Impressive how democracy’s lovers and defenders of free expression remain silent with media censorship in the European Union, open cases in Ukraine for producing a documentary, a journalist detained in Poland, journalist detained in Latvia, etc. etc…
And if all this was happening in Russia or Iran or Venezuela… or Cuba? How do you think the mainstream media was acting? . I leave that for you here as homework.
On January 5th it became known that Marat Kasem, head of the Lithuanian bureau of Russia’s Sputnik news agency, was detained for alleged evasion of EU sanctions and suspicions of espionage (That’s western line all against are spy) in Riga, where he returned for family reasons to end of december.
Without mentioning the suspect’s last name, the Latvian State Security Service clarified the same day that the arrest of “an employee of the Rossiya Segodnya agency” took place on January 3 in the framework of a criminal proceeding initiated “by a possible breach of EU sanctions”.
A court ordered the journalist to remain in custody, for which he was transferred to Riga’s central prison.
During these last years, Kasem lived in Moscow and worked for the Rossiya Segodnya agency (parent company of Sputnik), whose general director is on the EU blacklist.
The spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zajárova, accused Latvia of having failed to comply with its international commitments regarding freedom of expression, protection of the rights of journalists and the inviolability of rights and freedoms. In addition, she recalled that Kasem had withdrawnly denounced the persecution by various Baltic states.
Marat Kasem, the Lithuania bureau chief of Russia’s Sputnik news agency, has been detained by authorities in Latvia on charges of violating EU sanctions. RT’s Murad Gazdiev says this is part of a broader EU crackdown on media outlets that haven’t followed the bloc’s official narratives
