Medvedev Bemoans Persistent Rights Efforts
President Dmitry Medvedev was presented with a new report by his rights council yesterday regarding the death of Sergei Magnitsky. The council insists that the lawyer died not due to a lack of medical care, as is now the official line, but from a brutal prison beating, and included in their report evidence of the lawyer’s injuries, including broken knuckles and a black arm. Medvedev granted that Magnitsky’s is a ‘sad case‘, but expressed what sounds like frustration on being repeatedly pressed to recognize Russia’s most infamous and egregious failings of its citizens. Quoted in the Washington Post:
‘Sometimes I have a feeling that there are only two problems that must worry those who are dealing with human rights, prosecutors and, finally, the president — these are the Magnitsky case and the Khodorkovsky case.‘
If Medvedev is tired of fighting his human rights proponents, perhaps he should give them a little more rope. Although really, this response – from the man considered to be the most liberal of his entire government – more or less adds a flourish to the ongoing stalemate.
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