In a recent column by Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times about the torture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah by the U.S. Government, an interesting question is posed: if this cover-up of a war crime is finally unraveled, will it eventually lead to accountability at the highest levels of the Oval Office? Sullivan writes, “Any reasonable person examining all the evidence we have – without any bias – would conclude that the overwhelming likelihood is that the president of the United States authorised illegal torture of a prisoner and that the evidence of the crime was subsequently illegally destroyed.” In making the case for George Bush as a war criminal, Sullivan has raised a very important point – when a high profile prisoner is severely mistreated by the authorities and threatened with death, the responsibility goes to the highest levels of executive power which authorized these actions. We can now observe a parallel example in Russia, which although lacking the dramatic headline-grabbing stories of terrorist plots, waterboarding, and destroyed videotapes, features the same repugnant cruelty as the former Yukos general counsel Vasily Georgievich Alexanyan is systematically being denied access to emergency life-saving medical care and chemotherapy treatments.