Mr. William Browder:

The Act has been in place since 14 December and the US Administration, according to the law, has 120 days to implement it. It is an open-ended story, as this would also address all gross human rights abusers. We do not know if the US State Department will put one name or 300 names on the list or how it will defend the names on the list. The Russians are really terrified of this. Not only have they retaliated against the Americans, but they have also passed a number of laws in Russia because of their terror.

For example, they passed a law earlier this week banning officials from owning foreign property because they are so afraid of having officials' assets frozen. The ban on adoption is tremendously heart-breaking, and it led to anger among many Russians, even within the elite. The Russians are children-loving people if there ever were children-loving people. Taking children as hostages in order to protect an ability to travel was not acceptable to anybody inside Russia. Some 50,000 people came out on the street after the adoption ban, and it was called the "law of scoundrels". Officials have had to allocate significant sums of money to try to justify that adoption ban. There have been all sorts of unintended consequences and nobody had an idea that they would come about.

The question was asked about how we got the documents from prison. Russia is a place with no rule of law but there is incredible adherence to procedure that would not be seen in any other place. If there is a rule about having a detention hearing every three months, it will happen, and if there is a rule that one can file a complaint, that will also happen. Mr. Magnitsky writes handwritten complaints - sometimes more than once a day - and every month or so he is allowed to meet his lawyer. He hands the lawyer a stack of complaints to be filed and they would be ignored. Nevertheless, the lawyer would make a copy when filing the complaints, with the result being our incredible record of what happened to him. It is like Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago for a modern time.

The psychology of allowing these documents to leave is interesting. Russia has essentially been operating in what is essentially a closed system, and there was never a thought that any of this would have any impact. It controls the entire criminal justice system so it does not matter what the documents state. Russia had no idea that these documents could be used in an international forum to create some type of consequence outside Russia, which is terrifying for those in power. These people believed they could ask people to do really terrible things and guarantee immunity but although we may not be punishing them the way they should be, we are nonetheless taking away absolute immunity. President Putin cannot promise his people that nothing will happen if they commit a terrible human rights abuse. That is the beauty of this policy and why it is so important. I hope Ireland will join me in doing what we have done elsewhere in the world.