The international trade body for lawyers has renewed its criticism of Russia's arrest of a hedge fund lawyer last year, and said it raises questions over that country's ability to establish a "credible" legal system.

The International Bar Association levelled its attack in a letter earlier this month at Russia's president Dimitri Medvedev. It criticised his government's arrest last November of Sergey Magnitskiy, the Moscow-based lawyer to the activist Hermitage hedge fund, and "the overall state of the rule of law" in Russia.