Readers who follow the work of Diana West will be familiar with Vladimir Bukovsky. Mr. Bukovsky was a Soviet dissident who was expelled from the USSR in the 1970s and now lives in Britain. During the controversy about Diana West’s book American Betrayal, Mr. Bukovsky was one of the most prominent and respected of her defenders.
Alexander Litvinenko was a former FSB officer and a friend of Vladimir Bukovsky’s. He fled to the UK, and died of polonium poisoning in London under mysterious circumstances in 2006. It is widely suspected that Vladimir Putin ordered the assassination of Mr. Litvinenko at the hands of the FSB.
Just before he was scheduled to testify in an inquiry in London about the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, Mr. Bukovsky was charged with possession of child pornography, in what appears to have been a set-up by the FSB. In response he has sued the Crown Prosecution Service for libel (an immensely expensive operation in Britain), and has recently gone on a hunger strike to draw attention to his case and attempt to have his lawsuit heard before the criminal trial against him.
Diana West has drawn attention to what Vladimir Bukovsky is doing. She says:
More than 150 former Soviet political prisoners, their relatives and descendants have signed a petition to “Save Vladimir Bukovsky,” which will be delivered to the Departmental Ministry of Justice in London. Please consider signing it here.
Below are excerpts from an article in The Guardian about Mr. Bukovsky’s case:
The Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has been on hunger strike at his home in Cambridge for more than a week in protest at what he calls the “Kafkaesque” British judicial system.
Bukovsky was charged last year with child pornography offences. He strenuously denies the allegations. In August he took the unusual step of suing the Crown Prosecution Service for libel: he is seeking £100,000 in damages and claims the CPS has “falsely and maliciously” hurt his reputation.
Jenny Hopkins, the CPS’s chief crown prosecutor for the east of England, said in April 2015: “Following an investigation by Cambridgeshire police, we have concluded that there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to prosecute Vladimir Bukovsky.”
The dissident was a close friend of Alexander Litvinenko. The pornography was allegedly discovered on Bukovsky’s laptop shortly before he was due to testify in a public inquiry into Litvinenko’s murder in London in 2006. Two Kremlin agents, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, poisoned the former Russian spy in a Mayfair hotel with a cup of polonium tea.
Bukovsky told the inquiry he was “pretty sure” the Kremlin was behind Litvinenko’s death. The inquiry chairman, Sir Robert Owen, agreed, ruling in January that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had “probably approved” the polonium plot in London.
Bukovsky’s friends in the UK and Russia say he has been set up. They say his outspoken criticism of Putin made him an obvious target for sophisticated Kremlin hackers to plant the pornography and suggest Russia then “tipped off” the British police using Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.
Speaking at his home in Cambridge, Bukovsky said: “I’m on hunger strike not because of trying to prove anything to the FSB [Russia’s security agency]. We’ve known each other for half a century. There’s nothing new they can tell me or I can tell them. I’m doing it for the British public.”
Read the rest at The Guardian. Sign the petition here (I’m not sure whether you have to be a British subject to sign it).
I’ll pray for him!
Obviously, it’s impossible to comment on the accusations of child pornography. But I have been a great admirer of Mr. Bukovski for many, many years: he has demonstrated time and again not only that he is a man of the highest principles and conscience in the political sphere, but that he has enormous courage and uncompromising convictions.
I wish him the very best – and find the child pornography accusations very difficult to believe. Certainly, it would be very easy for any technically qualified malicious person to plant such material on his computer.
Yes, it’s easy to smear anyone that way…
Yes, and it easy to frame anybody and both of the security /spy agencies of both the FSB and the CIA are excellent examples of what it takes to do some serious framing.
You know in light of the fact that the USA is banging the war drum these days (ASH CARTER was banging away real hard today) I think I would put my money on the CIA as the one doing the framing to make the Russians look real bad.
HECK , they are gonna need some REAL BIG ammo to start WWIII and the end of the world as we know it! WHO IS GOING TO DIE to kick off a war like that. MAYBE a few sky scrapers full of AMERICANS in say Atlanta or Chicago would do the trick????????
DROP by drop they hope to cause the AMERICAN people to want to KILL OFF Russians. ALL so that SOROS and the SAUDIS can get ALL their stuff . OH, what idiots do they really take us for???
CIA PROPAGANDA WAR uses many things and these are JUST A FEW:
Yellow cake in Iraq. Mass destruction gasses.
An anti-muslim film made by an Egyptian guy in the USA, faked to cover the AMERICAN backed rebel LIBYANS who killed AMERICANS in the Embassy SAFE HOUSE.
Serb Rape camps in a Soccer Stadium in Pristina in 1999, which is clear , neat and NOT a single male Albanian, or ANYBODY being raped or held there. French reporters even kicked around a ball and told us ALL … nobody there. NADA .Even the field grass is excellent and not damaged.
Hey let us NOT forget sweet babies!! PRIMIES no less. Babies dumped from incubation beds in Kuwait by Iraqi ELITE soldiers. OH the horror. GET SADDAM, blame him.
OH please was all that crap worth the lives of all who died because of it??? I do NOT think so. I helped re-settle Kurds west of Chicago in the Mid-1990s. Just between me and you , I do NOT think Saddam did that gassing.
The airliner shot down in Ukraine did NOT start WORLD WAR III. The USA wanted a war to help get hold of Russian Gas supplies and the base in Crimea. WHAT a horrible way to die.
I think , this porn thing against Bukovsky is NOT gonna help frame Putin or anybody to get us closer to WWIII.
JUST how many people are going to get killed to start WWIII these days???
USA has been fingered in the overthrow of a legal ( but anti-USA govt.) in Syria and STILL they continue to arm “rebels” the same ones who kidnapped 2 Greek Orthodox Bishops in April of 2013.
AND yet they keep on PUSHING a WAR there using these same KIDNAPPERS and murderers.
I always look at who gains the most. The NEO-CONS want a war with Russia and they want to TAKE SYRIA to give to the REAL porn-loving MEN, the SAUDIS. LAND!! Think of all the land. And SLAVES, just like Hitler predicted. Ah, the 4th Reich rears its head.
I TRUST THE USA under Obama as much as I trust a rattle snake NOT to bite me when I step on its tail than I do this government of ELITES!!
I want my good country back. NOT this FRANKENSTEIN mass murderer.
But then who REALLY knows???? Bukovsky is an odd old man, of that there is NO denying. maybe some bad pics got into his computer. I do not care to die based on whether he looks at little girls on occasion. DO YOU??
Going to war over the likes of him or the dead crook, who was a plutonium injected and muslim convert… IS NOT MY IDEA of dying for a great cause!!!
WAR ! WHAT is good for?? Absolutely NOTHING!
Unless you work for the OBAMA ADMINISTRATION! Right?? Hillary???
I have signed. The least I can do. I find the child porn charges very ‘ convenient’ just before his testimony and this will not be the first time such has happened.It also works both ways because many ‘ high-placed ‘ persons who should have been arrested for such rarely are.
I don’t expect much justice these days