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.
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