Dead men don't talk (thrown from 4th floor of apartment bldg).

[MelissaB]

Lawyer for Sergei Magnitsky's family Nikolai Gorokhov has been "thrown from the 4th floor of his apartment building" in Moscow.

Link to tweet

Edited to say: They guy is still alive. It seems he is currently in critical condition w/severe head injuries.

[annabanana]

1. How many is that now?

I'm sure tRump wouldn't hesitate...

[C_U_L8R]

2. I wonder if the Trump crew

is taking notice of all the expiring Russians.
They may want to bar their own windows.

[MelissaB]

3. Some background:

The Russians Killed My Lawyer. This Is How I Got Congress to Avenge Him.

How one man convinced Washington to care about human rights in Putin’s Russia.

By Bill Browder

February 03, 2015

It was 7:45 a.m. on Nov. 17, 2009, when my phone rang. It was my lawyer, Eduard, who had a horrible message to relay: “Bill, Sergei is dead.” Sergei Magnitsky was one of my lawyers in Russia. He’d been arrested and detained in Moscow for nearly a year after exposing Russian government corruption. I knew that he had been mistreated, but the fact that he’d been killed was beyond my worst nightmare.

The pain I felt upon hearing of his death was physical, as if someone had plunged a knife into my gut. After pacing the room and hyperventilating for several minutes, I made a vow to Sergei, to his family and to myself that I wouldn’t let the people who killed him get away with it. That vow changed my life, and eventually would change the United States’ foreign policy towards Russia.

Sergei Magnitsky’s death provides a lens for everything that’s wrong in Russia today. The story started over a decade ago when I ran Hermitage Capital Management, the largest investment firm in Russia. I was very successful, but when I started to complain publicly about corruption at the companies in which my fund invested, President Vladimir Putin had me expelled from the country and declared a threat to national security. Eighteen months later in June 2007, my Moscow offices were raided by the police, and the documents they seized were used to fraudulently re-register the ownership of our investment holding companies as well as to create $1 billion of fake tax liabilities. In December, the corrupt officials used their new “ownership” of our companies and the fake liabilities to fraudulently reclaim $230 million of taxes we paid in the previous year. It was the largest tax rebate in the history of Russia.

After these raids I hired Sergei Magnitsky, then a 35-year-old tax lawyer, to investigate. Over the following months he helped us file criminal complaints against the police officers involved in the raids with a different branch of Russian law enforcement and was so brave that he even testified against them. In retaliation, he was arrested by two of the same Interior Ministry officers against whom he had testified.

Link: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/sergei-magnitsky-murder-114878

[fleur-de-lisa]

4. David Corn tweet:

David Corn‏Verified account @DavidCornDC 5m5 minutes ago

David Corn Retweeted Daniel Sandford

England just passed the Magnitsky act freezing assets of Russians and others who engage in torture & human rights violations. Retaliation?

[MelissaB]

6. Interesting!

Thanks for that.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. That Act seems to stem from this:

For this Russian dissident, holding Putin accountable was almost deadly — twice

On Jan. 9, the Russian dissident Vladi­mir Kara-Murza celebrated a signal victory in a long campaign to hold Vladi­mir Putin’s regime accountable for its human rights crimes. The outgoing Obama administration announced sanctions against Gen. Alexander Bastrykin, a close Putin confidant who heads the state investigative committee — the instrument used to persecute opposition activists with trumped-up criminal charges.

Kara-Murza, who divides his time between Moscow and Washington, had long campaigned for the designation of Bastrykin, just as he had pushed for passage of the law under which the general was targeted — the Sergei Magnitsky Act, which mandates sanctions on Russians involved in repression and corruption. For years Bastrykin “seemed too powerful to be sanctioned,” Kara-Murza exulted in a Jan. 12 blog post. “That ceiling is now gone.”

Exactly three weeks later, back in Russia, Kara-Murza felt a horrific and all-too-familiar sensation: His organs were beginning to shut down. He concluded immediately that he had been poisoned, just as he had been once before, in May 2015. His family rushed him to a hospital, where a doctor who helped save his life in the previous instance was waiting. Within hours he was in a coma, where he remained for a week.

Snip........“It’s revenge for the Magnitsky law, pure and simple,” Kara-Murza told me. “It’s the main thing they are afraid of. They have mastered the ways of silencing the opposition at home.
For now the only thing they are really afraid of is Western countries closing the havens where they stash their money and send their families.”https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/for-this-russian-dissident-holding-putin-accountable-was-almost-deadly--twice/2017/03/19/d1010aa6-0a66-11e7-b77c-0047d15a24e0_story.html?utm_term=.768ce75a30cc

[Girard442]

5. If you've ever wondered why Trump does the full-on grovel to Putin. NT

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Gorokhov was due Court tomorrow to argue on behalf of Sergei Magnitskys mother.

Link to tweet

[GliderGuider]

9. Somebody didn't read their CIA assassination manual

7 floors minimum for certain death. How hard is that to remember, guys?

[Blue_true]

10. Vlad continues to clean up loose ends. Wonder how he comes

after Trump after Trump is no longer useful?

[MelissaB]

11. And not just Trump. What about Manafort, Page, and the countless others with Russian ties?

Link to tweet

[Warren DeMontague]

12. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

....right?