Pavel Durov, Russian-born founder and CEO of the Telegram messaging platform with French and Emirati passports, was arrested last night by the French intelligence services at Paris Le Bourget airport as he stepped off his private jet arriving from Azerbaijan, as reported among others by Reuters.
According to a BFMTV report, he was detained by French authorities following a search and arrest warrant issued by the French national judicial police just minutes before he landed in Paris; so, this means that he was not aware of it and it could not have avoided the trip and thus the arrest, even if he wanted to!
The charges against Durov are complicity in terrorism, narcotics, fraud, money laundering, receiving stolen goods and under-age criminal content, crimes for which some Telegram users should be charged of, not the Telegram CEO and founder! If they are confirmed in court and if Durov does not cooperate (i.e. if he does not obey the western masters), he risks 20 years in a French jail.
Should he fail to cooperate, then a ban on Telegram could be envisaged, as the EU Digital Services Act adopted in October 2022 seems to have been tailor-made for this case. In the end, all that would be needed is to construct a narrative to justify yet another fascist act, perhaps by taking ad hoc content circulated on Telegram and emphasising it (Western propaganda is a master at this). Banning Telegram suddenly would have been too much for those who call themselves “democratic”. So it is necessary to find a pretext exactly like all those found whenever there was a war to “export democracy”, for example.
The frontal attack on anyone who dares to get in the way of the Western regime is clear and obvious: they will now do everything in their power to force Durov to conform to Western standards (do what Mark Zuckerberg does, for example).
It is also worth noting that on 31st May 2024, Bloomberg published an article with the following headline:
So, the answer to the question in the title of this article is Yes. Either Pavel Durov pledges allegiance to the Outlaw US Empire, NATO and EU, thus transforming Telegram in a novel Facebook, where content follows the masters’ propaganda otherwise it is banned, or Telegram may be banned altogether in the EU.
So much for democracy and freedom of speech… and in the country that invented the motto “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity).
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Earlier today Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, posted the following statement on his Telegram channel:
Once, quite some time ago, I asked Durov why he didn't want to cooperate with law enforcement on serious crimes. “This is my principled position”, he stated. “Then there will be serious problems in any country”, I told him.
He reckoned he had the biggest problems in Russia and left, then also got citizenship/residence permits in other states. He wanted to be a brilliant “man of the world” who lives perfectly well without a homeland. Ubi bene ibi patria! [Latin expression literally meaning: where (it is) good, there (is) the fatherland]
He miscalculated. For all our common enemies now, he is Russian - and therefore unpredictable and dangerous. Of a different blood. Certainly not Musk or Zuckerberg (who, by the way, is actively co-operating with the FBI). Durov should finally realise that the Fatherland, like the times, cannot be chosen.....
Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia.
In the meantime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his fellow Zionists are killing over 40,000 Palestinian people, including over 16,000 children. Yet, the same people who arrest Pavel Durov oppose an arrest warrant for the aforementioned war criminals.
By the way, earlier this morning Hezbollah carried out its retaliation against Israel for the assassination of Fouad Shokor, as reported by Al Mayadeen. I will write a separate article on it later today, after Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah delivers his speech at 18.00 EEST.
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UPDATE (25/08/2024): Just a minor update to include Maria Zakharova’s statement that she posted on her Telegram channel last night, highlighting the hypocrisy and double-standard of several Western NGOs:
The Russian Embassy in Paris, as is customary in cases where information is received about the detention of Russian citizens by the local authorities, immediately got to work. There is no need to remind our diplomats of their functional duties.
And I remembered how in 2018 a group of 26 NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists and others, condemned the Russian court's decision to block Telegram. Other similar statements have been made in the West (1, 2, 3, 4).
All this was said by them because on 1 July 2018, the Yarovaya law came into force in Russia, which obliges telecommunications service providers to store records of telephone messages and Internet traffic of their customers for six months, as well as keys to decrypt users' correspondence and provide them to the FSB of Russia upon request. There were legislative complaints against Telegram, which existed in many countries due to the technical parameters of the encryption system.
These Western NGOs called on the Russian authorities to stop creating obstacles in the work of Telegram. They asked the UN, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the European Union, the US and other governments to oppose Russia's actions and protect the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and privacy. They also called on Internet companies to counter unreasonable and unlawful demands that violate the rights of their users. They demanded that the Russian authorities guarantee the rights of users of the global network to publish and anonymously view information on websites, stressing that any restrictions must be authorised by a court of law and fully comply with the European Convention on Human Rights.
However, Durov has remained at large all this time, continuing to develop Telegram.
I publish a screenshot of all the Western profile structures that spoke out then, including a collective appeal. Do you think that this time they will appeal to Paris and demand Durov's release, or will they swallow their tongues?
you hit the nail on the head here ismaele - "Banning Telegram suddenly would have been too much for those who call themselves “democratic”. So it is necessary to find a pretext exactly like all those found whenever there was a war to “export democracy”, for example."
you hit the nail on the head here ismaele - "Banning Telegram suddenly would have been too much for those who call themselves “democratic”. So it is necessary to find a pretext exactly like all those found whenever there was a war to “export democracy”, for example."
keep up the great work! thanks..