Putin: U.S. Congress Magnitsky Bill 'Unfriendly Act'
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday condemned as unfriendly the so-called Magnitsky Act passed by the U.S. Congress blacklisting Russian officials implicated in the prison death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Passed last week and awaiting signature by U.S. President Barack Obama, the legislation would punish officials tied to the November 2009 death of Magnitsky in a Moscow detention center, denying them entry to the United States and freezing their assets.
Putin's comments came one day before the Russian lower house is set to initially vote on a bill of its own that Moscow sees as tit-for-tat retaliation for the actions by U.S. lawmakers.
"The investigation (into Magnitsky's death) is not over yet, and it's not yet clear who is right and who is wrong there, what the situation is. This is a purely political, unfriendly act," Putin said in his first reaction to the legislation.
"I don't understand why," he said. "Why do they need it? They (the United States) talk of a reset but they themselves make the situation worse."
Magnitsky was held in pre-trial jail on fraud allegations when he died in pain of several untreated conditions.
Prior to his arrest he claimed to have discovered a major tax fraud covered up by Interior Ministry officials and testified against them.
Magnitsky ended up being investigated by the same officials he had accused of the fraud who then accused him of the same crimes.
Supporters say he was then deliberately left to die of the untreated medical conditions in a Moscow detention center so the true perpetrators of the fraud would never have to face justice.
Putin called the legislation "some kind of intrigue of domestic politics" that has "sacrificed Russian-American relations."
"Don't people die in their prisons too?" Putin said. "They won't close Guantanamo for eight years, where people are held without trial or investigation and walk in chains like in the Middle Ages."
Russian officials have vowed to retaliate, and the State Duma this week pondered whether to name the law targeting Americans in the name of Dima Yakovlev, a Russian boy who died after his U.S. adoptive father left him locked in a car in summer heat.
Putin called the State Duma's initiative to retaliate "absolutely correct", saying the measures need to be "adequate but not outrageous".
The acquittal of Dima's American father was greeted with fury in Russia and was a closely-watched issue for the public, eventually leading to passage of a new adoption law to give Russia more oversight over the process.
"We are outraged not as much by these tragedies... but by the reaction of the (U.S.) authorities," Putin said of deaths of Russian adoptees in the United States, "the reaction to acquit."
The Duma lower house will vote on the law in first reading Friday. It has been introduced by the heads of all four parliamentary parties, and the speaker Sergei Naryshkin.
The proposed legislation, made public on the Duma website Thursday, calls for denying entry to and freezing assets of American citizens who commit crimes against Russian citizens abroad, pass "unfair" judgments against them and violate the rights of Russian people and organizations.
The law needs to be passed in three readings and then signed by Putin. Its promoters say that it will be passed before the end of the year.
Source: Agence France Presse
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