Lianachan wrote:Former UK ambassador Craig Murray says:
Alexei Navalny should not have been in jail.
Nor should Julian Assange. Nor Imran Khan.
And which western politicians now waxing about Navalny said anything about Ukraine's murder of Gonzalo Lira?
Or Israel's murder of Abdu Al-Tamimi?
Oppose all or none. The hypocrisy stinks.
For all his moral superiority, Mr. Murray shouldn't be too hypocritical himself.
I actually do not have a strong opinion on whether Julian Assange should be in jail or not. However, other than Alexcei Navalny, he is in jail for breaking laws that are very specific and clear, and were in place when he did what he did. I think we all owe him thanks for exposing American war crimes, but he did far more than that, endangering personnel through divulging personal data - something for which he was heavily criticized by journalists. The laws he broke were set up against treason, not political activism, and he knew he was breaking them. Also, there was, IIRC, ample criticism of the way the UK held up a warrant against Assange for some trumped-up Swedish rape charge until the U.S. got its extradition request in order. Or of the way he is treated much worse, apparently, re. his chronic health problems.
I don't know of many people who actually think Imran Khan should actually be in jail for actual corruption, and I don't think there is a lack of publicity of what to me looks like an arrest for political convenience on charges made up on the spot. OTOH, neither do I know if Mr. Khan maybe actually is corrupt. I've heard it on good authority that pretty much everyone in Pakistani politics is. Has to be, apparently.
And I haven't found anything in my admittedly cursory search that applauded Israel for "getting rid" of Abdu-al-Tamimi or Ukraine for the death of Gonzalo Lira. It's not there. As is becoming of a free press, these deaths are researched, publicized, and criticized. Very few people outside the core of the current Israeli government or the settler movement seem to applaud the Israeli courts for pretty much ignoring complaints about in-prison turture on grounds of national security. Regarding the morals of all this, the FSB tried to murder Alexey Navalny by means of a poison gas that can only be prduced, stored, and handled by a big military apparatus. It is inconceivable that this wasn't done by order from the top. After surviving, he was arrested upon his return, charged, sentenced and sent to penal colonies on charges everyone knew to be untrue, and which even the Russian side made no attempt to make appear true. This was a murder ordered by the guy in command, on grounds of power-presevation for that peron alone, and the cases of al-Tamimi and Lira were not. There is good reason to oppose them all, and I think we all do, and there is even better reason to see differences in the seriousness of these crimes.