If Trump's BFF Putin put a dead man on trial, why his ruckus over them voting?
Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison in suspicious circumstances, was found guilty of tax evasion on Thursday in a posthumous trial that has further damaged President Vladimir Putin's reputation in the West.
The Moscow court also convicted Magnitsky's former client William Browder, a British investment fund boss who has led an international campaign to expose corruption and punish Russian officials he blames for Magnitsky's death in 2009.
Browder, tried in absentia, was sentenced to nine years' jail in the case, which deepened U.S. and European Union concerns over human rights and the rule of law in Putin's Russia.
"Today's verdict will go down in history as one of the most shameful moments for Russia since the days of Josef Stalin," Browder, who is unlikely to be extradited from Britain to Russia, said in an emailed statement.
Amnesty International called Magnitsky's prosecution - Russia's first posthumous trial - "deeply sinister", saying it "set a dangerous precedent that could open a whole new chapter in Russia's worsening human rights record."
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Magnitsky died after a year in jail during which he said he was mistreated and denied medical care in an effort to get him to confess to tax evasion and give evidence against Browder, the head of investment fund Hermitage Capital Management.
The Kremlin's own human rights council has said there was evidence suggesting Magnitsky, 37, was beaten to death. Yet Putin has dismissed allegations of torture or foul play and told the nation last year that he died of heart failure.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-magnitsky-idUSBRE96A09V20130711
If "dead person" is a class that can be tried and convicted according to Putin law, then why shouldn't they be able to enjoy the other civic functions of government, such as voting, in the land of his best friend, right?
