British MP Submits 1000 Pages of Evidence to Home Secretary To Ban Magnitsky Killers From UK

May 18, 2012

British MP Dominic Raab has request­ed UK Home Sec­re­tary There­sa May to “give prop­er con­sid­er­a­tion” to the ban on entry to the UK of 60 Russ­ian offi­cials con­nect­ed to the tor­ture and death of late Russ­ian lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky who worked for British invest­ment com­pa­ny Her­mitage Cap­i­tal. This fol­lows the change in the UK immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy announced by the UK For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Office last month in its Annu­al Human Rights Report. In the report, immi­gra­tion rules have been changed so the UK will no longer allow entry into the UK of non EU cit­i­zens involved in human rights abuses. 

The change in the UK immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy was prompt­ed by the debate of the British Parliament’s Beck­bench Busi­ness Com­mit­tee held on 8 March 2012 which result­ed in pass­ing of a motion call­ing for visa bans and asset freezes on Russ­ian offi­cials con­nect­ed to the death of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, those involved in the large-scale cor­rup­tion he had uncov­ered, and offi­cials involved in oth­er gross human rights abus­es. The motion was ini­ti­at­ed by Dominic Raab, MP, and sup­port­ed by three for­mer For­eign Sec­re­taries, and two oth­er for­mer For­eign Ministers.

Mr Raab has now sub­mit­ted over 1000 pages of doc­u­men­tary evi­dence to the UK Home Sec­re­tary set­ting out the spe­cif­ic involve­ment of par­tic­u­lar Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials in the false arrest, tor­ture and death of Mr Mag­nit­sky and in the theft of mil­lions of dol­lars from the Russ­ian bud­get uncov­ered and exposed by Mr. Magnitsky.

“In the attached evi­dence, there is over 1000 pages of doc­u­ment­ed evi­dence …reviewed by a num­ber of inde­pen­dent sources. These inde­pen­dent human rights bod­ies, includ­ing the Moscow Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion, the Moscow Helsin­ki Group, the Russ­ian President’s Human Rights Coun­cil, Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al, Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, REDRESS, the U.S. Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion and oth­ers, have con­firmed the roles that these Russ­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials played,” said Dominic Raab, MP.

Dominic Raab has asked of the Home Sec­re­tary to con­firm each of the 60 offi­cials named in his evi­dence pack­age won’t be allowed entry into the UK and that this fact will be dis­closed to the public.

“Hav­ing adopt­ed a more robust pol­i­cy, it needs to be rig­or­ous­ly imple­ment­ed… It is impor­tant that jus­tice is both done and seen to be done,” said Dominic Raab, MP.

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