By typical Russian, whatabout, chutzpah double standards, yes the treatment of Bout is inhumane
Just when I thought that Russian chutzpah could never surprise me, something like this comes along:
A federal court handed Bout 25 years in prison on Thursday for conspiring to sell weapons to Columbian guerrillas who were actually US federal agents in disguise.
. . . .
The ministry claimed the US had used “unbearable conditions” in detention as a means of physically and psychologically pressuring Bout during his trial. “Long before the verdict, the authorities declared V.A. Bout a ‘merchant of death’ and little short of an international terrorist, while the prosecution was built entirely on his imputed ‘criminal intent’,” it said, adding: “The Russian foreign ministry will take all necessary efforts to return V.A. Bout to the Motherland.”
This from the country that uses psychological pressure and physical torture and literally-literally-unbearable conditions to coerce those they want to break.
Three prominent examples: I could spend days assembling many more.
Example 1. Today is the 6th anniversary of the arrest of Vasily Aleksanyan. Aleksanyan worked for Khodorkovsky and Yukos. The Russians wanted to compel him to testify against Khodorkovsky. How? Here’s how:
During Aleksanyan’s imprisonment, his health rapidly deteriorated due to HIV-related illnesses. He became almost blind and developed cancer of the liver with metastasis into the lymph nodes. He also became ill with tuberculosis.
Despite the grave medical situation demanding urgent antiretroviral treatment and chemotherapy in a hospital, he was denied both. The prosecutors also ignored three injunctions by the European Court of Human Rights on 27 November 2007, on 6 December 2007 and on 20 December 2007.According to Aleksanyan, the prosecutors are demanding false evidence against other Yukos executives from him before starting his medical treatment. On 26 December Aleksanyan made public a statement asking for help from human rights advocates.
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Amnesty International urges Russian authorities to close Magnitsky’s case
Amnesty International, an international human rights organization, urges Russian authorities to terminate a criminal case against lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in the pre-trial detention center in November 2009, the organization reported on its website on Friday.
The Moscow’s Ostankinsky District Court affirmed the resumption of Magnitsky’s case on Tuesday, April 3. The posthumous investigation was ordered by Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin on July 30, 2011.
Meanwhile, human rights activists have repeatedly called on the Russian authorities to investigate the circumstances of Magnitsky’s death.
The court dismissed on April 3 the appeal filed by Magnitsky’s mother to cancel Grin’s order. His widow Natalia Zharikova filed a petition in which she supported Magnitsky mother’s appeal.
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Russia’s treatment of US ambassador a reflection of shaky relations
In the past eight days, the US ambassador to Russia has been harassed by state media, called arrogant by his host country’s foreign minister and had guests accosted outside his home by the Kremlin youth group Nashi.
American officials had been assured that the anti-US rhetoric streaming out of Moscow since the end of last year was part of Vladimir Putin’s campaign to return to the presidency, a populist move to blame Russia’s ills on a tested enemy of yore. But the continued attacks on Michael McFaul, who took up his post as ambassador in January, have raised questions about the fate of US-Russia relations under Putin’s presidency.
The latest incident came on Wednesday, when Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, chided McFaul for reacting “arrogantly” to Russian concerns over US plans to build a missile defence shield in Europe.
“Yesterday our colleague, the US ambassador, arrogantly announced there will be no changes on missile defence, even though it would seem that an ambassador should understand it is necessary to take the interests of the state in question into account,” Lavrov said.
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The Empire is Still Evil
Twenty-first century Russia has three famous faces: Anna Chapman, the failed spy, who came in from the cold to become a red hot sex symbol back home; Alexander Litvinenko, the spy-turned-dissident, who was poisoned by a radioactive polonium isotope in London; and Vladimir Putin, the KGB colonel-turned-president, who had himself re-elected for a six-year term last month. It is no accident that all three of these faces belong to former intelligence officers. The point of Deception is to explain how and why Putin’s Russia has succeeded in fooling us all, both about its own sinister nexus of espionage, politics and finance, and about its insidious corruption of the West. This important book is a sequel to the author’s last indictment of the Putin regime, The New Cold War, which came out four years ago. Deception is, if anything, even more devastating.
At this point, I should declare an interest: I have known Edward Lucas for a quarter of a century, ever since he and I covered the revolutions in Eastern Europe that heralded the fall of the Soviet Union — he for the BBC World Service, I for the Daily Telegraph. In those days, Ed was a kind of one-man world service, rushing from press conference to demonstration, from the dungeons of the dissidents to the palaces of the politburos, reporting and commenting, sharing in the euphoria but never letting himself be carried away by it. He has not lost his missionary zeal to this day: as a senior editor at the Economist he is still unmasking the enemies of civilisation.
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Obama Must Reset Relations with Russia Along Economic Lines
As Vladimir Putin prepares for his May inauguration and return to the Russian presidency, the United States must design a new relationship with this often difficult leader and his country.
The “Russian Reset” of President Obama’s first term sought to overcome the strain in relations of recent years in order to achieve some specific foreign policy goals. It brought a new arms control treaty, Russian cooperation in transiting military material to Afghanistan, and help in pressuring Iran. But simply continuing the reset along the same lines is a dead end.
There is little likelihood of any significant progress in nuclear arms control because any new accord would require more meaningful reductions in weapons. The US and NATO engagement in Afghanistan is winding down. And Russia seems unwilling to pursue further sanctions against the Iranian threat of proliferation.
When Mr. Putin arrives in Camp David for the G8 summit in May, President Obama must be ready to lay out the framework for a new reset.
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Government under pressure to publish names of Russians suspected of links to assassinations
The Government is under pressure to publish the names of Russians suspected of being linked to targeted assassinations amid increasing concerns that London is turning into a playground for mobsters and hit squads.
The calls come following the recent attempted murder of a prominent Russian banker who was due to testify in an upcoming murder trial and reports that a hit man sent to assassinate a prominent Chechen dissident leader has successfully fought off a deportation bid.
Former Europe minister Dennis MacShane believes the situation has become so critical that publicly outing the names of known Russians linked to political killings would send a powerful signal that such violence will not be tolerated on British streets.
“It is only by naming publicly the Russian security apparatus officials, in office or retired and working in the para-security services that Britain can send a message ahead of the Olympic Games that our main city is not ‘Londongrad’ and Russian killers should stay away and stop harassing British businesses,” the MP told The Independent. “Every Russian I meet tells me that private protests have no impact on the Kremlin. Britain has to take a lead and go public with naming names as that is one message the Russian security-business state which likes owning property here, likes sending its children to private schools, and needs City of London lawyers to write contracts actually understands.”
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The Limits of Cheeseburger Diplomacy
President Obama’s “hot mike” comments to Dmitry Medvedev represented a classic Kinsley gaffe. Unaware he was being recorded, Obama assured the Russian leader that he would “have more flexibility” on missile defense after his reelection. Medvedev, in turn, promised to “transmit this information to Vladimir,” a reference to the once and future President Putin.
If anyone was still wondering why Republicans remain skeptical of Obama’s commitment to missile defense, now they understand. Yet the significance of the hot-mike incident goes beyond that one issue. In a broader sense, the president has indicated that he is doubling down on his “reset” policy toward Moscow, despite a mountain of evidence that the policy has largely failed.
The most recent evidence of its failure was Russia’s March 4 presidential election, which restored Putin to the top job — his former job — in the Kremlin. That election was sullied by “procedural irregularities,” not to mention a political and media environment that forestalled genuine democratic competition. The same could be said of Russia’s December 4 parliamentary elections, in which the government’s mischief was even worse. As the New York Times reported, OECD election observers said they “had observed blatant fraud, including the brazen stuffing of ballot boxes” — which makes it all the more remarkable that Putin’s United Russia Party suffered such major losses.
In short, the country is sliding deeper into lawless autocracy. Meanwhile, Moscow continues to resist imposing tougher sanctions on Iran and Syria, and it continues to supply Damascus with all sorts of weaponry that is being used to massacre innocent civilians. When Russia and China vetoed a recent U.N. resolution on Syria, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called their actions “despicable.”
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Must Read: The Novaya Newspaper On VAT Theft At Tax Office #28
You will probably remember from the case of Magnitsky, the thieves in Taxation Inspection #28 (including my favourite Vladlen-I-Am-Bitter- Stepanov) who, under the cover of the Investigation Committee, Ministry of Interior and Federal Security Service, pulled from the budget 5.4 bln roubles on the pretence of profit tax refund.
Those who deal with taxation know quite well that stealing money via “abusive tax schemes” is done by means of fake VAT recovery; theft of profit tax rebate is rather uncommon.
Honest businessmen fail to recompense it for years, most often they secure judgement only through court rule.
But certain personalities get the VAT recovered lightening-fast.
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Navalny Presses for Inquiry Into Putin Deputy
Aleksei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent anticorruption activist, added to the pressure on the Russian government to investigate allegations of what he called corrupt financial practices by a senior deputy to Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.
The accusations against the deputy, Igor I. Shuvalov, were initially brought to the attention of Russian prosecutors months ago, but on Friday, Mr. Navalny publicly posted the documents that form the basis of the allegations on his Web site.
At issue in the case is not their authenticity – a Moscow law firm has already confirmed they are real – but whether what is described violated laws or might be considered unacceptable, even in Russia’s political system.
Mr. Navalny said he still did not expect law enforcement to act against such a senior official. He said the publication was intended to reinforce the opposition’s message that corruption is pervasive in the Russian government.
“This is not a case of somebody in Siberia stealing pipes,” Mr. Navalny said. “It occurred within the oligarchy that lives abroad and with a Western-oriented official. It will be remembered. Now, every time the fight against corruption comes up, so will Shuvalov’s name.”
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To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
