The 40-year-old Putin critic beforehand survived two poisonings, in 2015 and 2017, that he stated had been orchestrated by the Kremlin in retaliation for his advocacy of Western sanctions towards the Russian authorities.
Russia has denied that it was the supply of the poisonings, which left Kara-Murza in a coma each instances. But investigations by unbiased organizations discovered that he had been adopted by members of the identical federal company that allegedly poisoned jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and at the very least three different opposition figures.
His spouse, Evgenia Kara-Murza, confirmed his arrest in a tweet late Monday. “Twice have the Russian authorities tried to kill my husband for advocating for sanctions against thieves and murderers, and now they want to throw him in prison for calling their bloody war a WAR,” she wrote. “I demand my husband’s immediate release!”
“Following poisonings and other grave threats, this outrageous detention is the latest move in Vladimir Putin’s ongoing effort to silence Kara-Murza and hide the truth about the atrocities Putin is committing in the Russian people’s name,” The Post’s writer, Fred Ryan, stated in a press release praising the author’s braveness. “No one should be deceived by the Russian government’s trumped-up charges and smears, and Kara-Murza should be released immediately.”
Kara-Murza is a longtime colleague of the late Russian opposition chief Boris Nemtsov who was assassinated exterior the Kremlin in 2015. He is an creator, documentary director and former candidate for the Russian parliament, and served as deputy chief of a political group, the People’s Freedom Party.
He performed a key position in getting the United States, European Union, Canada and Britain to undertake sanctions legal guidelines in 2012, often called the Magnitsky Act, that concentrate on people in Russia and elsewhere who’re complicit in human-rights violations.
Kara-Murza has written dozens of columns for The Post’s Global Opinions part over the previous few years which were important of the Russian authorities.
“Within a single week, all — literally, all — of Russia’s remaining independent media voices have been silenced in a coordinated effort by the prosecutor general’s office and the government’s main censorship agency,” he wrote in a column March 7. “One after another, media outlets that dared to report honestly on Putin’s assault on Ukraine had their signals cut off and their websites blocked.”
His arrest follows the Kremlin’s sharp crackdown on unbiased news media and dissent in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. The Russian parliament final month enacted a legislation making it a criminal offense punishable by jail phrases of as much as 15 years for spreading what it considers “fake” news in regards to the navy, together with calling the invasion of Ukraine an “invasion.”
As different dissident figures have fled the nation, Kara-Murza has been one of many few to stay in Russia.
In an interview that aired Monday on CNN+, the community’s new streaming service, Kara-Murza stated, “I have absolutely no doubt that the Putin regime will end over this war in Ukraine,”
He referred to as Putin’s authorities “a regime of murderers. It is important to say it out loud. It is really tragic frankly, I have no other word for this, that it took a large-scale war in the middle of Europe, which Vladimir Putin is now conducting against Ukraine, for most western leaders to finally open their eyes to the true nature of this regime.”
He added defiantly, “The biggest gift … we could give to the Kremlin would be to those of us who are in opposition to Putin’s regime we could give up and run. That’s all they want from us.”
The Russian human-rights group OVD-Info stated Kara-Murza was taken by arresting officers to a police station in central Moscow, the place he was being held on a 15-day administrative jail sentence on prices of disobeying police orders. The group cited his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov.
Kara-Murza is the third author related to The Post to face arrest and persecution by the hands of a international authorities in latest years.
Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian author and dissident additionally was a contributor to Global Opinions when he was murdered in October, 2018 by Saudi brokers in that nation’s consulate in Istanbul. The CIA concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s assassination, a conclusion later confirmed by the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights after a six-month investigation.
Jason Rezaian, The Post’s correspondent in Tehran from 2012 to 2016, spent 544 days in jail in Iran with out trial earlier than his launch in early 2016. Rezaian is now a author for Global Opinions.
CNN, which broadcast the interview with Kara-Murza, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
This article has been up to date with new information and feedback.