Obama signs Magnitsky Act

[Minskaya]

WASHINGTON, December 14 (RIA Novosti) - US President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law the Magnitsky Act, a bill punishing Russian officials for alleged human rights violations that US lawmakers attached to a landmark trade bill normalizing trade relations with Moscow. The aspects of the law targeting Russian officials, which simultaneously repeals the Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik law, has angered the Kremlin, which says it is an attempt by the United States to interfere in Russia’s internal affairs. The law calls on the White House to draw up a list of Russian officials deemed by Washington to be complicit in rights abuses. These officials will then be banned from obtaining US visas and have their US assets frozen.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued an angry statement Friday in response to the new US law, calling the linking of the human rights legislation to the trade bill “cynical.” Moscow has promised to impose analogous restrictions against US officials in response to the law. On Friday, the lower house of the Russian parliament gave preliminary approval to a draft law penalizing US nationals involved in violating the rights of Russian citizens.

Source: RIA NOVOSTI

Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky was a Russian attorney who uncovered a massive embezzlement scheme by Russian officials. He was arrested by Russian police in 2008 and imprisoned at the Butyrka prison in Moscow. He was held incommunicado for eleven months without trial in squalid conditions, and died the day before an automatic release. Russian officials attributed his death to a heart attack, but the Moscow Helsinki Group has charged that Magnitsky died from torture and abuse by officers of the Russian Ministry of Interior.

[Minskaya]

As a partial response, the lower house of the Russian parliament has passed a measure that would ban Americans from adopting Russian children. Putin has thus far avoided stating if he will sign or veto the bill. Such a measure may "feel good" politically, but it is a terrible knee-jerk reaction. The United States accounts for around one third of all foreign adoptions of Russian children. There are approximately 650,000 Russian children in orphanages, and most of them suffer mental problems because their parents were either alcoholics or drug addicts. Russia simply does not have the state/social resources to care for all of these orphaned children.

[Chogy]

Guatemala did the same after a couple of bad apples got caught selling babies.

We used to have a flight that I crewed to Guatemala City. Every Sunday, we'd fly down excited, prospective parents. On Thursdays, the airplane would be loaded with those same parents with their new baby. It was a remarkable sight. Sad that it has ended. Even more sad are the outrageous claims that babies adopted by U.S. couples are going into organ transplant labs and the like.

[Minskaya]

Update....

Putin Signs Adoption Ban, Putting Pending Cases in Limbo
By GREGORY L. WHITE
December 28, 2012

MOSCOW—President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed into a law a controversial ban on adoptions of Russian children by U.S. citizens, ordering his government to take a range of steps to make it easier for Russians to adopt orphans. The law, which has drawn fierce criticism from Russian liberals and even some top government officials for drawing children into the center of a political battle, will take effect Jan. 1, officials said. It leaves in legal limbo about 50 children who were in the final phases of adoption. Along with the adoption ban, Mr. Putin signed a decree ordering the government to ease the adoption process for Russians and boost benefits for adoptive parents. But child-welfare specialists said the steps aren't likely to be enough to make up for the loss of adoptions to the U.S., which was the largest single foreign destination for Russian orphans.

The adoption ban was included in a package of measures the Kremlin pushed through parliament to retaliate for a new U.S. law aimed at punishing alleged Russian human-rights violators. That law was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison after exposing what he said was a $230 million fraud perpetrated by senior Russian police officials. Russian officials insist his death was an accident. on Friday, a Moscow court dismissed the charges against the last of the prison officials implicated in the Magnitsky case. The move was criticized by Mr. Magnitsky's former client, hedge fund Hermitage Capital. "Not a single official responsible for Sergei Magnitsky's false arrest, torture and death or the crimes he had uncovered has been prosecuted by the Russian authorities," Hermitage said Friday. "There is no doubt that people responsible for Magnitsky's death are being protected by the president of Russia."

Source: WSJ.com

[Chogy]

Brilliant thinking. Punish Russian orphans to retaliate for disliked U.S. legislation...

[Minskaya]

Brilliant thinking. Punish Russian orphans to retaliate for disliked U.S. legislation...

Indeed. Pretty sad when your own children are considered mere pawns on the tit-for-tat chessboard

[Minskaya]

Russia presses on with plans to try dead whistleblower
By Steve Gutterman and Thomas Grove
MOSCOW | Mon Jan 28, 2013

(Reuters) - Russia pushed forward with plans for the posthumous trial of a lawyer on tax evasion charges on Monday, despite a boycott by relatives and lawyers who said President Vladimir Putin's government was "dancing on the grave of a dead man". Sergei Magnitsky died in 2009 after complaining repeatedly he was denied treatment as his health declined in jail, prompting the United States last month to bar entry to Russians accused of involvement in his death or serious rights abuses. Putin, restored to the presidency in May, has dismissed the international furor over the case, saying last month the lawyer had died of a heart attack.

Although Putin has rejected suggestions Magnitsky was tortured in prison, the Kremlin's own human rights council has voiced suspicions he was beaten to death. One prison official was tried last year but prosecutors asked the court to clear him after Putin said Magnitsky had not been tortured, and the judge complied. Amnesty International's regional director, John Dalhuisen said the Magnitsky trial was an attempt to deflect attention from those who committed the crimes he exposed. It would set "a dangerous precedent that would open a whole new chapter in Russia's worsening human rights record," he said.

Magnitsky's former employer, investment fund Hermitage Capital, says the lawyer was killed because he had accused law enforcement and tax officers of stealing $230 million from the state by setting up bogus tax refunds. Magnitsky's mother and her attorney refused to show up for a preliminary hearing for a trial they denounced as a politically motivated attack on a dead man, forcing the Moscow court hearing the case to appoint defense lawyers. "I think it is inhuman to try a dead man," Magnitsky's mother Natalya, who stayed away from the scheduled preliminary hearing, told Reuters by telephone. "This is not a court case but some kind of farce, and I will not take part in it." Her lawyer, Nikolai Gorokhov, said that according to Russian law the dead can be prosecuted at the request of relatives seeking to rehabilitate a loved one. "The trial cannot be just, because it is simply illegal," said Gorokhov, who also refused to attend the hearing. "The entire trial is set up only to blacken Sergei's name. It's a dance on the grave of a dead man," he said.

Source: Reuters

Apparently, beating him to death just wasn't enough.

[Doktor]

Prosecuting dead people has only happened a few other times in history. Such dead defendants included Joan of Arc, Thomas Beckett, John Wycliff, and Martin Borman. The Catholic Church banned the practice centuries ago. In modern jurisprudence prosecution of the dead is unheard of, particularly by civilized nations who respect the rule of law. We simply do not try the dead. This Russian example of justice brings shame to the rule of law and discredit upon its judicial system.

David Crane is a professor at Syracuse University College of Law and the founding former Chief Prosecutor of the international war crimes tribunal in West Africa called the Special Court for Sierra Leone, 2001-2005.

JURIST - Forum: Prosecuting the Dead.