Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Russian “Justice”

The National Interest

The new, Republican-majority Congress is starting its work with a jaundiced eye on what’s going on in Russia. Just a week ago Moscow convicted Mikhail Khodorkovsky for crimes most legal experts believe he did not commit. Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov is in jail, albeit only for two weeks, for demonstrating in support of freedom of assembly. But it is the fourteen-year sentence meted out against Khodorkovsky which is particularly telling. It reflects not guilt on the part of the ex-chairman of Russia’s Yukos oil company, but the animus against the man by Russia’s rulers. Even if American companies want to do business in Russia, the verdict and the arrests don’t help.