Кобляков е на свобода, но България успя да се прояви като слуга на Путин

 

 

Николай Кобляков, на снимката с моя милост днес, беше освободен тази сутрин от Софийския градски съд, който промени домашния му арест на “подписка” и се разходи по централния софийския булевард “Витоша”.

 

Предстои му утре да чуе и решението на българския съд по искането на руските власти да бъде екстрадиран в Русия .

 

Междувременно България, в която руският опозиционер все пак беше поставен под домашен арест, е посочена днес като страна, която сътрудничи с Кремъл- ако номерът на Путин мине в България, той ще може да преследва и други жертви по света, пише едно от най-авторитетните британски издания.

This article is written by Richard Heller and Peter Oborne (additional research by Clarissa Agnew)

Today an innocent man called Nikolay Koblyakov will appear in front of a Bulgarian judge in a desperate effort to fend off an unscrupulous attempt by Vladimir Putin to deport him to Russia.

The world knows very little of Koblyakov, but his story gives us a terrifying glimpse into how Putin is opening another front in his campaign of intimidation against the states of eastern Europe.

His latest target is Bulgaria. None of its territory has ever belonged to Russia. It has no common frontier with Russia, and there is no Russian-speaking population there in need of Putin’s “protection”.

His designs on it are based on naked power. Bulgaria is part of Nato and of the EU, but it is the poorest member and totally dependent on Russian energy.

In May several fellow EU members expressed fears that Bulgaria was about to make a decisive and irrevocable tilt towards Russia. The BND (the German Foreign Intelligence Service) has voiced similar concerns that Russia is increasing its influence in Bulgaria so as to use it as a “political beachhead” to penetrate the European bloc.

Of late, Bulgaria has opposed the EU’s increasing sanctions on Russia and has passed a law to enable Russia’s Gazprom to avoid long-established EU competition law for the Bulgarian segment of its new pipeline.

The Koblyakov case gives new substance to these fears.

Koblyakov is a graduate of the London School of Economics. On returning to Russia he started a chain of care homes for the elderly which seem to have been both compassionate and profitable. As so often happens in Russia, competitors with the backing of the regime forced him out of business.

Since then, Mr Koblyakov has lived in Paris, where he was a founding member of Russie-Libertés, an NGO that campaigns for Russian democracy. He participated in protests involving Free Pussy Riot, the controversial 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and a demonstration under Ukranian flags outside the National Assembly in Paris on the night of Putin’s D-Day anniversary dinner with President Hollande.

On 1 April this year an Interpol Red Notice* for his arrest was internally published at the request of Russia. The charge was “swindling”, a crime that allegedly took place between December 2004 and September 2005 in France concerning a company called Stankimport.

The debt claimed by this company, which is the sole basis of his alleged crime, was rejected by the French courts. All evidence points to his innocence. Russia was nonetheless able to secure the Red Notice for a supposed offence, which was ten years old, on non-Russian soil.

Interpol’s involvement in episodes of this sort has become depressingly commonplace. There is mounting evidence that it collaborates in efforts by governments to put dissidents in jail.

According to Fair Trials International, some the worst offenders are Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Belarus, Indonesia, Iran and Venezuela. (This case mirrors that of activist Baha Kimyongür, the victim of a Turkish Red Notice that resulted in a six-month imprisonment in three different European countries before he was eventually released when Interpol recognised it was “abusive”.)

Fair Trials told us that “it does Interpol’s reputation no favours to be repeatedly caught up in political cases. Interpol alerts can give credibility to accusations from the world’s most oppressive regimes, meaning exiled activists are getting arrested and are having to fight against extradition to the countries they thought they’d escaped.”

After his Red Notice was issued in April, Mr Koblyakov lived peacefully in Paris, and travelled to Portugal, France, Latvia, Germany, the Czech Republic, Greece and the UK with no attempts made to arrest him.

Yet, immediately upon arrival in Bulgaria in late July, he was taken into police custody and held in detention.

Russian authorities have now filed for his extradition from Bulgaria. His first hearing took place on 1 August, when he was told to remain in Bulgaria and await a formal extradition order. Last Monday his second hearing took place in which he was sentenced to house arrest in Sofia.

Events are now moving forward with horrifying speed. Today he faces a third hearing appealing the decision to place him under house arrest. Tomorrow a fourth hearing will give a verdict on his extradition.

It is highly probable that the Bulgarians will accept the Russian request. If and when that happens, Nikolay will face a rigged trial and sentence to a Russian prison. He could well die there in agony, as happened to Sergei Magnitsky, the anti-corruption investigator who gave his name to the American Magnitsky Act.

The West should sit up and take a careful look at what is happening here.

The fears of EU member states and of the German Foreign Intelligence Service have come to fruition. The pin of Bulgaria’s political compass is straining eastwards and the effect is an abuse of very basic human rights.

It now appears that Bulgaria is aiding Putin in imprisoning European citizens guilty of nothing other than dissenting against Putin’s regime, and extraditing them back to Russia, where prison camps await. The parallels with 20th century Soviet dishonesty and brutality are frighteningly clear.

Karinna Moskalenko is Russia’s leading human rights lawyer and a member of Moscow Helsinki Group. When asked about the Koblyakov case she replied, “In a ‘normal’ country there is no way he would be extradited. But what has happened to date with Nikolay Koblyakov in Bulgaria demonstrates that it is not a normal country.” Against this background, his request for asylum in Bulgaria stands almost no chance.

The fear is that if Vladimir Putin intimidates Bulgaria into yielding up Nikolay Koblyakov, he will soon grab other innocent victims and throw them into his prisons, to face deprivation, torture and death.

*Interpol Red Notices are a high-priority system of alerts often used as a means of detecting suspected terrorists. In theory, these Red Notices should be welcomed by everyone, because they hasten the identification and arrest of desperate men and women who are a danger to us all. In practice, they have been perverted again and again to assist unpleasant regimes in persecuting domestic opposition.

 

 

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