Alexei Navalny's lawyers are arrested

Who's the bot?

The post is about Russia and how they've now have arrested a lawyer because he's representing navalni.

So then point to be where the UK is part of Russia, or maybe just maybe we should hold the topic of "unfairly arrested" where we can talk all day long about assange, navalni or anyone else.

Besides assange is no lawyer, a better whataboutism would be trumps lawyers who are either arrested have charges against them.

Absolutely. I will never be satisfied with any punishments or justice system, unless and until that system cannot be abused — if it can be used against Team Us by Team Them when Team Them are next in power, it had better be because Team Us actually did something wrong. Even if Team Them today won't abuse the system, it's just waiting for trouble.

That said:

> Yeah. But he was also over a decade in jail without a trial.

He spent most of that decade hiding from an extradition, and is currently refused bail on the grounds that last time he was given it, he jumped. That's very different in important ways.

Now, as demonstrated by the fact that we collectively did, we can spend the entirety of that duration arguing:

(1) if the things he was accused of doing were in fact crimes (they were, but some people at the time were claiming they weren't).

(2) if the women who made the accusations were secret US government plants — they could be, but I doubt based on statements attributed to one of the accusers communicating with the Swedish prosecutor even after Assange had been ejected from the embassy.

(3) if the legal system had pressure put on it to keep him pinned down in one place for the sake of the US investigation — I suspect yes, albeit only at the first stage: the reason I think pressure was put upon the system is that sexual offences are notoriously difficult to prove and accusations normally don't go anywhere, the reason I think "only the first stage" is that he'd already claimed asylum before it got very far. Furthermore, the investigation was re-opened (briefly) after Assange had been ejected from the embassy and the new extradition request from the USA, and the combination is stupid, which is suggestive without being proof (after all, governments do stupid things all the time).

(4) and also if he even did the things he was accused of — I lean towards thinking he did, because (a) sexual offences happen way more than most people realise, and (b) all the people who, upon hearing of the nature of the allegation, argued #1 in the negative, saying something along the lines of "surely that can't be a crime!" or "this is merely rude, not criminal", neither of which is the standard of evidence used in a court case, hence the difficulty of proof that is my reason for thinking pressure was put on the system in #3.

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Despite all that, the current extradition process to the USA sounds suspect, at the very least.

I can sympathize with genuine causes but cheap potshots like whataboutism is just such a cynical means.

The intelligence people were annoyed with him back then, hence all the claims of even that arrest being "a conspiracy" sounding at least slightly plausible, and yet, even then, they were demonstrably so uninterested that he could walk to an embassy and claim asylum.

He has been denied bail now because he skipped bail then and when doing so specifically said his reason was not wanting to end up in the country who now wants to extradite him.

And to be blunt, saying "as I am afraid of being extradited to the USA, I want to remain in a country that has a history of extraditing people to the USA rather than be extradited to a different country that has a slightly lesser reputation for the same" was one of the things that a decade ago made me think he was fleeing justice for the sexual offences rather than being sincere in (what ought to have been a legitimate) fear of the USA.