Kin Cheung / AP, file

Former South Korean "comfort woman," Kim Bok-dong, 87, front, who was forced to serve for the Japanese Army as a sexual slave during World War II, seen here in April.

TOKYO -- The outspoken mayor of Osaka is under fire not only from the government but from members of his own party for saying that the use of “comfort women,” some of whom were forced into prostitution, during World War II was necessary for the morale of Japanese soldiers.

Toru Hashimoto, co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, made the comments during a news conference Monday.

“Whether it was of their own volition or against their will, the comfort women system was something necessary,” he said. “For military morale back then, it was probably necessary.”

The comments brought a quick backlash from senior Japanese politicians.

One of the strongest rebuttals came from a top official in Hashimoto’s own party.

“This is not something that’s coming out of our party. I think Mr. Hashimoto was expressing his own private opinions,” said Sakihiti Owaza, a senior official in the Japan Restoration Party. “If these comments continue, we will need to look into his true intentions and put a stop to this.”

Toru Yamanaka / AFP - Getty Images, file

Osaka Mayor and co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party Toru Hashimoto, seen here in 2012.

Yoshihide Suga, chief cabinet secretary in the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, declined to directly criticize Hashimoto; doing so would be considered inappropriate because they are members of different parties.

He said, however, that the government’s position on the matter was clear: "The issue of comfort women is an experience of an unspeakable, painful suffering for which we also feel extreme anguish.”

Cabinet Minister Tomoko Inada did not let the protocols of political politeness stand in her way.

“It might not be appropriate to comment on what has been said by a leader of another party, but I believe the system of comfort women was a tremendous violation of women's human rights,” she said.

Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura said he heard about the comments while on visits to Washington and London and he thought they had been not been “properly understood” by foreign media.

Despite that, given the tensions between Japan and its Pacific neighbors, he said that “the timing of Mr. Hashimoto’s comments couldn’t have been worse.”

“I strongly wonder where there was anything positive in making these comments,” he said.

Hashimoto’s remarks about comfort women represented a break with what has become a Japanese tradition.

In 1994, then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued an official apology for Japan's conduct before and during the war, including the treatment of those who came to be known as comfort women. Since then, subsequent administrations have upheld Murayama’s apology.

On Monday, Hashimoto agreed that it was important to accept Japan's role as an aggressor in the war and apologize for its atrocities, but he argued that other countries have had brothels for their troops.

"When a group of men is risking their lives, when this group of men are in a psychologically tense state,  … anyone could understand that they would need something like the comfort women system," he said.

By Tuesday, there was evidence that Hashimoto might be stepping back a bit – but not retreating.

"Just because it was right at the time, obviously you cannot justify it today,” he wrote in a Twitter post.

NBC News’ John Newland contributed to this story.

Related:

• Japan, US agree N. Korea must not have nukes
• Okinawa base plan meets protests
• More Japan coverage from NBC News

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Ahmedi guards protecting an Ahmedi mosque in Lahore, Pakistan on April 30, 2013. Ahmedis are reviled by mainstream Muslims as heretics because they believe a prophet followed Mohammed, defying the basic tenet of Islam that says Mohammed is the last prophet.

Lahore, Pakistan — In majority Muslim Pakistan, religious minorities say democracy is killing them.

Intolerance has been on the rise for the past five years under Pakistan's democratically elected government because of the growing violence of Islamic radicals, who are then courted by political parties, say many in the country's communities of Shiite Muslims, Christians, Hindus and other minorities.

On Saturday, the country will elect a new parliament, marking the first time one elected government is replaced by another in the history of Pakistan, which over its 66-year existence has repeatedly seen military rule. But minorities are not celebrating. Some of the fiercest Islamic extremists are candidates in the vote, and minorities say even the mainstream political parties pander to radicals to get votes, often campaigning side-by-side with well-known militants.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Ahmedis praying in their mosque, which displays an Arabic sign saying 'In the name of god, people are praying', in Lahore on April 30, 2013.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

A Shiite worshipper at a shrine in Jhang on May 1, 2013. Minority Shiites in Pakistan have little hope that the May 11 general elections will help them because they fear Sunni radicals, who have targeted Shiites, could gain political strength.

About 96 percent of Pakistan's population of 180 million is Muslim. Most are Sunni, but according to the CIA Factbook about 10 to 15 percent are members of the Shiite sect. The remaining 4 percent are adherents to other religions such as Christians, Hindus and Ahmedis.

More than a dozen representatives of Pakistan's minorities interviewed by The Associated Press expressed fears the vote will only hand more influence to extremists. Since the 2008 elections, sectarian attacks have been relentless and minorities have found themselves increasingly targeted by radical Islamic militants. Minorities have little faith the new election will change that. Read the full story.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

A Christian woman peering out from inside a church as angry Christians protest the beating of a young man from the Joseph Colony, a Christian neighborhood in Lahore, on April 30, 2013.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Barber Elias, 25, a Christian who was injured when he was beaten by radical Muslims, in the Joseph Colony in Lahore on April 30, 2013.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Christians protesting the beating of a young Christian belonging to the Joseph Colony, in Lahore on April 30, 2013.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

A Christian repairing his home after it was attacked by radical Muslims, in the Joseph Colony in Lahore on April 30, 2013.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Homeless Hindus sleeping in a shrine cared for by Omparkarh Narian, 55, in Rawalpindi on May 4, 2013.

Slideshow: Pakistan: A nation in turmoil

Asif Hassan / AFP - Getty Images

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

Launch slideshow

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Saudi Arabia's Wojdan Shaherkani (top) competes in the London 2012 Olympic Games

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Girls in Saudi Arabia are to be allowed to take part in school sports for the first time in the latest sign that the Islamic kingdom is inching forward on the contentious issue of women’s rights.

Female students enrolled in private girls’ schools will be able to take part as long as they wear ‘decent clothing’ and are supervised by female Saudi instructors within the tight regulations of the country’s Ministry of Education, the official Saudi Press Agency announced Sunday.

“I think it’s a really good idea,” said Hala Tashkandi, a junior student of Applied Linguistics at Prince Sultan University, a private college in the capital, Riyadh. “Physical education for girls is sorely lacking, which is a shame because some of the best athletes I know are female.”

However, most girls are educated in public schools where the rules forbidding female competitive sports will not be relaxed.

It means school sport will remain restricted to members of the wealthy elite, despite the country’s need for more female athletes. Last year, the country's first two female Olympians took part in the London games following pressure from the International Olympic Committee which signaled at the Beijing 2008 games that it would no longer allow countries to restrict entry on the basis of gender.

Sarah Attar competed in the women’s 800m race, while Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shaherkani took part in judo after a deal was reached with officials allowing her to wear her hijab.

Saudi women are barred from driving and must seek the permission of a male "guardian", usually a father, husband or brother, to marry, travel abroad, open a bank account, work or have some forms of elective surgery.

Until recently, it seemed Saudi Arabia’s vocal minority of zealots were winning the ideological battle and sustaining the marginalization of women, but recent announcements suggest the tide may finally be turning.

Streeter Lecka / Getty Images

Sarah Attar of Saudi Arabia competes in the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Last week, a campaign featuring domestic abuse was launched to raise awareness in a country where such subjects are still considered largely taboo.

In January, the country’s reform-minded monarch, King Abdallah, appointed 30 women to the Shura Council despite a huge backlashfrom the religious establishment and comments on twitter and local blogs that branded them “infidels” and women of “loose character.”

Manal Sanai a final year student at Najd, a private girls’ school in central Riyadh, said she was excited by news about school sports. “Most girls don’t know their potential in sports because of the lack of exposure to any kind of physical activity and this will be a good chance to develop their talents,” she said.

Sports and activities such as dancing do take place, but only in private clubs with membership fees of upwards of $2,000 a year and can still be raided by the Mutawwa – or religious police.

Afaf Al Hamdan, the former manager of the Al Manahil Center for Women, which runs several physical educational programs catering to the city’s wealthy elite, questioned why sport would not be extended to public schools.

“The big bulk of students are in government schools and don’t have the means to pay for private clubs,” she said. “If these classes are run in a female environment with students dressed properly, then there is nothing against Sharia [law].

“All women in this country, unlike those of my generation who had never even heard of exercise, should have access to the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.”

That sentiment was echoed by Tashkandi, who pointed out that the Olympians Shaherkhani and Attar were only given two weeks to train because of wrangles over their participation.

“There’s so much potential and it could be incredibly helpful in terms of their physical and mental health as well,” she said.

Related:

• Saudis put a black eye on domestic abuse
• Video: Women in Saudi Arabia

Ilan Godfrey/AFP/Getty Images

Desmond Tutu is awarded the 2013 Templeton Prize in this handout image

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, the South Africa anti-apartheid campaigner, checked into a Cape Town hospital Wednesday for treatment of a persistent infection.

Tutu, 81, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for stance against whites-only rule in his country, and remained a global campaigner for peace and human rights until withdrawing from public life last year.

He spent the morning in his office before checking into hospital, a spokesman for his office said.

 “He was in good spirits and full of praise for the care he receives from an exceptional team of doctors,” the spokesman said.

He is expected to undergo tests to discover the underlying cause of the infection, and the non-surgical treatment is expected to take five days.

Earlier this month, Tutu was awarded the 2013 Templeton Prize worth $1.7 million for helping inspire people around the world by promoting forgiveness and justice.

He was a long-time campaigner for the release of Nelson Mandela, who was held as a political prisoner until 1990.

NBC News' Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

Related:

• PhotoBlog: Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday dance
• Desmond Tutu wins $1.7 million Templeton Prize

Yuri Kadobnov / AFP - Getty Images file

A woman holds a leaflet, reading "For human rights" and featuring a picture of Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny, during an opposition rally in Moscow on April 17.

Vladimir Putin's Russia has launched an "unprecedented" crackdown on political activists and civil society groups, Human Rights Watch alleged in a report released Wednesday.

The New York-based group’s report described a "nationwide campaign" of harassment and intimidation by the former KGB officer's government.

It came on the day Putin critic Alexei Navalny urged a court to throw out what he said were trumped-up charges intended to silence him. It also comes weeks after the State Department cataloged a series of human concerns in Russia, including restrictions to harsh fines for unsanctioned political meetings, electoral fraud and the detention and trial of citizens without due process.

The HRW report, "Laws of Attrition: The Crackdown on Russia’s Civil Society after Putin’s Return to the Presidency," said:

• Putin’s government has sought to portray critics as "clandestine enemies" 
• a number of political activists have been jailed 
• and a series of restrictive laws, including one against treason that could criminalize international human rights campaigners and others that impose "draconian limits on association with foreigners," have been passed.

It also said that hundreds of organizations had been subjected to "intrusive" inspections about a raft of matters such as tax affairs, fire safety and air quality.

In one case, the report said a group was asked for chest X-rays of its staff to ensure they did not have tuberculosis. In another, officials demanded copies of speeches made at a group's meetings.

"Taken together, the laws and government actions described in this report violate Russia’s international legal obligations to protect freedom of association, expression, and assembly and threaten the viability of Russia’s vibrant civil society," the report said.

Nikolay Petrov, scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, echoed the HRW findings, saying the democratic climate in Russia has got “much worse” over the past year.

“At first, these new laws were portrayed as something that would only be used as a threat, not a tool that would actually be used,” he said. “Now we are seeing these laws used a lot to target [non-profit] organizations and protests.

“Huge numbers of law enforcement officers are now involved” in the clampdown against political opponents and rights groups, he added.

Sergei Chirikov / EPA file

Russian police officers make their way through a crowd to detain opposition activists in Moscow last month.

“It is important for all democracies to be aware of what is going on in Russia.”

The HRW report cited two cases as "further examples of Russia’s waning commitment to its international human rights obligations": The two-year prison sentences given to two members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot for a political stunt in a Moscow cathedral and the fate of Leonid Razvozzhaev, a political activist accused of organizing a riot who attempted to claim asylum in neighboring Ukraine.

Razvozzhaev went missing in Ukraine after stepping outside the office of a partner organization of the United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees "to take a break during an asylum interview."

"Several days later he reappeared in custody in Russia. Razvozzhaev appears to have been forcibly disappeared and was forced to sign a confession under duress while in incommunicado detention. Razvozzhaev is in custody awaiting trial in Russia," the report said.

In response to the State Department comments earlier this month, Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement accusing the United States of politicizing human rights issues, according to Reuters.

"Americans prefer not to recall their own record (of violations)," the statement said, adding that Washington has recently resorted to disproportionate use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, causing civilian casualties, Reuters said.

On Wednesday, a court in the industrial city of Kirov adjourned to consider Navalny’s request to throw out charges that he stole $500,000 from a state-run timber firm, The Associated Press reported.

The most prominent opposition leader to be tried in post-Soviet Russia, Navalny has suggested Putin ordered the charges trial to stop his criticism of "swindlers and thieves" in government and sideline him as a potential presidential rival.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related: 

Full Russia coverage from NBC News

Lisi Niesner / Reuters

Survivor Petro Mischtschuk, 87, from Ukraine, wears his old prisoner's garb as he stands near the memorial site of the Little Camp at Buchenwald.

Between July 1937 and April 1945, the Nazis imprisoned a quarter of a million people in the Buchenwald concentration camp, located near the German city of Weimar. Around 56,000 of them were killed before the camp was liberated by U.S troops on April 11, 1945.

68 years later, Reuters photographer Lisi Niesner interviewed some of the remaining survivors as they returned to Buchenwald to mark the anniversary of the liberation.

Lisi Niesner / Reuters

Victor Karpus, 88, from Ukraine, stood at the muster ground where inmates gathered at dawn each day for a roll call. Karpus was imprisoned in several camps including Buchenwald for a total of three years. He even once managed to escape from a camp but got captured and taken to Buchenwald, where he remained until its liberation.

"Work or die – it was impossible to get out from Buchenwald," Karpus says.

Lisi Niesner / Reuters

Lisi Niesner / Reuters

"To each his own": An inscription on Buchenwald's iron gate.

Eva Pusztai, 88, from Hungary, sat in a wheelchair in front of a reconstructed gallows. In July 1944 she was deported to Birkenau and six weeks later to Muenchmuehle, one of 136 satellite camps of Buchenwald.

The forced labor in the arms industry or the camp's stone quarry took the imprisoned to the brink of their physical abilities. "You got just enough food to survive. I lost a third of my weight and I was almost starving to death," she says. 

"The employable have to be destroyed by work," she says, explaining the attitude of the Nazis to their prisoners. Her right eye filled up with a single tear that ran down her cheek, then she composed herself and smiled.

Lisi Niesner / Reuters

"Where is your god? Why he does not help you?" Jakob Silberstein, born in Poland in 1924, remembers the mocking of a high-level Nazi on Yom Kippur. He survived six years of captivity in Buchenwald and Auschwitz and witnessed brutal actions by the SS, being locked in a standing cubicle for a week, carrying stones and drinking rainwater for days. 

He was standing inside the gas chamber at Birkenau when an SS man asked if any of the men were skilled laborers. "I stated I was an electrician, which luckily saved my life," he said. After the liberation he found out that none of his family or friends had survived the war. He now lives in Israel and tirelessly tells his story.

Lisi Niesner / Reuters

Lisi Niesner / Reuters

Urns are displayed in a room adjacent to the crematorium at Buchenwald.

Professor Elling Kvamme, 94, from Norway, stood at the site of Barrack Block 22. He was teaching medicine at a university in Oslo in 1943 when he was arrested for his connections with underground politics. "Students are always dangerous and the Nazis realized it very quickly," he explained.

He was forced to take part in the Nazi program of Germanization and had to work at the pathological facility in Buchenwald. Before the dead were cremated in an incineration system developed to veil the traces of murder, specimens were taken from their corpses for anatomical collections.

Lisi Niesner / Reuters

Vasile Nussbaum, 83, from Romania, spent a year in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. "Buchenwald was a sanatorium in comparison to Auschwitz" he recalls without hesitation.

Nussbaum revisits the site of the camp every year on liberation day. "You never know what’s coming, today we are 83 years old and in the next year we are no more here", he says.

Lisi Niesner / Reuters

Barracks behind trees at Buchenwald.

Editor's note: Pictures taken between April 11-14, 2013 and made available to NBC News today. Read more at Reuters' Photographers Blog.

Bob Strong / Reuters file

A prisoner reads a newspaper in a communal cell block at Camp VI at Guantanamo Bay prison. The UN on Friday called on the US to close the prison, accusing the country of violating international law.

GENEVA -- The UN human rights chief called on the United States on Friday to close down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, saying the indefinite imprisonment of many detainees without charge or trial violated international law.

Navi Pillay said the hunger strike being staged by some inmates at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeastern Cuba was a "desperate act" but "scarcely surprising."

"We must be clear about this: The United States is in clear breach not just of its own commitments but also of international laws and standards that it is obliged to uphold," the UN high commissioner for human rights said in a statement.

About half of the 166 detainees there have been cleared for transfer either to home countries or third countries for resettlement, Pillay said. "As a first step, those who have been cleared for release must be released," she said.

"Others reportedly have been designated for further indefinite detention. Some of them have been festering in this detention center for more than a decade," she said.

Of the 166 detainees, only nine have been charged with or convicted of crimes.

Forty inmates are currently staging a hunger strike to protest against their indefinite detention, according to a U.S. military spokesman at Guantanamo. Some have lost so much weight that they are being force-fed liquid nutrients.

Reuters

Women walk past portraits of North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung and late leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang on Monday.

Editor's note: This story includes a correction.

Anyone reading North Korea’s state-owned news agency could be forgiven for thinking that North Korea has legions of supporters throughout the world.

“U.S. and Its Allies' Moves to Stifle DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- or North Korea] Protested in Britain,” “Independent DPRK Praised by Bangladeshi Organization,” and “Day of Sun to Be Celebrated in Italy” are just three of the numerous headlines on KCNA’s English-language site trumpeting overseas support for Kim Jong Un’s regime.

But given the reports by human-rights groups detailing the horror of daily life in North Korea, who are the foreigners taking Pyongyang’s side?

Last month, the United Nations set up an inquiry to investigate “systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights.”

Amnesty International’s North Korea researcher Rajiv Narayan welcomed the move, adding that “millions of people in North Korea suffer extreme forms of repression" with hundreds of thousands of adults and children "in political prison camps and other forms of detention where forced hard labor, torture and other ill treatment is systemic.”

But Andy Brooks, a 63-year-old British communist, has one word to sum up such reports: “propaganda.”

He complained that “unsubstantiated claims” were “constantly thrown at the DPRK,” referring to North Korea's official name.

“People who visit come back with different stories,” he said.

'Everyone has a job'
Brooks, secretary-general of the U.K.’s New Communist Party, highlighted the recent visit to North Korea by “the American baseball man” – meaning retired basketball star Dennis Rodman.

“He didn’t see any of this and he’s certainly not a communist,” he said.

Brooks, who declined to say how many members his party has, had no doubt when asked if he thought North Koreans had a good life.

“Oh yes. They have free education, everyone has a job. I think everyone has housing and so on. It has, in my view, a very high standard of living,” he said. “One of the proofs of the pudding is the longevity. The average lifespan is 74, 75.”

Brooks said he had made “many trips” to North Korea and had lunch with Kim Jong Il, the late “Supreme Leader,” who he said was a “great communist thinker.”

Kim Jong Il was the son of his predecessor Kim Il Sung and father of his successor Kim Jong Un, but Brooks said he did not regard this passage of power from father to son as hereditary.

“It’s more complicated than that … I think the way to put this, the way I see it, in the DPRK nothing is done except by committees, every decision is collective from the smallest to the highest. The decisions in the DPRK are not the will of one man,” he said.

“It’s a socialist society in which most things are nationalized. It’s under social ownership and they’re trying to develop their part of the country in accordance with the principles they uphold,” he said.

Asked if he’d rather live in the U.S. or North Korea, he said “oh, North Korea, it goes without saying for me, absolutely.”

“You look at the great extremes in the U.S., a country so wealthy, a country that could feed the entire world and there are people starving in the streets,” he said.

However, even fellow communists disown people like Brooks.

Mark Fischer, national organizer of the Communist Party of Great Britain, described pro-North Korean leftists as “a tiny family group of ultra-Stalinist loops -- the political equivalent of what happens when cousins marry.”

Fischer, who said his party has several hundred members, said over the years Stalinists had looked for a country embodied their philosophy and had gradually run out of options.

“These people really are in the Stalinist last-chance saloon,” he said. “They’ve looked to somewhere as the socialist motherland and it’s got … more absurd as time has gone on. They are kind of living fossils.”

Slideshow: Glimpses into the hermit kingdom of North Korea

David Guttenfelder / AP

As chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, David Guttenfelder has had unprecedented access to communist North Korea. Here's a rare look at daily life in the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

Asked to explain how someone could support North Korea, Fischer said “to be honest with you, I think there must be a degree of double-think, Orwellian double-think.”

Seoul-based analyst Daniel Pinkston, of the International Crisis Group, said the North's "apologists" were ignoring its human-rights abuses.

“I see a lot of these people crying about U.S. imperialism, the unfair system … if they are crying out about all this injustice, why don’t they just go join the KPA [the North’s Korean People’s Army]?” he said.

“They sit behind their computers in London or Brazilia or New York and send out these kinds of outrageous comments,” he said.

“Just go, nobody is stopping you, go and live in North Korea.”

Related:

North Korea: 'Moment of explosion is approaching fast'

What happens if North Korea gets out of hand? Here are some scenarios

Full North Korea coverage from NBC News

Amr Nabil / AP

A bodyguard protects popular Egyptian television satirist Bassem Youssef, who has come to be known as Egypt's Jon Stewart.

Bassem Youssef, a Egyptian satirist, has turned himself in after the country’s prosecutor-general issued an arrest warrant over allegations he insulted the president and Islam.

Youssef, known as Egypt’s version of “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, was released after questioning on a bail of $2,200, an official in the prosecutor's office told Reuters on Sunday.

The comedian is accused, among other things, of undermining the standing of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, Reuters said.

The questioning of the comedian has raised fears over freedom expression in the post-Mubarak Egypt.

The prosecutor general issued the arrest warrant after at least four legal complaints filed by Mursi supporters, the BBC reported.

"It is an escalation in an attempt to restrict space for critical expression," said Heba Morayef, Egypt director at Human Rights Watch told Reuters.

Youssef's questioning came after the prosecutor general issued five arrest warrants for prominent political activists accused of inciting violence against the Muslim Brotherhood, the group that propelled Mursi to power in last year's election.

“The dilemma of Egypt’s new rulers is that they came to power as a result of a radical change in the country, but they refuse to accept other results of this change,” wrote Abdullah Kamal, an Egyptian analyst, on the website of news channel Al-Arabiya.

During a telephone interview with popular television anchor Lamees El-Hadidy on Saturday night, Youssef rejected the accusation that he had insulted Islam, the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph reported.

"If there is anyone who has insulted religion it is those who use Islam as a weapon for political reasons," he said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

RELATED: 

Morsi issues ominous warning to Egypt opposition

Photo blog: Clashes turn violent outside Muslim Brotherhood offices, dozens injured

More on Egypt from NBC News

Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP

Police officers stand near an empty defendant's cage in a courtroom in Moscow on March 11, 2013. The court postponed the trial of Sergei Magnitsky, a dead lawyer who accused law-enforcement authorities of massive corruption and whose case sparked a dispute between Washington and Moscow.

Mikhail Voskresensky / Reuters

Flowers lie near the grave of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in the Preobrazhensky cemetery in Moscow on March 11, 2013.

Journalists crowded into a packed Moscow courtroom on Monday to witness a legal first: the first prosecution of a dead person in Russian history. But the case was postponed as the absence of defendant Sergei Magnitsky — who died in 2009 — was compounded by the non-appearance of his legal team.

Magnitsky is charged with tax evasion and fraud — similar to accusations that he had leveled against police and tax officials — in a case that sparked a dispute between Washington and Moscow when Congress passed a law named after Magnitsky.

"The defense team ... believes that they have not yet fully acquainted themselves with the 60 volumes of case materials,"  Judge Igor Alisov said, looking down on the barred cage usually reserved for the accused and the empty seats where Magnitsky's lawyers should have sat. Alisov postponed the trial until March 22.

-- Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report