https://ift.tt/VzDq2E1. Attorney General Merrick Garland says he would not “object” to designating Russia’s Wagner mercenary group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, calling its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a “war criminal.”
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Garland was asked by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, if he agreed that the Wagner group “should be a Foreign Terrorist Organization under U.S. law.”
“I think they’re an organization that is committing war crimes, an organization that’s damaging 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 if he would “object to me making it a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” Garland said, “I don’t object, but I’d defer in the end to the State Department.”
Although the Justice Department is not directly involved in designating foreign terrorist groups, Garland’s comments amount to an endorsement in the case of Wagner.
Before making a designation, the secretary of state is required to consult both the attorney general and the treasury secretary.
“The fact that he would not object, I think, is important because what that indicates to me is the fact that in his view … the activities of the Wagner Group throughout the world, I’d say, primarily in Africa, meet the statutory definitions,” said James Petrila, a retired CIA lawyer now an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School.