Saturday, April 13, 2013

Two Can Play That Game

Russia has published a blacklist of US officials banned from entering the country in retaliation to a Washington sanction against 18 Russians and Chechens accused of committing human rights abuses.

[...]

Russia’s foreign ministry on Saturday called the Magnitsky Act an "absurd" law that "intervenes in our domestic affairs" and "delivers a strong blow to bilateral relations."

"Unlike the American list, which is formed arbitrarily, our list primarily includes those who are implicated in legalisation of torture and perpetual detentions in Guantanamo prison, to the arrests and kidnapping of Russian citizens," the ministry said.

Russia’s list includes John Yoo, a former US Justice Department official who wrote legal memos authorising harsh interrogation techniques; David Addington, the chief of staff for former Vice President Dick Cheney; and two former commanders of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

Fourteen more people are named as having violated the rights of Russian citizens abroad, including the US district judge Jed Rakoff and several prosecutors from his district in the state of New York, as well as several Drug Enforcement Administration officers and FBI agent Gregory Coleman.

  alJazeera
It really is the height of arrogant hypocrisy for the US to talk about any other country’s human rights abuses. And Russia would be well within reason to name every director of the CIA since its inception, plus Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz (et al.), and all Commanders in Chief of the US Army ever overseeing Guantanamo Bay prison and secret detention centers around the world. That they didn’t name all those people only shows that they’re playing the same game we are.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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