US includes ethnic Azerbaijani to 'Magnitsky list'

The United States imposes sanctions against 12 Russian citizens under the so-called Magnitsky Act, the press service of the US Department of the Treasury said on Tuesday. According to the press service, these sanctions are imposed against people linked with Magnitsky's arrest and death - officers of the Butyrskaya prison and the Matrosskaya Tishina detention centre, police officers. The list has no names of Russian top-ranking officials.

The following people were included in the list: Igor Alisov, Alexandra Gaus, Vyacheslav Khlebnikov, Dmitry Klyuev, Dmitry Krath, Andrew Krechetov, Larisa Litvinova, Viktor Markelov, Vladlen Stepanov, Umar Shugaipov, Fikret Tagiyev and Musa Vahaev. Magnitsky Act provides sanctions against Russians involved, according to the congressmen, in human rights violations. 

Fikret Tagiyev is an ethnic Azerbaijani, according to haqqin.az.

The Treasury has not yet provided an explanatory note to the expanded list posted on its website.

The Magnitsky Act, which was signed by US President Barack Obama in December 2012, introduces visa and financial sanctions on individuals deemed by Washington to be complicit in the 2009 death of whistleblowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail, as well as other purported human rights abuses.

Russia has in the past responded to such targeted sanctions in a proportional manner.

Previously, it issued its own blacklist of 18 US officials described by Moscow as having been connected with the US's infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba or as having violated the rights of Russians abroad.

Bakudaily.az