Corruption is Everywhere > Tourists warned - 30 die from alcohol poisoning in Istanbul; Imran Khan sentenced to 14 years - politically motivated? Navalny's lawyers imprisoned

 

Dutch tourists warned to be careful after

contaminated alcohol kills 30 in Istanbul

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned Netherlands residents about contaminated alcohol in Istanbul, which has killed at least 30 people this week. Dozens of people have been admitted to the hospital. Foreigners are among the victims.

It is not known whether any Dutch people have become ill or died. The Ministry said it had not received any requests for help.

According to the Ministry, the people died after drinking alcohol that was likely illegal and that was contaminated with methanol to make the drink stronger. It advised people to only buy alcoholic beverages in official stores that are allowed to sell alcohol.

“Check carefully whether bottles are still sealed. Only go to reliable bars and restaurants. Do not drink home-distilled alcohol, for example, on the street or at someone’s home. Always keep an eye on your food and drinks,” the Ministry advised.

Late last year, tourists also got sick and died from drinking methanol-laced alcohol in Vang Vien in Laos. 

Reporting by ANP and NL Times

This happens on the Indian sub-continent fairly often, but usually at weddings and often with horrendous consequences.

In third-world countries like Pakistan, you never know whether the corruption was on the part of the accused or is on the part of the government who want to bury any strong competitors for their position and their own corruption system.

But being Pakistan, I suspect Khan is innocent. After all, Pakistan's Deep State murdered Benazir Bhutto 17 years ago, and her father before that.

Former Pakistani PM Imran Khan gets

14-year sentence on corruption charges

By Clyde Hughes

Former Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks during the Pakistan-Sri Lanka Trade and Investment Conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on February 24, 2021. Khan was sentenced on Friday to 14 years in prison. File Photo by Chamila Karunarathne/EPA-EFE

Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Pakistan's anti-corruption court handed former Prime Minister Imran Khan a 14-year jail sentence in a land bribery case against him, his attorney said on Friday.

The case was one of the largest against the embattled, but still popular, former cricket star who has been in jail since 2023. Prosecutors had charged that Khan sought land in exchange for favors from real estate developer Malik Riaz Hussain.

Prosecutors said the deals were made in connection with the Al Qadir Trust, which was a front company for the ex-prime minister, and his wife Bushra Bibi.

Bibi, who had led large rallies demanding that her husband be freed, was taken into custody Friday shortly after the verdict, where she was also convicted of land corruption.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, of PTI, had long charged that the land was purchased for a spiritual educational institute and was not connected with any individual personal gain.

PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan called the trial "politically motivated" and that Khan had "done no wrong."

"But [Imran Khan] will not give in," Ali Khan said, according to BBC News. "He will not break."

Imran said after the verdict that he would "neither make any deal nor seek any relief."

Navalny's lawyers sentenced to prison terms of up to 5 1/2 years on 'extremism' charges

By Paul Godfrey

Lawyers Igor Sergunin (L), Alexei Liptser (C) and Vadim Kobzev, who represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were caged Friday as is the standard practice in Russia, as they were sentenced to prison terms of between 42 and 66 months for participating in their clients' "extremist" FBK anti-corruption community. Amnesty International said the three were being victimized for merely doing their jobs. Photo by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE

Jan. 17 (UPI) -- A Russian court handed down prison sentences of between 42 and 66 months Friday to three lawyers of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after they were convicted of aiding his Anti Corruption Foundation, which authorities have designated an "extremist" organization.

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023, four months before Navalny died at age 47 at a remote correctional facility inside the Arctic in February, on charges that they were acting as go-betweens, relaying messages from Navalny to his colleagues.

Their arrest left Navalny without any legal representation and completely cut off from the outside world in the months before his death from what authorities claimed were natural causes at the Polar Wolf penal colony 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow.

Kobzev was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in penal colony, Lipster to five years, while Sergunin's term was reduced to 3 1/2 years in exchange for pleading guilty.

The district court in Petushki, 75 miles east of Moscow, which no press or family were permitted to attend, also banned each of the men from practicing law for three years.

Kosbev's lawyer condemned the case, telling the BBC's Russian service that the evidence used to convict the men was inadmissible because it was obtained by listening in on client-attorney meetings which was illegal under Russian law.

"They're not allowed to eavesdrop on meetings between a lawyer and a client in a penal colony in principle -- there's a direct legislative ban."

Lipster's lawyer, Andrei Orlov, while expressing regret at the outcome, vowed to fight on.

Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, herself living in exile and the target of a Russian arrest warrant, said in a post on X that the lawyers "were political prisoners and must be released immediately."

The U.K.-based Amnesty International called the long sentences handed down to the three "shameful," saying "their only crime" was standing up for justice and human rights and demanded they be set free.

"The prosecution and sentencing of Vadim Kobzev, Aleksei Liptser and Igor Sergunin is a shameful attempt to silence those who dared to defend Aleksei Navalny and make his voice heard even from behind bars," said Amnesty International Eastern Europe and Central Asia Director Marie Struthers.

"By targeting lawyers for merely doing their job, the Russian authorities are dismantling what remains of the right to legal defense, and abusing what is a criminal justice system only in name.

"We call on the Russian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release these individuals and drop all charges against them."

Amnesty said the lawyers, who were added the national registry of "extremists and terrorists" by the Russian financial regulator in November, were the latest victims of an orchestrated campaign of arbitrary detentions, prosecutions and harsh criminal sanctions targeting associates and supporters of Navalny and his FBK.

The action formed a wider pattern of "unabashed misuse of anti-extremism legislation" by the Russian state to crack down on civic activists, Amnesty added.

FBK head Ivan Zhdanov noted the sentences were handed down exactly three years to the day from Navalny's arrest on his return to Russia in January 2021 after treatment abroad for near-fatal Novichok poisoning the previous summer, saying he very much doubted the timing was coincidental.

Years of harassment of the movement and other opposition political figures by authorities intensified in the months before a court banned FBK in June 2021 after the Kremlin made an application for it to be outlawed on grounds it was an "extremist organization."

One wonders what evidence they had for declaring FBK and extremist organization? Is anti-corruption considered extremism in Russia?

We will never know, of course, because Russia's courts are very secretive and have no appeal system that I am aware of.

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European Politics > Hungary's First Ever Female President; Navalny Jailed another 9 years; Navalny Missing

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Hungary elects its first female president

The National Assembly has appointed Katalin Novak,

 from Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party, to serve a five-year term

© Twitter / Katalin Novak

Katalin Novak, 44, was elected as the new president of Hungary on Thursday, becoming the youngest and first-ever female incumbent in the role in the country’s history.

The National Assembly appointed Novak, who had been serving as the vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, to a five-year term after she delivered a rousing speech calling for national unity.

Novak defeated economist Peter Rona in a vote that was split down party lines within the legislature. Her 137 votes to Rona’s 51 secured her success. She replaces Janos Ader, who was also a member of Fidesz. Ader was unable to run for president again due to constitutional limits that permit an individual to serve only two five-year terms.

Prior to her election, Novak had served as a member of the National Assembly since 2018 and the minister for family affairs within Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s fourth government from 2020 to 2021. While serving as the vice president of Fidesz, she was tasked with overseeing economic support for Hungary’s populace, including housing subsidies, state-backed home loans, and tax cuts.

Speaking prior to the vote, Novak pledged to defend the country’s constitution, which was drafted and approved by Fidesz, showing her support for the continued implementation of key elements of Orban’s agenda. Officially, the role of president is a non-partisan position, the duties of which are largely ceremonial, but the election marks a victory for the prime minister’s party.

The opposition United for Hungary party had condemned Novak’s nomination for president, accusing Fidesz of picking “a party soldier for the third time in a row for one of the most important public offices in Hungary.”

“Those saying that I would be just a puppet in this position degrade not me personally, but women in general. They cannot [imagine] that a woman can be a sovereign public [official] capable of making autonomous decisions," Novak was quoted by Hungarian media as having said.

Congratulations, Katalin. God bless you!

Russian court gives Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny

another 9 years in prison

By Clyde Hughes

   

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is seen in a glass cage before a hearing at the Babushkinsky District Court in Moscow, Russia, February 20, 2021. Months earlier, Navalny was sickened by a Soviet-era nerve agent that ultimately caused him to commit a parole violation. File Photo by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE 

March 22 (UPI) -- A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced opposition leader and high-profile Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to nine more years in prison on charges of fraud and contempt of court that critics say are intended to quash dissent.

The court's ruling means that Navalny, who was already in prison for a parole violation technicality, could now be behind bars for a total of 12 years, his legal team said.

Prosecutors charged Navalny with stealing more than $4.7 million in donations that were given to his political organizations for his own personal use.

The court's sentence says that Navalny must spend the time in a maximum security prison.

"The whole world knows that this trial has nothing to do with the law," Ruslan Shaveddinov, a Navalny supporter said, according to The Washington Post.

"We see that Alexei will be held in prison for many more years, they hope to do that. We can't turn a blind eye to this as we see that everything is headed toward a very sad end of our country."

The judge on Tuesday also fined Navalny about $11,000. Navalny can appeal the court's decision.

Navalny had been serving a 2½-year sentence for violating a 2014 suspended sentence for embezzlement while recovering from poisoning in Germany in 2020. Critics said the embezzlement conviction was also politically motivated.

The Russian government is suspected in his poisoning, which medical officials said was carried out with the Soviet-era nerve agent novichok.

After he fell ill on a flight, Navalny spent 32 days in the hospital, most of them in the intensive care unit. He was later taken to Germany for treatment, where doctors identified the novichok.

Democracy, in Eastern Europe, is very different than elsewhere. Instead of winners having the most financial backing, Eastern European winners are the ones who can avoid prison long enough to win. Myanmar also uses this model.

Lawyer says Russian critic Alexei Navalny missing after prison transfer

By Simon Druker

   

Russian opposition leader and Vladimir Putin critic Alexei Navalny, pictured 2012, is missing and his whereabouts are unknown following a prison transfer, his lawyer and spokesperson said Tuesday. File Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI | License Photo

June 14 (UPI) -- Alexei Navalny is missing and his whereabouts are unknown following a prison transfer, a spokesperson for the Russian opposition leader said Tuesday.

Navalny had been in custody, but his lawyers were told he was no longer at the prison when they attempted to meet with him Tuesday, his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter.

"Alexei Navalny @navalny was transported away from the penal colony No. 2. His lawyer, who came to see him, was kept at the checkpoint until 14.00, and was then told: 'There is no such convict here.' We do not know where Alexei is now and what colony they are taking him to," Yarmysh Tweeted.

"Of course, neither Alexei's attorneys nor his relatives were informed about his transfer in advance. There were rumors that he was going to be transferred to the high-security penal colony IK-6 'Melekhovo,' but it is impossible to know when (and if) he will actually arrive there."

The Kremlin critic is serving a 12-year prison sentence, after having nine additional years tacked on in March to an existing sentence.

His lawyers were also arrested at the same time, while Yarmysh said the sentence would make it "practically impossible" to keep in contact with Navalny.

"The problem with his transfer to another colony is not only that the high-security colony is much scarier. As long as we don't know where Alexei is, he remains one-on-one with the system that has already tried to kill him, so our main task now is to locate him as soon as possible," she wrote on Twitter Tuesday.

Navalny, who has been previously arrested by Russian authorities, survived being poisoned in August of 2020, an act that has been widely blamed on the Kremlin.

His anti-corruption organizations were also labeled "extremists" last year, effectively shutting them down. And then in late January, Navalny was added to Russia's terrorists and extremists list.

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OPCW Embroiled in Another Controversy Against Russia - NATO's Raison d'etre

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‘How is it even possible?’ Russia asks OPCW after report claims

team sent to Germany the same day Navalny fell ill in Siberia

10 Jul, 2021 16:52

FILE PHOTO. ©  Reuters / Yves Herman

The latest OPCW report containing data on its response to the ‘poisoning’ of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny has glaring inconsistencies, Moscow says, adding that the chemical weapons watchdog has failed to explain them.

Russia will seek clarification from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on its findings, the country’s envoy to the chemical weapons watchdog Aleksandr Shulgin has announced. The document, presented at the 97th session of the organization’s executive council earlier this week, contains information on the body’s reaction to Navalny’s poisoning back in August 2020.

In it, the OPCW states that its secretariat “deployed a team to perform a technical assistance visit” related to the suspected poisoning of a “Russian citizen” at Germany’s request on August 20. 

The problem is that on that day, Navalny was only flying from the Russian Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow. It was on that flight that he first felt ill and was then rushed to a hospital in another Siberian city, Omsk, following the plane’s emergency landing.

Someone must be psychic!!!

Russia demanded that the OPCW explain “how this is even possible” and why the organization had previously told the participating states that its team was only sent to Germany in early September, Shulgin said.

So, what do we have here?

When Navalny first felt unwell while still onboard a flight from Tomsk to Moscow,

the OPCW experts were already waiting for him in Berlin?

According to the Russian envoy to the OPCW, the technical secretariat of the chemical weapons watchdog has so far failed to provide any answer to these questions. According to Shulgin, Russia has “lots of questions” for the OPCW and will seek “clear answers” to every last one.

The revelations also elicited a reaction from the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova. She said the glaring inconsistencies in the OPCW report only show that some Western nations, together with Navalny himself, are “going down” with their whole “chemical weapons poisoning story.”

Instead of answering Russia’s questions, the OPCW executive committee session saw another “drama” about Navalny’s “supposed poisoning with a chemical weapon agent,” Shulgin said. “Routine anti-Russian theses have become a ‘must’ for the NATO nations at any OPCW event,” he added.

Without Russia as an enemy, NATO has no purpose. Consequently, it spends endless time and money to prove that Russia is still the great enemy of Europe and America. NATO is well past its time of being obsolete.

After falling ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, Navalny was hospitalized in Omsk and placed in a coma on August 20. The doctors in Omsk found no traces of any specific chemical agents in his body and concluded that his condition had been caused by a metabolic disorder.

Two days later, following a request from his associates and his family, Navalny was flown to Berlin’s Charite clinic. On August 24, German doctors said that the results of clinical studies indicated he had been poisoned with a cholinesterase inhibitor.

I don't suppose the doctors in Berlin were well prepared with a diagnosis two days before they even saw Navalny? Prepared by the team sent to Berlin days before it was decided that Navalny would be sent to Berlin.

The OPCW has also now said that “biomarkers of the cholinesterase inhibitor” were found in the blood and urine samples taken from Navalny that were sent to its laboratories.

Navalny spent more than a month being treated in Berlin and has since repeatedly claimed that Kremlin “ordered” his poisoning. Meanwhile, a report published in British medical journal The Lancet suggested that it was the actions of the Russian doctors in Omsk that might have played a key role in saving the opposition figure’s life.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also revealed back in October 2020 that he personally asked Russian prosecutors to let Navalny travel to Germany. The opposition figure was under travel restrictions at that time due to a suspended sentence.

Berlin then also repeatedly stated that Navalny was poisoned with a ‘Novichok-like’ substance – a reference to the infamous chemical agent supposedly used to poison former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK in 2018.

It's been 3 years now and we've heard from the Scripals once. I wonder why?

While authorities in the European Union's most powerful member state cited evidence obtained by the German military as well as analysis from two laboratories in France and Sweden, Moscow has repeatedly pointed to the fact that Berlin never presented any material evidence of Navalny’s poisoning, and did not share any findings with Russian officials. This is despite at least four formal cooperation requests from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office.

The Media is the Message - Russian Presidential Candidate Calls Out RFE/RL for Being CIA Mouthpieces

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Ex-Russian presidential candidate Sobchak lashes out at ‘CIA officers’ running

US state media RFE/RL after top journalist fired

8 Dec 2020 09:31

FILE PHOTO © Sputnik / Ekaterina Chesnokova

Journalist, liberal society fixture, and former presidential candidate Kseniya Sobchak has launched a blistering attack on US state media operating in Russia, after it fired a journalist for “criticizing Alexey Navalny.”

“The real VGTRK [Russia’s state broadcasting company] is now in Prague,” said of Current Time TV’s parent company RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty). “Of course, there is no longer any free press in America – at least for foreign markets. So, shame on Current Time.”

On December 3, Timur Olevsky was sacked after publicly discussing a conspiracy theory that Navalny’s now-deceased father-in-law had been a security services agent living in London. Olevsky apologized to the well-known opposition activist, but lost his job in any case, for digging into the family’s private life.

“Olevsky is a noble man,” Sobchak wrote on Telegram. “And those old ex-CIA officers who rule Current Time and Radio Liberty are not.”

Sobchak accused the US government-run outlet of “firing their most famous journalist for criticizing Navalny,” and thereby “throwing a bone to the dumbest propaganda.”

According to the former socialite, Olevsky did nothing wrong by “blurting out” stories about Navalny, likening the activist’s very private social life to that of President Vladimir Putin.

In her post, Sobchak lambasted the Prague-based US-government mouthpiece for being worse than VGTRK, the broadcaster of most of the country’s most popular TV channels. She also took aim at the editor-in-chief of RT, Margarita Simonyan.

Sobchak is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, the former mayor of St. Petersburg and erstwhile ally of Putin. In the early 2000s, she was known as the host of reality show ‘Dom-2’. She quit the program in 2012, turning away from low-brow entertainment and towards serious journalism, and eventually hosted a show on liberal TV Rain and MTV Russia. In 2018, she ran in the country’s presidential election, coming fourth. Sobchak is now the host of a wildly successful YouTube show, which regularly garners a million views per episode.