A new report provides further evidence of the brutal treatment of a Russian tax lawyer

IN NOVEMBER 2009 Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax lawyer, died in mysterious circumstances in a Moscow prison cell. He had been in custody for over a year after accusing Russian officials of perpetrating a massive fraud against Hermitage Capital Management, a investment fund he had represented.

Now Bill Browder, Hermitage's founder, has issued a forensic 75-page presentation [PDF] that provides the clearest evidence yet that Mr Magnitsky was the victim not only of medical negligence, as Russian officials have suggested, but brutality and torture.

The report's title, "The Torture and Murder of Sergei Magnitsky and the Cover Up by the Russian Government", explains its contents clearly. Its publication can only add to pressure on the White House to back a bill working its way through the US Senate that would slap sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the Magnitsky case and others like it. Similar moves are afoot in the European Union.

Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, has acknowledged that Magnitsky's death was a criminal act. Yet he has done little to pursue those responsible.