The United States has imposed sanctions on three Russians accused of serious human rights violations in the case of Russian opponent Vladimir Kara-Murza, arrested last year after speaking out against the war in Ukraine .
The US Treasury announced the imposition of sanctions against Elena Lenskaya, Andrei Zadachin and Danila Mikheev for violations in accordance with the Global Magnitsky Act.
Zadachin is the detective of the Main Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. It was he who ordered the initiation of criminal proceedings against Kara-Murza based on his anti-war views. Lenskaya is a judge at the Basmanny District Court in Moscow. He presided over the remand hearings in the Kara-Murza case and ordered his detention. Mikheev appeared in court as an expert witness on behalf of the Russian government during the hearings that led to Kara-Murza’s detention.
The State Department also imposed visa restrictions on Zadachin and Lenskaya for their involvement in gross human rights abuses.
In addition, the State Department imposed sanctions on Zadachin, Lenskaya and Mikheev, as well as on the Deputy Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation Oleg Sviridenko, as well as on judges Anna Mishchenko and Ilya Kozlov, involved in the trial of Kara-Murza.
“The United States reiterates its call for the immediate and unconditional release of Vladimir Kara-Murza,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a statement.
Kara-Murza, who has British and Russian citizenship, was an aide to opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead in central Moscow in 2015.
Twice, in 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza suddenly fell ill, he said, from poisoning by Russian intelligence, and each time fell into a coma before recovering. Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisonings.
Kara-Murza was arrested by Russian authorities in April and declared a “foreign agent”. He is currently in custody on suspicion of spreading false information about the military under new laws passed eight days after the invasion of Ukraine began.
Kara-Murza urged the United States, Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom to use Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russian human rights violators and corrupt officials, the official said. Treasury Department.
This week, Kara-Murza’s lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, reported a “significant deterioration” in his client’s health. Prokhorov wrote on Facebook that on February 21, Kara-Murza was placed in a punishment cell.
On the third day of his stay in the punishment cell, Vladimir began to lose sensation in his right foot, then in his left foot. The numbness of the extremities is associated with his stay in the punishment cell, as well as the fact that in May 2015 he was badly poisoned, was in a coma for several weeks, then regained his motor skills for more than a year.
The lawyer reports that Vladimir Kara-Murza developed peripheral polyneuropathy following two serious poisonings.
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