Human Rights Groups Urge U.S. Government To Sanction Officials Accused Of Torture, Executions Under New Law

A coali­tion of 23 human rights groups, includ­ing Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve, has urged the United States gov­ern­ment to issue sanc­tions against for­eign gov­ern­ment offi­cials who they say have used the death penal­ty to repress polit­i­cal dis­sent by tor­tur­ing peace­ful pro­test­ers into con­fess­ing to cap­i­tal offens­es they did not commit. 

In a September 12, 2017 let­ter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (“NGOs”) asked the United States to invoke pro­vi­sions of the Global Magnitsky Act, a new law that ​“autho­rizes the President to impose finan­cial sanc­tions and visa restric­tions on for­eign per­sons in response to cer­tain human rights vio­la­tions and acts of sig­nif­i­cant cor­rup­tion.” The law, enact­ed in 2012 and expand­ed in 2016, was named after Sergei Magnitsky (pic­tured), a Russian lawyer and whistle­blow­er who was beat­en and died in a Moscow prison in 2009. 

The let­ter called the sanc­tions avail­able under the act ​“a poten­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary tool” to deter human rights abus­es by ​“those that would use vio­lence to silence dis­sent and main­tain their grip on power.” 

The NGOs request­ed that the State Department and U.S. Treasury inves­ti­gate 15 cas­es ​“from every region of the world” that, they say, ​“involve hor­rif­ic sto­ries of tor­ture, enforced dis­ap­pear­ance, mur­der, sex­u­al assault, extor­tion and bribery.” They ask the U.S. to inves­ti­gate Bahrain’s Chief of Public Prosecution, Ali bin Fadhul Al Buainain, for his alleged involve­ment in the tor­ture of Shia polit­i­cal activist Ali al-Singace and two oth­ers, and their exe­cu­tion on January 15, 2017. The rights groups say Bahraini pros­e­cu­tors ​“sought and obtained the harsh­est pos­si­ble pun­ish­ment, the death sen­tence, with full aware­ness that the defen­dants claimed their con­fes­sions had been coerced and that the case had been marred from the start by this and oth­er grave vio­la­tions of due process.” 

They also seek inves­ti­ga­tion of judges on Saudia Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court, who ​“repeat­ed­ly rel[ied] on con­fes­sions alleged­ly obtained through tor­ture” in con­vict­ing mem­bers of reli­gious minori­ties for par­tic­i­pat­ing in pro-democ­ra­cy protests in 2011. The NGOs say the judges also ​“sen­tenced sev­er­al of the defen­dants to death for con­duct alleged­ly under­tak­en while they were minors,” in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

Reprieve’s Director, Maya Foa, who over­sees the orga­ni­za­tion’s strate­gic ini­tia­tives on the death penal­ty and extreme human rights abus­es, called the use of tor­ture to force con­fes­sions, exe­cut­ing chil­dren, and using the death penal­ty to sup­press free speech ​“grotesque rights abus­es that fly in the face of American val­ues.” She said the U.S. should use the pow­ers of the Global Magnitsky Act ​“to hold to account the indi­vid­u­als respon­si­ble for gross human rights abus­es, and to save the lives of inno­cent young [pro­test­ers].”

Senator John McCain, one of the authors of the Global Magnitsky Act and its amend­ments, said the involve­ment of non-gov­ern­men­tal human rights orga­ni­za­tions is cru­cial to the suc­cess of the Act. In a state­ment to Reuters, he said he ​“will con­tin­ue work­ing to ensure the admin­is­tra­tion enforces the law and uti­lizes this pow­er­ful tool to advance free­dom and jus­tice around the world.”

Rob Berchinski, Senior Vice President of Policy at Human Rights First, said “[o]ur process is designed to assist the gov­ern­ment.… Now the ques­tion is sim­ply one of polit­i­cal will.” The Act requires the White House to report to Congress by December 10 on sanc­tions it has imposed under the law.