Posts Tagged ‘AFP’
McCain tells Russia Putin ‘doesn’t believe in you’
US Senator John McCain penned a blistering column for a Russian news website on Thursday, telling the Russian people that their President Vladimir Putin is a dissent-quashing tyrant who “doesn’t believe in you.”
The senior US lawmaker and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee accosted Putin and his associates for rigging elections, imprisoning and murdering opponents, fostering corruption and “destroying” Russia’s reputation on the world stage.
“I am not anti-Russian,” McCain wrote in the piece for Pravda.ru website. “I am pro-Russian, more pro-Russian than the regime that misrules you today.”
McCain last week said he intended to write an op-ed piece for Russian media after Putin had his own column published in The New York Times.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Russian News Service radio that the president would read the piece, but is unlikely to respond.
“McCain is not known as a fan of Putin. To engage in polemics — I doubt it, his is the point of view of a person who lives across the ocean,” Peskov said.
The website Pravda.Ru is not known as a serious news source and has nothing to do with the newspaper Pravda published by the Communist party, which was the country’s most important paper in the Soviet era but which has now fallen into obscurity.
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Interpol rejects arrest warrant for dead Russia lawyer’s boss
International police agency Interpol has rejected a Russian request to issue an international arrest warrant for the former employer of late lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, saying the case is of “political nature”.
Magnitsky died in prison in 2009 after revealing a massive fraud scheme. At the time he blew the whistle he was working for US-born British citizen William Browder, the biggest foreign investor in Russia in the past decade, who has now become a target for Russian authorities.
In a statement issued on Friday, Interpol said it had “deleted all information in relation to William Browder following a recommendation by the independent Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF)”.
After studying the case, it said the CCF had concluded it “was of a predominantly political nature and recommended that all information be deleted from Interpol’s databases”.
Browder is the founder of the Hermitage Capital hedge fund where Magnitsky worked when he went public with details of massive fraud by state officials. Shortly afterwards Magnitsky himself was charged with tax evasion.
Magnitsky died in detention after having spent 11 months on remand in squalid prisons and is currently on a controversial posthumous trial.
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Russia gives Ireland adoption warning over Magnitsky law
Russia has warned Ireland it could break off talks on cross-border adoptions if lawmakers press for sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, according to a letter obtained by AFP on Friday.
The threat follows Moscow’s decision to ban US adoptions of Russian orphans in retaliation for a recent US law freezing the assets and denying entry to America of those tied to Magnitsky’s death in custody in 2009.
The warning was included in a letter from Russian ambassador Maxim Peshkov to Pat Breen, the chairman of the Irish parliament’s committee on foreign affairs, which last month began debating plans for an Irish version of the US Magnitsky law.
Dated March 11, the letter cites the US ban on adoptions and says the committee’s proposals “can have negative influence on the negotiations on the adoption agreement between Russia and Ireland being proceeded”.
Bill Browder, the US-born investor who was Magnitsky’s employer when he died and who is campaigning for an EU version of the US law, condemned the ambassador’s remarks.
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Russia hits 18 US officials with tit-for-tat entry ban
Russia blacklisted 18 Americans on Saturday, some linked to Guantanamo detention practices, in retaliation for a US ban on Russians allegedly linked to the death of a jailed whistleblower.
Already-strained relations between the two countries chilled further as Russia hit back at what it called Washington’s “unfriendly” move that would hurt mutual trust.
Among the officials sanctioned by Russia were John Yoo, a legal aide under former president George W. Bush and author of the so-called torture memo in 2002 — that provided legal backing for harsh interrogation methods — and David Addington, who was a top adviser to ex-vice president Dick Cheney.
The list also includes two former Guantanamo prison chiefs and officials who prosecuted convicted arms smuggler Viktor Bout.
“The war of lists is not our choice, but we cannot ignore outright blackmail,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.
On Friday, the US Treasury released a list barring 16 Russians allegedly linked to the death of jailed lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, as well as two Chechens tied to other alleged rights abuses, from travelling to the US or holding assets there under the 2012 Sergei Magnitsky Act.
The measure infuriated Moscow, with the foreign ministry calling the Magnitsky Act an “absurd” law that “intervenes in our domestic affairs” and “delivers a strong blow to bilateral relations.”
While the US list mostly targeted mid- and low-level interior ministry officials involved in the case against Magnitsky, Russia chose several names already known internationally due to accusations of torture.
“Unlike the American list, which is formed arbitrarily, our list primarily includes those who are implicated in legalisation of torture and perpetual detentions in Guantanamo prison, to the arrests and kidnapping of Russian citizens,” the ministry said.
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Russia drops probe into whistleblowing lawyer’s death
Russian investigators on Tuesday dropped their investigation into the 2009 death in jail of a whistleblowing attorney whose case led to a crisis in relations between Russia and the United States.
The investigators said they had no evidence that Sergei Magnitsky died at the age of 37 from beatings by prison staff, as his family and US-born former employer William Browder claim.
“Based on the preliminary investigation’s results, a decision was taken to end the criminal case due to a lack of evidence of a crime,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Magnitsky is currently facing a posthumous trial — Russia’s first — along with Browder into alleged tax evasion.
The Russian lawyer was jailed shortly after disclosing an alleged $230-million fraud scheme being run by senior tax and law enforcement authorities and accused of carrying out the fraud himself.
An attorney for Magnitsky’s mother Natalia said he intended to appeal the decision in court.
Magnitsky’s prosecution by the very same officials he had singled out for fraud has come to symbolise the Kremlin’s failure to crack down on corruption and institute the rule of law as repeatedly promised by President Vladimir Putin.
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Russia resumes hearings against dead lawyer
A Moscow court resumed preliminary hearings Monday in the posthumous trial of a Russian lawyer whose death in jail after accusing state officials of tax fraud has upset the Kremlin’s delicate ties with the US.
The Tverskoi District Court began the latest preliminary hearing against Sergei Magnitsky — Russia’s first legal procedure against a dead man — behind closed doors at 0600 GMT, a court spokeswoman told AFP.
The hearing is expected to set a date for the start of the trial in the case, after the state appointed an attorney to defend Magnitsky despite protests from his family.
“A lawyer is not allowed to take an instruction in a case that is clearly unlawful, and to take a position against the will of the client,” said a complaint written by Magnitsky’s relatives and distributed by his former employer Hermitage Capital.
“The assertion by prosecutors that the case was initiated at the request from the relatives is a lie,” the letter said.
Magnitsky’s mother Natalya and her own lawyers are boycotting the trial.
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Magnitsky fund boss brings Russia blacklist campaign to Europe
The investor pushing to blacklist Russian officials implicated in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has brought his campaign to Europe’s capitals, in a move that could have far-reaching implications for their relations with Moscow.
The London-based head of Hermitage Capital Management, William Browder, was in Paris on Monday to push for a French version of the US Magnitsky Act, a December law that blacklisted Russian officials tied to Magnitsky’s prison death.
The law has prompted a crisis in US-Russia ties, with Moscow retaliating by banning US adoptions of Russian orphans.
Ahead of talks with French lawmakers, Browder told AFP he was sure that within a year European capitals would have followed Washington’s lead in imposing sanctions on Russian officials.
“The Russian government tortured and murdered Sergei Magnitsky, our lawyer, after he uncovered a massive corruption scheme,” Browder said.
“The Russian government has taken every step to cover up the involvement of the officials… and then attack the victim. It has become clear to us that we have to get justice outside of Russia.”
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Russia puts dead lawyer Magnitsky on trial
Russia on Thursday opened a fraud trial against Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer whose prison death in 2009 led to the biggest US-Russia row in years, despite protests by the defence it was illegal to try a dead man.
The Magnitsky family defence lawyers refused to participate in an “unconstitutional” process against a dead man and the judge was forced to adjourn the hearing until the new year.
“The preliminary hearing into Magnitsky’s case has been moved to January 28 due to the absence of the lawyers from the defence,” the press service of the Tverskoy district court in Moscow told AFP.
Magnitsky was arrested in 2008 and spent nearly a year in squalid prison conditions, dying at the age of 37 of untreated illnesses. A report by the Kremlin human rights council last year said he was tortured and handcuffed in his final hours.
Before his arrest, the lawyer said he uncovered a tax scam worth 5.4 billion rubles ($235 million) against the company he worked for, investment fund Hermitage Capital, which involved interior ministry officials.
But he was then charged with the very crimes he claimed to have uncovered and was placed in pre-trial detention. The case was closed after his death but then reopened in August 2011.
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Russia set to advance ban on US adoptions
Russia’s upper house of parliament was due Wednesday to vote for a bill barring Americans from adopting the country’s children, in retaliation for a new piece of human rights legislation in the US.
The highly contentious bill has inflamed tensions between the two former Cold War rivals at a time when Washington needs Moscow’s help to convince President Bashar al-Assad to quit power in Syria.
The draft legislation has already passed the three required readings in the State Duma lower house and is due to reach President Vladimir Putin’s desk before the end of the year.
The Federation Council upper chamber — comprised exclusively of Putin allies and ruling party members — is expected to overwhelmingly approve the measure after it was backed in a committee meeting on Tuesday.
“This will not lead to any infringement of international rights,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
“Russia is fully implementing the rights it has under international law,” he added in comments that reinforced speculation that Putin would sign the bill into law.
The bill also includes a provision banning Russian political organisations that receive US funding.
The legislation came after US President Barack Obama this month signed into law the Magnitsky Act — a measure paying tribute to a Russian lawyer who died in police custody in 2009 after exposing a $235 million police embezzlement scheme.
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