MOSCOW, December 24 – RAPSI, Diana Gutsul. The prosecutor has asked a Moscow district court to acquit Dmitry Kratov, former deputy head of the Butyrka pretrial detention center, accused of negligence which resulted in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the court spokesperson told the Russian Legal Information Agency.

Kratov has been charged with negligence in regards to the death of Sergei Magnitsky. Prosecutor requested to acquit Kratov as no link was established between the actions of the defendant and Magnitsky’s death.

“Pursuant to the experts’ conclusion, Magnitsky died from the heart failure,” the prosecutor said, stressing that Kratov was acting duly.

Magnitsky, who served as a managing partner of the Firestone Duncan auditing firm and a legal consultant of the Hermitage Capital Management investment fund, was detained on November 24, 2008.

On the same day, the Investigative Committee charged him with tax evasion as part of a criminal case against Hermitage Capital Management. On November 26, the Tverskoy District Court issued an arrest warrant in his name. On November 16, 2009, he died in the Matrosskaya Tishina investigative isolation ward where he had been held for almost a year.

His death incited a public uproar. Apart from Kratov, the ward's doctor Larisa Litvinova was also a defendant in the case. However, the Investigative Committee closed the case against her last spring due to amendments to the Criminal Code affecting the statute of limitations.