New Battle Looms in US-Russian ‘War of Blacklists’
WASHINGTON, December 9 (By Carl Schreck for RIA Novosti) – The United States and Russia face a potential renewed blacklist war as a deadline looms this week for Washington to report on controversial sanctions against alleged Russian rights abusers.
The US administration has until Saturday to submit to Congress its inaugural annual report on any additions to the so-called “Magnitsky List” of Russians deemed by Washington to be complicit in human rights abuses and subject to US travel and financial sanctions.
The report is almost certain to irritate Moscow if the blacklist is expanded and could prompt Russia to add to its own list of US officials hit with analogous sanctions after Washington published the names of 18 Russians on the Magnitsky List in April, experts said.
“If the administration comes out with a huge list, which I do not expect, the Russians might react more vigorously,” Steven Pifer, former US ambassador to Ukraine, told RIA Novosti. “But I guess it will be such that the Russians will retaliate by announcing that they’ve added some names to their list.”
The US blacklist is authorized under the Magnitsky Act, a US law designed to punish officials believed to be connected to the 2009 death of whistleblowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail and later broadened to include a range of alleged rights abusers.
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http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131209/185403571/New-Battle-Looms-in-US-Russian-War-of-Blacklists.html