A European Magnitsky List

Wall Street Journal

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament voted on Tuesday to sanction 32 Russian officials involved in the persecution of Sergei Magnitsky, the Moscow lawyer who died in custody in 2009 after exposing official graft. The legislation follows America’s 2012 Magnitsky Act that currently targets 18 officials. When the European Parliament convenes in April, passage would send a signal that Russia’s neighbors will no longer ignore the nature of the Putin regime.

The bill would require all EU states to impose a “visa ban on these officials and to freeze any financial assets that they, or their immediate family, may hold within the European Union.” Among them are a number of Interior Ministry officers, including Oleg Logunov, who as head of the legal department of the ministry’s investigative committee was instrumental in Magnitsky’s unlawful detention. Also included is Igor Alisov, the judge who presided over Magnitsky’s Kafkaesque posthumous “tax-evasion” trial, and who read a “guilty” verdict to an empty defendant’s cage in 2013.

Europe may be tardy in targeting Magnitsky’s killers, but the Obama Administration’s record is worse. It first tried to kill the Magnitsky Act and then tried to water it down. An overwhelming majority in Congress from both parties forced the law on President Obama. Vladimir Putin retaliated by putting U.S. officials on a sanctions list of his own, and he even stopped Americans from adopting Russian orphans.

As Europe and the U.S. look for ways to punish Russia for its seizure of Crimea, they could expand the Magnitsky Act to cover perpetrators of other human-rights violations and political abuses. First on our list would be Russian officials involved in the case of dissident Russian blogger Alexei Navalny, who was brought before a kangaroo court last year and given a five-year prison sentence (subsequently suspended) as a way of preventing him from becoming mayor of Moscow.

Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a reminder that those who abuse their own people are also capable of turning on their neighbors. Passing and expanding the Magnitsky Act to penalize the first type of abuse is a useful step toward preventing the second. hairy girl buy viagra online www.zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php unshaven girls