Dead Russian lawyer's trial adjourned to March 22

A Moscow court on Monday opened the posthumous tax evasion trial against dead lawyer Sergei Magnitsky but swiftly adjourned the next hearing until March 22 to give the defence more time to prepare. Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison in November 2009 of untreated illnesses after 11 months in pre-trial detention over a multi-million dollar tax evasion scam which his supporters say he exposed rather than committed. He was aged 37. His family has boycotted the trial as a legal absurdity but the process is still going ahead after the court appointed defence lawyers to take Magnitsky's case in defiance of the family's wishes. "I see this trial as desecration of the memory of my husband Sergei Magnitsky," his wife Natalia Zharikova said in statement released by his former employer Hermitage Capital. "I think this trial has no legal foundation and goes against principles of rights and human values." She said that anyone "with a conscience" should not take part in the trial which she labelled as a "blasphemy". The co-accused is Magnitsky’s former employer William Browder, a US-born British citizen whose Hermitage Capital investment fund was once the biggest investor in Russia and has lobbied Western governments hard over the case. Based in Britain, he is being tried in absentia. Putting a dead man on trial is theoretically allowed under Russian law but hugely unusual. Magnitsky’s death became a symbol of rights abuse in Russia and prompted the US Congress to adopt a law sanctioning Russian officials implicated in the death. Russia then hit back with measures of its own, including a ban on US adoptions of Russian children.