US Attorney General Would Not Oppose Designating Wagner as a Foreign Terrorist Organization

US Attorney General Merrick Garland says he will not “object” to designating Russia’s Wagner mercenary group a foreign terrorist organization, calling its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a “war criminal.”

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a staunch Ukraine supporter, asked Garland if he agreed that the Wagner group “should be a foreign terrorist organization under US law.”

“I think they are an organization that is committing war crimes, an organization that is hurting the United States,” Garland said, noting that the designation is made by the State Department.

Graham, along with a bipartisan group of senators, is sponsoring legislation that would direct the secretary of state to designate Wagner as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Pressed by Graham whether he would “oppose turning it into a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” Garland said, “I’m not opposed, but ultimately I would leave it up to the State Department.”

Although the Justice Department is not directly involved in the designation of foreign terrorist groups, Garland’s comments amount to an endorsement in the Wagner case.

Before making an appointment, the secretary of state must consult with both the attorney general and the secretary of the treasury.

“I think the fact that he didn’t object is important because what that tells me is the fact that, in his opinion… the activities of the Wagner Group around the world, I would say, mainly in Africa, are the statutory definitions,” said James Petrila, a retired CIA lawyer who is now an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School.

Founded in 2014, the Wagner Group is run by Prigozhin, a sanctioned oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

With some 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, most recruited from Russian prisons, the paramilitary force has become a true arm of the Russian army in Ukraine. He is also charged with committing war crimes and other abuses in Ukraine and elsewhere.

In recent months, the US government has tried to crack down on the Wagner Group.

In December, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken designated the group an “entity of special concern.”

In January, the US Treasury Department designated it a Transnational Criminal Organization, a designation that allows the government to seize and freeze its assets.

But Graham and others pushing to designate Wagner a Foreign Terrorist Organization say these measures don’t go far enough.

Of much greater consequence to the group, they say, would be an FTO designation.

Among other things, it would make giving support of any kind to Wagner tantamount to giving “material support to terrorism.”

“What that means is that individuals who provide material support, broadly defined, to an FTO have violated the material support of terrorism statutes,” Petrila said.

While the designation won’t end all support for Wagner, it could make some legitimate companies that currently do business with the group more reluctant, Petrila said.

The State Department has not said whether it is considering applying the designation to Wagner. But in a recent interview with VOA, Beth van Schaack, the State Department’s ambassador general for global criminal justice, said: “It is extremely important that the most serious consequences that we have in terms of sanctions and criminal liability also focus on the Group. Wagner”.

Prigozhin has long been in the crosshairs of the Justice Department.

In 2018, he was charged in connection with Russian meddling in the 2016 United States presidential election.

As part of the effort, the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based “troll farm” controlled by Prigozhin, allegedly created hundreds of fictitious personas online and used the stolen identities of Americans.

The FBI is offering $250,000 for information leading to his arrest.

Calling Prigozhin a “war criminal”, Garland said: “Maybe it’s inappropriate for me to say so as a judge before I get all the evidence, but I think we have more than enough evidence at this point to feel that way.”

[Oleksii Kovalenko del Servicio Ucraniano de la VOA contribuyó a este artículo]

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