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Guantanamo List may be expanded, if Magnitsky List grows longer - Nikonov

He stressed the idea the Guantanamo List, in contrast to the Magnitsky Act, had a direct bearing on human rights violations

MOSCOW, January 19 (Itar-Tass) – Russia’s Guantanamo List is a mirror response to the United States’ Magnitsky list and it may be expanded any time, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, Vyacheslav Nikonov, told the media on Friday.

He stressed the idea the Guantanamo List, in contrast to the Magnitsky Act, had a direct bearing on human rights violations.

“The Guantanamo List is a mirror response to the Magnitsky list. At Guantanamo hundreds of people have been kept for many years without inquest or trial, in defiance of any procedural norms. They have been tortured. Therefore the creation of such a list of human rights abusers is envisaged by a law adopted by the State Duma and the Federation Council,” the legislator said.

Nikonov speculated that the Guantanamo List may be expanded, if the US list grows longer.

“In this particular case the Foreign Ministry follows the symmetric response tactic, which was promised from the outset,” he said.

The head of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, Alexei Pushkov, said on Friday that Russia had drawn up a list of 60 US citizens who have been prohibited from entering Russia in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act.

“On the basis of the law Russia has formed a list of 60 undesirable US citizens, including judges, agents, secret service officers and prosecutors involved in the trials of Russian citizens Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko, the law-makers who authored the Magnitsky Act, and also Americans who violated the rights of adopted Russian children,” he said. Also, Pushkov said on the same list there were the names of judges who passed unreasonably mild sentences on such parents and who claimed that Russian children died not of beating, but of innate illnesses.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia confirmed the Guantanamo List was its response to the Magnitsky Act. He recalled Russia had repeatedly pointed to cases “in which the US authorities and judiciary resorted to unlawful decisions spreading the US jurisdiction to the territories of third countries.”

“All that cannot be left without a response,” Ryabkov said.

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