MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) - Russia has endorsed a list of U.S. citizens whose presence on Russian territory is unwelcome in response to the U.S. decision to bar a number of Russian officials from entering its territory, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The Russian list of U.S. personae non gratae includes high-ranking officials involved in high-profile humanitarian crimes, it said.
"Certainly, we have not left unanswered the political provocation against our country. Based on the reciprocity principle, a list of U.S. citizens whose presence on Russian territory is unwelcome has been endorsed," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry website on Saturday.
The list contains "high-ranking Washington officials involved in the earlier mentioned high-profile crimes in the humanitarian area. The names of those who are responsible for unlawful actions against Russian citizens in the U.S. and who sanctioned and personally participated in their abductions and humiliation are also well-known. Definitely, these individuals are also barred from entering Russia," Lukashevich said.
"The matter is not finished: if the U.S. chooses the path of visa confrontation, we will have to enlarge this list," he said.
"This is not our choice," Lukashevich said. "We want an honest and mutually respectful dialogue and stronger interaction in all areas, including the visa field. It would be unacceptable if political games involving blacklists of Russians dash positive dynamism that has lately been in place in Russian-U.S. relations," he said.
"The ongoing campaign in the U.S. regarding lawyer Magnitsky's tragic death, including the Department of State's decision to impose visa sanctions against a number of Russian officials and lists of Russians who would be barred from entering the country being compiled at the Congress cause our serious concerns," Lukashevich said. "In fact, this implies an attempt to put direct pressure on our government institutions, which has nothing to do with care for human rights or a desire to find out all circumstances of the incident," Lukashevich said.
"Such moralizing approaches look especially cynical against the background of actual legalization of torture at U.S. special prisons, abductions and abuses of terror suspects, the unlimited holding of convicts at the Guantanamo prison, and uninvestigated killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan," Lukashevich said.
Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in Moscow's Butyrka pretrial detention center on November 16, 2009, while awaiting trial on tax evasion charges. Magnitsky's colleagues said he was arrested after uncovering corruption schemes involving high-ranking Russian officials.
It was reported earlier that the U.S. Department of State had entered the names of Russian officials who presumably played a part in Magnitsky's death into the blacklist of U.S. visa applicants. This list is also known as the Cardin list, as this idea belongs to U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin. A number of U.S. media outlets suggested that the blacklist includes Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers, top and medium-ranking policemen, prison guards and doctors, prosecutors, tax auditors and inspectors. This information was later confirmed by the U.S. Department of State.
Human rights activists had earlier expressed their discontent with the way a criminal inquiry into Magnitsky's death was being carried out and suggested that, despite some dismissals in the Federal Corrections Service, Magnitsky's death has never been properly investigated.
On July 5, the Russian Presidential Council for Human Rights handed over the results of an independent inquiry into Magnitsky's death to President Dmitry Medvedev.