{"id":186502,"date":"2018-10-22T22:32:49","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T02:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=186502"},"modified":"2018-10-22T22:32:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T02:32:49","slug":"clement-says-canada-use-magnitsky-act-sanctions-khashoggi-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/10\/22\/clement-says-canada-use-magnitsky-act-sanctions-khashoggi-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Clement says Canada should use Magnitsky Act sanctions in Khashoggi case"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
FILE: Honourable Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board of Canada, addressing ICANN 45. (Photo<\/a>: icannphotos\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA \u2013\u00a0Canada\u00a0should invoke the new Magnitsky Act to sanction those responsible for the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the official Opposition said Monday.<\/p>\n

Conservative justice critic Tony Clement says that Saudi Arabia has already identified some individuals who were partially responsible for Khashoggi’s death, adding that the Magnitsky law is a next step the government should consider.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis may be a prime case for applying the Magnitsky law,\u201d said Clement.<\/p>\n

Last year,\u00a0Canada\u00a0passed the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, known as the Magnitsky Act, which gives the government the authority to freeze Canadian assets of foreign individuals who are found to have violated human rights.<\/p>\n

Clement’s comments follow the same urging by NDP foreign affairs critic Helene Laverdiere, as well as a similar bipartisan demand in the U.S. Congress.<\/p>\n

Laverdiere said the NDP hopes there will be a United Nations investigation into Khashoggi’s death.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen those responsible are identified, will the government be prepared to enforce the Magnitsky law?\u201d Laverdiere said in question period last week.<\/p>\n

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the murder of Khashoggi on Monday, saying the various Saudi explanations for his death lacked credibility and consistency.<\/p>\n

The government has not yet offered a concrete response on whether it will consider using the Magnitsky law in this case, saying it’s consulting\u00a0Canada’s allies on this issue.<\/p>\n

Canada’s version of the Magnitsky law is based on the Global Magnitsky Act, a bill passed in 2016 that allows the U.S. to sanction foreign human rights violators.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, long before Saudi Arabia acknowledged its role in Khashoggi’s death, a bipartisan group of Democratic and Republican senators from the Committee on Foreign Relations wrote to President Donald Trump calling for sanctions under the act, automatically triggering a requirement that the president launch an investigation and decide within 120 days whether to take action.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recent disappearance of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi suggests that he could be a victim of a gross violation of internationally recognized human rights,\u201d reads the letter, signed by a number of prominent Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers, including Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker and South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, a close congressional ally of the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe request that you make a determination on the imposition of sanctions pursuant to the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act with respect to any foreign person responsible for such a violation related to Mr. Khashoggi.\u201d<\/p>\n

Named for whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who was beaten and denied medical care before his death in Russian custody in 2009, the 2016 law expanded on an earlier version designed exclusively to target Russian officials.<\/p>\n

Freeland said she has spoken with her counterparts from Germany and Turkey in recent days, and is actively engaged with\u00a0Canada’s allies in a crafting a joint response.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working together to press for a transparent and credible investigation and we are very clear that there must be an accounting for this murder; those responsible must be brought to justice and must face the consequences,\u201d Freeland told reporters Monday in Ottawa.<\/p>\n

Clement acknowledged Freeland’s position, which also came in a written statement on Saturday, and said the government needs to do its \u201cdiligence on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want a next step that has been sanctioned by Parliament, our Parliament, the Magnitsky law…could be something that should be looked at,\u201d said Clement.<\/p>\n

During a press conference with a visiting Mexican delegation, Freeland declined to answer questions about whether the government is considering scrapping the lucrative $15-billion contract to provide Ontario-made light armoured vehicles Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have frozen export permits before when we had concerns about their potential misuse, and we will not hesitate to do so again,\u201d Trudeau said later in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

Trudeau also convened a meeting of the government’s new the Incident Response Group, which includes cabinet ministers and senior government officials, to discuss the Khashoggi affair.<\/p>\n

Khashoggi disappeared on Oct. 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get paperwork he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee.<\/p>\n

Turkish officials say he was tortured, killed and dismembered at the diplomatic outpost.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada\u00a0is very mindful of the fact that this murder occurred in Turkey and it’s very important for Turkey to be a part of the conversation,\u201d said Freeland.<\/p>\n

\u2013 with files from James McCarten in Washington<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA \u2013\u00a0Canada\u00a0should invoke the new Magnitsky Act to sanction those responsible for the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":177304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-janice-dickson","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}