Greg White’s article in the Wall Street Journal today on the the Moscow Public Oversight Commission report on the death of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky is essential reading.  It is an absolutely devastating, criminal, and impossible to ignore situation.  See the Hermitage press release over here for extensive excerpts from the report.

But Monday’s commission report goes further than that, charging that authorities deliberately “organized physical and psychological pressure on Sergei Magnitsky.” It cites frequent changes of jails and cells, as well as conditions that amounted to “torture” even by the standards of Russia’s harsh prisons. Citing case records, the panel also dismissed claims by investigators and police that Mr. Magnitsky hadn’t filed complaints about the conditions and lack of medical care.