By Katharine Jackson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on three Russians it accused of serious human rights abuses against Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was arrested last year after speaking out against the war in Ukraine.
The U.S. Treasury Department said the sanctions target Elena Anatolievna Lenskaya, Andrei Andreevich Zadachin and Danila Yurievich Mikheev for abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act.
Kara-Murza, who holds both British and Russian citizenship and was a pallbearer at the 2018 funeral of U.S. Senator John McCain, was a close aide to opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead in central Moscow in 2015.
Twice, in 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza fell suddenly ill in what he said were poisonings by the Russian security services, on both occasions falling into a coma before eventually recovering. Moscow denied involvement.
Kara-Murza was arrested by Russia in April and declared a “foreign agent.” He is currently being held on suspicion of spreading false information about the armed forces under new laws passed eight days after the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine began.
Kara-Murza has pushed for the U.S., Canada, European Union and Britain to use Magnitsky-style sanctions to target human rights abusers and corrupt actors in Russia, the Treasury Department said.
(Reporting by Katharine Jackson; additional reporting by Rami Ayyub; editing by Tim Ahmann)
