Arrest of Pavel Durov raises serious concerns over free speech, universal jurisdiction and the cooperation of allied states against civilians.
Today, Interpol and extradition expert and Due Process International founder, Radha Stirling, joined Mario Nawful’s X Space along with Kimdotcom, Ian Miles Cheong and other prominent speakers to discuss the arrest of Pavel Durov in France.
Stirling raised the issue of universal jurisdiction, saying “I believe Pavel was arrested because France has cooperated with back door requests from the United States after Pavel refused to accept America’s invitation to work with them behind the scenes.
“We’ve seen how the US activated Sweden to target Julian Assange and then how Britain’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, thwarted efforts from Sweden to interview Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy which would likely have closed the extradition case (as explained by the former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, in his book, The Trial of Julian Assange).
“We’ve seen Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison because he owned a platform. They sentenced him because of the crimes committed by OTHERS who used his platform and gave him a life sentence while the actual criminals were given a few years. Trump said he would free Ross on day one.
“The Telegram CEO became a major target when Pavel declined ‘offers’ to cooperate with US officials and then divulged that to Tucker Carlson with his millions of viewers.
“The US has pushed universal jurisdiction to legitimise charging foreign nationals either directly or via their allies. They either request their allies to charge a target or indict them directly and put them on Interpol, try to get them arrested and detained throughout lengthy extradition proceedings, even when doomed to fail. They did this to my client, Chris Emms, who won against US extradition proceedings and is now safe.
“But it has come to the point where the US expects the entire world to follow their rules, even if it’s unlawful for them to do so.
“American’s universal jurisdiction puts every single person at risk of wrongful and arbitrary detention and Pavel’s arrest in France is making US allied countries almost a no go zone. The UK has seen the US operating in this way and has begun speaking in the same kind of rhetoric, talking about targeting Americans, even Elon Musk, for their social media posts. Everybody should be concerned about it and understand how frightened we would be if Saudi or China engaged in the same practice. We wouldn’t accept it, so why should we accept it from the US.”
Following the Space, Kimdotcom called for supporters of the #FreePavel movement to boycott France and all French products.
