison.
The death of the young lawyer, who worked for the Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan, highlighted concerns about Russia's overcrowded prison system and the treatment of white-collar prisoners.
The head of Hermitage Capital Management, Bill Browder, told the BBC in an interview released Monday that the lawyer was held "hostage" while the authorities tried to force him to sign false confessions.
"They basically said to him 'if you sign the following false confessions then we'll give you medical treatment - otherwise we won't'," Browder, who has been banned from Russia and lives in London, told the BBC.
Browder said the case showed Russia had become a "criminal state."
On Monday, human rights activist Ella Pamfilova tackled Medvedev on the death of Magnitsky at a meeting of top human rights activists at the Kremlin.
Magnitsky had been arrested in November 2008 on charges of tax evasion amounting to 500 million rubles (17 million dollars) in the probe that also indicted in absentia Hermitage's founder, Browder, who is a US citizen.
Medvedev "was obliged to act in some way," said Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst, saying that Magnitsky was "driven to his death."
"Such things can't be left without investigation because that would mean corruption runs riot and the president isn't in control of the situation in the country," he said.
Oreshkin questioned whether appealing to the prosecutors would be successful, however.
"I think doing this will be very difficult when we are talking about such a huge sum of money. I'm not even talking about a human life here," he said, adding that those involved in the case "are able to escape investigation."
Maria Lipman, an expert at the Carnegie Centre, urged caution over Medvedev's response to Magnitsky's death, which she called a "tragedy".
"I think an answer to this can only be given after the investigation has been carried out," she said. "It's easy to give an order, but it's more difficult to make sure that the order be implemented properly."
