By Ivan Anderzhanov.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has imposed visa sanctions on Russian government officials associated with the death in police custody of Hermitage Capital’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
America is the first country to officially impose sanctions on the Russian officials involved in the Magnitsky case, according to an emailed statement from Hermitage.
“The facts are so shocking about the false arrest, torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky that countries are now starting the act to prohibit the people who killed Sergei from coming into their territories. The first domino has fallen and many more will follow soon,” said a Hermitage Capital representative.
This news comes from comments by the Obama administration on the forthcoming Magnitsky legislation, known as the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011”. This legislation is sponsored by 19 leading senators from both the Democratic and Republican parties. The legislation calls for visa sanctions and asset freezes on individuals involved in Magnitsky’s false arrest, torture and death, as well as on perpetrators of other gross human rights violations.
The visa ban is a response by the US State Department to a request by Senator Benjamin Cardin (Democrat, Maryland) in April 2010 to ban a list of 60 Russian officials who were involved in the false arrest, torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky and the $230m corruption scheme that he had uncovered. The list includes Alexei Anichin, deputy interior minister, Victor Grin, deputy prosecutor general, and Viktor Voronin, head of Department K of the FSB (the successor organisation to the KGB).
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