Sergei Magnitsky

MOSCOW — Russian authorities, under persistent international pressure to charge police officials in the pretrial detention death of a 37-year-old lawyer, on Monday blamed prison doctors instead. Human rights activists, colleagues of Sergei Magnitsky and even U.S. senators have urged Russia to call Interior Ministry officials to account for arresting, prosecuting and then denying medical treatment to Magnitsky, who died in custody in November 2009. But on Monday, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the...

MOSCOW — Thousands of protesters crowded a square in central Moscow on Monday to demand political freedoms and an end to corruption, in an attempt to inject new life into Russia's flagging opposition movement. The largely peaceful demonstration marked a year since Russian authorities cracked down on the opposition on the eve of Vladimir Putin's presidential inauguration. Since then, many opposition leaders have been targeted with prosecutions, and some ordinary protesters arrested then...

MOSCOW — Russia's Interior Ministry has refused to pursue charges against the investigators who oversaw the imprisonment and treatment of Sergei Magnitsky , the lawyer who died in pretrial detention, despite strong recommendations to do so from a presidential commission. At the same time, the prosecutor's office said Tuesday that it might reopen a case against Magnitsky on accusations of tax fraud that was closed when he died. A recent court decision ruled that such cases should be fully investigated...

ACCORDING TO the State Department, the government of the Russian republic of Chechnya under Ramzan Kadyrov "has committed and continues to commit such serious human rights violations and abuses as extrajudicial killing, torture, disappearances and rape. " Mr. Kadyrov, State added in an August 2011 letter, "has been implicated personally" in "the killing of U.S. citizen Anna Politkovskaya , a journalist who had reported widely on human rights abuses in Chechnya. " Yet when the Obama administration released on...

MOSCOW — Thousands of protesters crowded a square in central Moscow on Monday to demand political freedoms and an end to corruption, in an attempt to inject new life into Russia's flagging opposition movement. The largely peaceful demonstration marked a year since Russian authorities cracked down on the opposition on the eve of Vladimir Putin's presidential inauguration. Since then, many opposition leaders have been targeted with prosecutions, and some ordinary protesters arrested then...

The Obama administration on Friday named 18 Russians to a U.S. sanctions list for alleged human rights abuses, setting up a likely feud with Moscow over what Russian officials have decried as interference with the country's internal affairs. The 18 names were the first to be promulgated under the so-called Magnitsky Act , which Congress passed last year to punish Russian officials linked to suspected violations of human rights. All but two of those on the list have been...

T here is one incontestably great actor on the world stage today, and he has no interest in following our script. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — soon to be Russia's president again — has proven remarkably effective at playing the weak strategic hand he inherited, chalking up triumph after triumph while confirming himself as the strong leader Russians crave. Not one of his international peers evidences so profound an understanding of his or her people, or possesses Putin's canny ability to size...

MOSCOW — The U.S. State Department has quietly put Russian officials connected to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on a visa blacklist as Moscow threatens to curtail cooperation on Iran, North Korea, Libya and the transit of supplies for Afghanistan if the Senate passes a measure imposing even tougher sanctions for human rights abuses. The Russian government has grown ever more infuriated by a series of international reprimands over the case of the 37-year-old lawyer who died a painful death in pretrial...

A bill to punish Russian officials for alleged human rights abuses would badly damage U.S.-Russian ties and hurt U.S. exports, business groups said Tuesday, two days before a key congressional panel is expected to vote on the measure. The bill would require the United States to deny visas to and freeze the assets of Russians linked to the detention and death of Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-graft lawyer who died in a Russian jail in 2009 under suspicious circumstances. The legislation is expected to win...

MOSCOW — Two members of the European Parliament, visiting Moscow to meet with human rights organizations, called on Russia on Monday to permit citizens to assemble freely without harassment and to guarantee free and fair elections for parliament later this year and for president next year. "If the elections are not free," said Kristiina Ojuland, a member of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee, "it's clear the next Parliament would have no legitimacy. " Ojuland and...

The Obama administration on Friday named 18 Russians to a U.S. sanctions list for alleged human rights abuses, setting up a likely feud with Moscow over what Russian officials have decried as interference with the country's internal affairs. The 18 names were the first to be promulgated under the so-called Magnitsky Act , which Congress passed last year to punish Russian officials linked to suspected violations of human rights. All but two of those on the list have been connected by U.S. officials to the...

italy Bersani is called on to form government Italy's center-left leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, was chosen Friday to form a new and viable government, which is badly needed to steer the country out of recession and get more Italians back to work. The national elections last month produced no clear winner, but President Giorgio Napolitano said that Bersani, 61, was best positioned to create a government given "the most difficult...

MOSCOW — Russian authorities, showing no signs of declaring a truce with critics at home or abroad, took a swipe at both Tuesday by ruling that no crime was committed in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer whose treatment prompted the U.S. Congress to impose sanctions on corrupt officials here. The finding by the country's top investigative body contradicted those of a Russian presidential commission, which concluded that Magnitsky was abused and denied medical treatment before his death, and a private investigation by his...

THE ADOPTION OF children from abroad is fraught with emotions, and adoptions from Russia are no exception. Russia is the third-most favored place for adoptions by U.S. families, after China and Ethiopia. The adoptions have often led to bruised feelings of national pride. At the same time, many of the children enjoy a better life than if they had languished in Russia's grim institutions. It was with an eye toward improving the process of such adoptions that the United States and Russia approved a bilateral...

MOSCOW — Russian legislators began their promised retaliation Monday against the Magnitsky Act passed by Congress, saying they will enact a law before the end of the month banning visas for Americans who harm adopted Russian children, for example, or kidnap Russian citizens from third countries. Viktor Bout, arrested in Thailand, was convicted in New York this year for arms trafficking despite Russian protests, and many Russians consider his arrest a kidnapping. The Magnitsky Act imposes a visa ban...

ON FRIDAY, the House of Representatives stepped out of the past and confronted today's human rights debacle in Russia. By a vote of 365-43, the chamber repealed the 1974 Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions that were a cornerstone of the long struggle to win freedom for Soviet Jews to emigrate. At the same time, the House approved legislation creating new sanctions against human rights abusers, including those who sent corruption-fighting lawyer Sergei Magnitsky to his death in a jail cell three years ago. The Jackson-Vanik...

LAST MONTH the Obama administration disclosed it had taken a significant step toward balancing its policy toward Russia, which has focused heavily on striking deals with the authoritarian regime of Vladi­mir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev while mostly ignoring issues of corruption and human rights. In a letter to Congress, the State Department disclosed that several dozen Russian officials implicated in a notorious corruption case that led to the persecution and death of a Russian lawyer had been banned from traveling to the...

MOSCOW---A half-dozen Russian opposition leaders made an unusual statement Monday urging repeal of a Cold War-era trade sanction that has been defended in the United States as a means of supporting democracy and human rights here. The Obama administration has been lobbying Congress hard to repeal the trade amendment, known as Jackson-Vanik and introduced in 1974 to pressure the Soviet Union to allow Jews to emigrate. Though its sanctions have been regularly waived for years, Russia considers it an affront.

MOSCOW — Russia kept up its criticism of a measure approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday that would impose sanctions on Russians deemed to have violated human rights. The legislation, known as the Magnitsky Act, was added to a bill granting Russia permanent normal trade status. "I can confirm that our response will be tough, but not necessarily symmetrical," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Friday before the House acted, in comments reported by the Interfax news agency.

MOSCOW — As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to take up legislation known as the Magnitsky bill this week, a newspaper reported Wednesday that a key figure in the Russian corruption case that inspired the measure is involved in a two-year-old criminal investigation. Olga Stepanova was the head of a tax office that approved a fraudulent $230 million refund in 2007, a scheme revealed by whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky before he was arrested. He died in jail...