The US has blacklisted Russia’s top investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, along with four others, for human rights offences
US sanctions top Russian investigator
Officials said the sanctions were not linked to US hacking allegations but to the 2012 Magnitsky Act.
The legislation is named after an anti-corruption lawyer who died in a Russian jail. The Act penalises Russians believed to have been involved in his death or other severe human rights abuses. The sanctions include baring them from entering the US and freezing their assets there.
Also blacklisted was Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, both suspects the murder of Russian spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
Litvinenko fled Russia for Britain, where he was poisoned after drinking green tea laced with a rare but potent radioactive isotope at a London Hotel.