The Clooney Foundation for Justice, which actor George Clooney created with his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, has drawn heat from Russian officials, who say its effort is a crusade to arrest Russian journalists, News Nation reports.
The legal director at the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Docket initiative, Anya Neistat, had said the organization was seeking the arrest and extradition of “the most obvious Russian propagandists” in Europe to face charges of “war propaganda.”
They want to criminalize Russian journalists’ speech, calling it war propaganda.
The principle of Universal Jurisdiction (UJ) allows countries to prosecute the most serious crimes regardless of where they have been committed. UJ has been developing since the Second World War as a mechanism to pursue justice for survivors and victims of mass atrocities.
Led by legal director Anna Neistat, the project seeks to obtain secret arrest warrants for these journalists [who they determine are propagandists], leveraging specific provisions in the criminal codes of certain European countries.
Those remarks were made last week to the Russian-language service of the U.S.-funded Voice of America news network (CIA).
The CIA site didn’t bother to translate into English, so I used Google Translate. I included only the key sections.
I won’t share the entire translation. For the purposes of this interview, she mostly made her case against Russia only from a Ukraine perspective, using opinion and no facts to illustrate.
THE INTERVIEW EXCERPTS
“Legal Director of the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Docket Project on the organization’s efforts to hold Russian propaganda operatives accountable.
“From the “Kyiv Nazi regime” to “de-Ukrainization” – all these false terms have been implanted into the consciousness of Russians by Russian propagandists for many years. The propaganda of state and state-loyal media in Russia, in the opinion of many, fully prepared the majority of Russian society to accept what their leadership did in February 2022 – an open invasion of the territory of a neighboring state and massive war crimes that were committed there by Russian soldiers. …
“Now international organizations investigating the role of Russian propaganda in Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine say that the organizers and conductors of information support for this war should be prosecuted in the same way as war criminals.
“One such organization is the Clooney Foundation for Justice, founded by human rights activist Amal Clooney and her husband, famous American actor George Clooney.
“Anna Neistat, legal director of the Docket project created by the Clooney Foundation, told Danila Galperovich about the ways in which she and her colleagues propagandists to responsibility.
NEISTAT: “I think that the role of Russian propaganda in this war is very significant, and, in particular, in the fact that Russian soldiers are committing war crimes in Ukraine. As for the readiness of Russian society to accept this propaganda – I believe that the seeds of this propaganda, as you put it, fell into this soil for many years, and this was, as it were, training the consciousness of Russians, developing in them the habit of trusting what is told by those TV channels, which they are allowed to watch. This did not start two years ago, but has been an ongoing process. And this process was a double result: firstly, the concentration of all ways of delivering information in the hands of the state, and secondly, the gradual closure of all independent sources of this information. …
QUESTION: What exactly are you doing to bring Russian propagandists to justice? Tell us about your way of doing this…
NEISTAT: There are two main approaches to this that we are mastering, although there are other methods, but they are much more complex. I would not like to go deeper into legal casuistry, but I will tell you about two methods.
“First, the charge of incitement to genocide. You are probably aware of many international court cases of this kind, and such an accusation was made in the case of the Rwandan genocide against Thousand Hills Radio. This set a great international precedent when people who worked at the radio station and were not involved in any killing or physical execution of genocide were charged and convicted of inciting genocide. In principle, this is within the scope of the International Criminal Court, which, as you know, is already investigating some crimes committed in Ukraine and has issued arrest warrants.
“That is, one of the ways to prosecute Russian propagandists is to appeal to the ICC with a request to prosecute and open an investigation into their involvement in incitement to genocide. But this path is not the easiest, given all the legal difficulties associated with proving this crime, and given how many cases the ICC is currently considering – both related to Ukraine and all others. But I think that even purely symbolically, if the ICC considers the possibility of such an investigation, such a signal would be correct.
“In this case, a more practical way is to bring charges of war propaganda. This is an offense that is still present in the criminal codes of several European countries. The structure of the articles there is quite interesting, but at the same time the crime itself is very simple, simpler than incitement to genocide: it is literally propaganda for war. …
[This is interesting because Biden’s administration tried to ban all Russian information from the US at the beginning of the war.]
NEISTAT: Even before the recording began, you told me that such a crime – “war propaganda” (and I see the historical irony in this) – appeared in the criminal codes of these several European countries at the insistence of the USSR after World War II. Western countries subsequently excluded such an article from their codes, citing the priority of freedom of speech. So, how possible is it to apply such an article in these countries if you say that there is no such experience?
First, about freedom of speech: this concept is very broad, but not absolute. There are many legal decisions, including international ones, that show what the exception is. War propaganda is certainly one of these exceptions. We mention this conflict when we draw up our appeals, but we are confident that our position on this matter is legally strong.
“How do we compose our appeals? We mainly work in the area of “universal jurisdiction”. All the appeals that we made about what was happening in Ukraine – on crimes against humanity, war, and other crimes – were made outside of Ukraine, in countries with universal jurisdiction, which allows the investigation of crimes of this kind, regardless of where it is located. suspect and where the crime was committed.
“This system, and I already talked about it in our earlier interviews, has also been working for quite a long time, but now it is being used more and more. Already 12 or more countries have begun investigations related to crimes committed in Ukraine. And by the same principle, we are seeking an investigation into those crimes related to war propaganda.
“Thus, we are drawing up a request to initiate a criminal case in a country where this is in the criminal code, based on an analysis of the statements of these Russian propagandists and proving that their words fall within the definition of such a crime.
“We know, of course, that at this time, the propagandists we are talking about themselves are not in these countries, but prosecutors can issue a warrant for their arrest, and this will be a very significant step. Because, unlike the Russian military and even their commanders, these propagandists tend to travel abroad, some of them with residence permits, relatives and property in different countries.
“They generally move around the world much more than ordinary war criminals. And if a warrant is issued for their arrest, then in principle any European country is a member of Europol, and this becomes a warrant at the Europol level. That is, in any European country, in theory, they can be arrested and extradited to a country that is investigating a criminal case against them in accordance with the same universal jurisdiction.”
Emphasis added.
Universal Jurisdiction
There’s more, but those are key passages. She told the journalist that they are keeping all the information secret for now and not let the propagandists [journalists?] know they are looking at them. She wouldn’t even specifically mention the countries that are agreeable.
The principle of Universal Jurisdiction (UJ) allows countries to prosecute the most serious crimes regardless of where they have been committed. UJ has been developing since the Second World War as a mechanism to pursue justice for survivors and victims of mass atrocities.
Led by legal director Anna Neistat, the project seeks to obtain secret arrest warrants for these journalists, leveraging specific provisions in the criminal codes of certain European countries.
Anna Neistat has confirmed the foundation’s plans. The initiative aims to target journalists/propagandists who are considered to be the most prominent as this organization sees it.
The Docket Project focuses on the criminal codes of some European countries that prohibit ‘war propaganda.’ By preparing requests to initiate proceedings in these countries, the foundation hopes to secure arrest warrants that would allow for the detention of these journalists throughout Europe, utilizing the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol).
It sounds very globalist and tyrannical.
OPINION
Clooney’s wife is the person who helped secure arrest warrants at the ICC for Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister.
Clooney responded by saying the person from his foundation misspoke in the interview.
“I’m the son of a journalist. We at the Clooney Foundation would never go after journalists, even if we disagree with them. In fact, we have a long track record of protecting journalists,” Clooney posted on Instagram.
However, Neistat went on for a long time and without hesitation and into some detail It wasn’t just a slip of the tongue.
Also, we should keep in mind that Ukraine has engaged in war crimes. They are on video torturing and killing Russian soldiers who surrendered. Ukraine also puts journalists in the gulag and killed at least one American Ukrainian journalist.
NewsNationNow.com said that the Kremlin has threatened George Clooney.
It seems Russia wants to ban Clooney’s Foundation. That is the only threat I know of. News Nation wasn’t specific but said Russia threatened Clooney.
This sounds like the censorship that is used against Americans and Europeans.
A US-funded Ukraine NGO is building a list of enemies and alleged Putin supporters who are just normal conservatives, Libertarians, or Republicans. Of course, Donald Trump tops the list. They included politicians, jounralists, comics, and just ordinary posters on X. Ukraine is a dictatorship. They have imprisoned journalists and killed at least one American journalist trying to flee Ukraine.
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