An advisory council to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says it is close to finishing a report into the death in custody of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
Magnitsky, who was defending British investment company Hermitage Capital Management against tax evasion charges, died aged 37 in a Moscow pre-trial detention facility after being refused medical treatment for pancreatitis.
"The material is almost ready," Mikhail Fedotov, head of the president's council on human rights and civil society, told reporters on Wednesday.
Fedotov said the council is also launching a probe in the second conviction of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev.
The two men had been nearing the end of an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion when they were told they would have to spend six more years in jail in a politically tinged trial in December.
The council is acting on Medvedev's calls for the "expert community" to look into the verdict, which a court aide claimed was ordered from above, Fedotov said.
MOSCOW, April 6 (RIA Novosti)
