Russia responded angrily on Thursday to a proposal that would deny European visas to a list of 60 officials who have been implicated in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in pretrial detention in Moscow last year.
Chairman of the Russian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev condemned the proposed ban as “Bolshevik tactics” and said Russia might be forced to “very harshly retaliate” if the proposal went forward. He said such pressure “could have extremely negative consequences for the entire relationship between Russia and the European Union.”
The Foreign Ministry called the move “direct interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state and open pressure on the judicial system of the Russian Federation.”
While the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee voted to add the recommendation to its human rights report, the proposal remains far from becoming policy.
First, it must be approved by the full European Parliament next month. Then it would be up to the EU’s member states to decide whether to adopt sanctions against the 60 officials, said Heidi Hautala, a member of the Finnish delegation, who sponsored the proposal.
“What it represents is a strong concern in the European Union that it’s time to give justice to Magnitsky, who certainly looks like a victim of the Russian judicial system,” she said.
The 60 names include highly placed officials in the Russian Interior Ministry, prosecutorial investigative committee and prison administration, as well as 12 judges. The proposal recommends denying them visas and freezing assets and bank accounts held overseas.
The committee’s vote follows a recommendation by US Senator Benjamin Cardin in April that the US State Department deny visas to the officials.
Magnitsky died on Nov. 16 last year, after being held for more than 11 months on suspicion of tax fraud. At the time of his arrest, Magnitsky was working as counsel for Hermitage Capital Management, whose founder, William Browder, was involved in a bitter feud with the Russian authorities.
KATYN
In other developments, Russia’s lower house of parliament passed a statement yesterday saying the World War II Katyn massacres were committed on the direct order of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
The 1940 massacre of some 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens in western Russia by Soviet secret police has long soured relations between the two countries.
Soviet propaganda for decades blamed the killings on the Nazis, but post-Soviet Russia previously acknowledged they were carried out by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs — Stalin’s much feared secret police.
The text was agreed at an unusually stormy Duma session that featured virulent opposition from the minority Communist Party, some of whose officials still insist the massacre was carried out by the Nazis.
The statement comes ahead of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Poland next month.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS