On 16 November 2009 Sergei Magnitsky died in the Butyrka pre-trial detention centre in Moscow. Sergei Magnitsky was a whistleblower who had alleged large-scale theft from the Russian state sanctioned and carried out by Russian officials. He was arrested and eventually died in Moscow's Butyrka prison where he had been held for 358 days and had been denied adequate medical care. The presidential human rights council found that Sergei Magnitsky had been severely beaten just before he died. His case has become an international cause célèbre, in large part as a result of the efforts of Bill Browder, and led to the adoption of the Magnitsky bill by the US government at the end of 2012.
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