Posts Tagged ‘kadyrov’
The president again turns a blind eye to Russia’s misdeeds
According to the State Department, the government of the Russian republic of Chechnya under Ramzan Kadyrov “has committed and continues to commit such serious human rights violations and abuses as extrajudicial killing, torture, disappearances and rape.” Mr. Kadyrov, State added in an August 2011 letter, “has been implicated personally” in “the killing of U.S. citizen Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had reported widely on human rights abuses in Chechnya.”
Yet when the Obama administration released on Friday a list of Russian officials who are to be subject to a visa ban and an asset freeze because of their complicity in human rights crimes, Mr. Kadyrov was not on it. The list of names — mandated by Congress in legislation that the administration strongly resisted — is a step toward holding the regime of Vladimir Putin accountable for its abuses, but it also is another example of President Obama’s questionable catering to the Kremlin.
Sixteen of the 18 names on the sanctions list are connected to Sergei Magnitsky, a whistleblowing Russian lawyer who died after being imprisoned and abused; it was his case that prompted Congress to pass the law last year. Under its provisions, the administration is required to identify Russian officials complicit in the persecution of Mr. Magnitsky, as well as in other human rights crimes, and publicly sanction them.
Some advocates of the law wondered why the list was so short; some 60 Russian officials have been connected to Mr. Magnitsky’s case alone, not to mention other notorious cases such as that of Ms. Politkovskaya, who was gunned down on Mr. Putin’s birthday in 2006. There are some good reasons: An asset freeze by the Treasury Department, which can be subject to legal challenge, has to meet a relatively high standard of evidence.
Administration officials concede, however, that some names were left off the list for political reasons. One is Mr. Kadyrov, who reportedly is included in a classified annex of officials who are to be denied visas but not be subject to an asset freeze. We were told that the administration did not want to target senior officeholders, out of concern that Russian reciprocation would ban members of Congress, Cabinet members or state governors (the equivalent of Mr. Kadyrov) from visiting Russia, further complicating U.S.-Russian relations at a time when Mr. Obama is still seeking to strike deals with Mr. Putin. As it is, the Kremlin issued a sanctions list over the weekend that included several officials of the George W. Bush administration.
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Can the Magnitsky list live up to its potential?
On Friday, the Treasury Department disclosed the names of 18 Russian officials who will be subjected to asset freezes and visa bans under the Magnitsky Act. Sixteen of these officials were complicit in the prosecution and death of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The remaining two are Chechens; one connected to the death of a critic of Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the other widely suspected of murdering US journalist Paul Klebnikov. Russia’s retaliation? A list of 18 Americans now banned from Russia that includes AEI’s John Yoo. To this he joked, “Darn, there goes my judo match with Putin.”
In comparison to the 280 Russian human rights violators that Congressman Jim McGovern submitted to the Obama administration earlier this month, the approved list of merely a dozen and a half low- and mid-level Russian bureaucrats disappointed human rights defenders. Yet with any luck, the appearance of two Chechens for reasons unrelated to Magnitsky’s death indicates that the administration is prepared to include additional Russian officials involved in other instances of human rights abuse. This is consistent with both the letter and spirit of the Sergei Magnitsky Act.
That said, although the administration did comply with a congressionally-mandated deadline to release the Magnitsky list by April 13, recent events have served to highlight President Obama’s refusal to publicly condemn the Putin regime for its human rights violations and rapid democratic regression over the last year. Obama didn’t say a word when the Russian authorities canceled their investigation of Magnitsky’s death. And he has remained silent during the ongoing posthumous trial to convict Magnitsky on bogus, politically motivated tax evasion charges. In response to the hundreds of recent NGO raids by the Russian police, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has publicly criticized the Kremlin’s attack on civil society. From Obama, not a peep.
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US identifies alleged Russian human-rights abusers targeted for sanctions
The Treasury Department on Friday announced sanctions against 18 Russians over human rights violations, but avoided some prominent officials whose inclusion could have enflamed U.S.-Russian relations.
U.S. lawmakers who backed the sanctions viewed the list as timid while a prominent Russian lawmaker said it could have been worse. State Department officials denied that political considerations had been a factor.
The list was mandated by a law passed last year and named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was arrested in 2008 for tax evasion after accusing Russian police officials of stealing $230 million in tax rebates. He died in prison the next year, allegedly after being beaten and denied medical treatment.
The list included Artem Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov, two Russian Interior Ministry officers who put Magnitsky behind bars after he accused them of stealing $230 million from the state. Two tax officials the lawyer accused of approving the fraudulent tax refunds, and several other Interior Ministry officials accused of persecuting Magnitsky were also on the list. Absent were senior officials from President Vladimir Putin’s entourage whom some human rights advocates had hoped to see sanctioned.
Magnitsky’s former client, London-based investor William Browder, who has campaigned to bring those responsible in his death to justice, has claimed that one of those tax officials, Olga Stepanova, has bought luxury real estate in Moscow, Dubai and Montenegro and wired money through her husband’s bank accounts worth $39 million.
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U.S. debates how severely to penalize Russia in human rights spat
In a controversy underscoring continued stresses in U.S.-Russia relations, Obama administration officials are debating how many Russian officials to ban from the United States under a new law meant to penalize Moscow for alleged human rights abuses.
The debate’s outcome, expected in about two weeks, is likely to illustrate how President Barack Obama will handle what critics say is a crackdown on dissent in Russia and set the tone for Washington-Moscow relations in the president’s second term.
The new law is named for Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old anti-corruption lawyer who died in his jail cell in 2009. It requires the United States to deny visas and freeze the U.S. financial assets of Russians linked to the case, or to other alleged violations of human rights in Russia.
The act was passed in December as part of a broader bill to expand U.S. trade with Russia, and Obama signed it December 14. But the White House was never keen on the rights legislation, arguing that it was unnecessary because Washington had imposed visa restrictions on some Russians thought to have played a role in Magnitsky’s death. The United States has declined to name those people.
The Magnitsky Act says the president must publish by mid-April the list of accused human rights abusers – or explain to Congress why their names can’t be published. The reasons for not publishing must be tied to national security.
U.S. officials said there are differences within the Obama administration over what kind of list to produce – short or long – or whether to even produce two lists, one for the visa bans and another for the asset freezes.
“The difference is essentially between those who don’t want to piss off the Russian government any more than we absolutely have to, and those who don’t want to piss off Congress any more than we have to,” a State Department official said on condition of anonymity.
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Kadyrov Faces Sanctions Under Magnitsky Act
One month after U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, it is clear that Russo-American relations have entered a difficult period.
But the dispute over Moscow’s adoption ban might mark only the beginning of the difficulties Obama is facing with the Kremlin in his second term, which officially starts with Monday’s inauguration ceremony.
The Magnitsky Law states that no later than 120 days after its Dec. 14 signing, the president must submit to Congress the names of those facing sanctions. That list is likely to contain Ramzan Kadyrov, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The Chechen leader “is on the list of Russian officials to be sanctioned, as [the commission] recommended,” the organization said in a report published on its website earlier this month.
The report argues that Kadyrov “condones or oversees” mass human rights violations and instituted a repressive state based on his religious views. “At least nine women have been killed for ‘immodest behavior’ since 2008, with Kadyrov praising the murders, and the killers did not stand trial,” it said.
Kadyrov has long been accused of involvement in murders, torture and disappearances of political opponents and human rights activists both in the country and abroad. He denies wrongdoing, and his spokesman, Alvi Karimov, reiterated Tuesday that the report’s accusations were baseless.
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State Department Takes Action Against Chechen Leader
After the U.S. instituted a travel ban against the Russian officials involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, Russia responded with its own visa “blacklist” of American officials unwelcome in the Russian Federation. But the State Department seems to have one-upped the Russians again.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin’s brutal surrogate in the North Caucasus, has now been given the diplomatic cold shoulder:
Thoroughbred racing has always attracted a mix of royalty and rogues. Blue bloods like the Whitneys and the Vanderbilts have long been owners. So, too, have mischief-makers like the mobster Arnold Rothstein, who won the 1921 Travers at Saratoga with a racehorse named Sporting Blood.
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