Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been found guilty of tax fraud by a Moscow court. The details of that case render the decision questionable; if it were not so tragic, the decision itself would be a farce.

Magnitsky was found guilty on July 11, nearly four years after he died in a Russian prison, virtually certainly as a result of abuse he had endured at the hands of his captors.

Sergei Magnitsky's trial and conviction was, as one of his friends and defenders pointed out, "one of the most shameful moments for Russia since the days of Joseph Stalin."