Published: February 2024
When it comes to political arrests, poisonings, and deaths, not everything is as it seems.
Julian Assange (2019)
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is seen as a fearless journalist by his supporters and as a “non-state hostile intelligence agent” by the US government. In 2010, Assange was ensnared by a CIA “honey trap” in Sweden, but contrary to widespread media claims, he was never charged with rape. Swedish prosecutors wanted to close the case but British officials pressured them not to do so. In an email later leaked on Wikileaks, a Stratfor analyst argued that “the Kremlin would have killed him.”
Fearing extradition to the US by Swedish or British authorities, Assange for seven years stayed in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In 2016 Assange was accused of having published Clinton presidential campaign emails hacked by a Russian group, but the “Russian hacking” was a false-flag cyber operation run by US and Israeli intelligence. Meanwhile, a Spanish security firm working for American-Jewish casino mogul and major Trump sponsor, Sheldon Adelson, ran a spy operation on behalf of the CIA against Assange and his visitors at the embassy.
In April 2019, after the US pressured a new Ecuadorian government to end its diplomatic protection of the Wikileaks founder, Assange was arrested by British police and has since been held in solitary confinement at the Belmarsh high-security prison – in conditions a Swiss UN expert described as “torture”. In addition, the judge who oversaw Assange’s extradition case to the US is married to a former British defense minister with ties to individuals and firms previously exposed by Wikileaks.
In February 2024, the British High Court will decide over Assange’s final appeal against extradition to the United States, where he may face lifelong imprisonment for espionage.
Image: In January 2018, a few weeks before his internet access was cut off, Assange shared the SPR chart depicting media ties to the US Council on Foreign Relations.
Alexei Navalny (2024)
Western media liked to describe Russian political activist Alexei Navalny as a “Russian opposition leader” while critics saw him as a CIA/NED asset chosen to lead a “color revolution” and regime change in Russia. In fact, Kremlin critic Navalny had less than 10% popular support in Russia.
In 2014 Navalny was convicted for embezzlement and received a suspended prison sentence. In August 2020, a mysterious “poisoning incident” occurred while Navalny was traveling with a female British operative. Navalny was flown to Germany where he later produced a fake video on “Putin’s palace”. He returned to Russia in January 2021, knowing that he would be arrested and imprisoned based on the previously suspended sentence – which is what happened.
In February 2024, Navalny died in a Russian prison, reportedly due to a stroke. On the very day of his death, Navalny’s wife held a speech at a NATO security conference in Munich. While Western media suggested Navalny may have been killed on behalf of Putin, a British or American operation seems more likely, given that to his Western sponsors, Navalny had become more useful as a martyr than as a political agent. A natural death or even a covid vaccine injury cannot be ruled out, either.
Update: On the morning of Navalny’s death, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly agreed to a deal to exchange Navalny for a Russian citizen imprisoned in Germany. The British operative mentioned above, Maria Pevchikh, falsely claimed Putin had rejected the deal.
Video: Color Revolutions: The American Conquest of the East (Canal+, 2005)
Gonzalo Lira (2024)
Chilean-American Youtube commentator Gonzalo Lira stayed in Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion and, despite the high risk, continued to criticize the Ukrainian government on social media. Lira was first detained in April 2022 and arrested in May 2023. He was released on bail, tried to flee the country but was caught and arrested again. In January 2024 he died of medical neglect and pneumonia while in a Ukrainian prison.
Although Gonzalo Lira’s case was highlighted by Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, the US government never asked Ukrainian authorities to release the US citizen, and US establishment media hardly covered the case at all. Several other Western journalists who have criticized the Ukrainian government have been placed on a Ukrainian “kill list” named Myrotvorets (“peacemaker”).
Image: US media coverage of Gonzalo Lira and Alexei Navalny (RT)
Sergei Magnitsky (2009)
A case of much more international significance was the death of Sergei Magnitsky in a Russian prison back in 2009. Magnitsky was an accountant working for American-Jewish investor Bill Browder, Russia’s largest foreign investor during the 1990s. Browder claimed that corrupt Russian officials had used his financial firm for a $200 million tax fraud and that Magnitsky was arrested and killed by Russian authorities as a whistleblower.
Based on this story, Browder initiated the American Magnitsky Act, which in 2012 for the first time imposed sanctions on Russian officials. Yet evidence provided by Russian authorities suggested that the $200 million tax fraud was perpetrated by Browder himself, that Magnitsky was arrested not as a whistleblower but as an accomplice and witness, and that he was killed not by Russian prison guards but by an aluminum poison on behalf of Browder – as were three more of Browder’s accomplices.
A Russian filmmaker and famous Putin critic wanted to film Browder’s version of the story but started to realize that the story didn’t add up. His final documentary showed this surprising and explosive turn of events, yet the German production company no longer wanted to show the film; a screening at the European Parliament, on Press Freedom Day 2016, was canceled at short notice; an online version of the film was removed by Vimeo; and a book about the case was censored by Amazon.
Nevertheless, the film is available in the SPR Media Archive, both in English and in German.
Video: The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes (Andrei Nekrasov, 2016)
Sergei and Yulia Skripal (2018)
In March 2018, two weeks before the Russian presidential elections and three months before the FIFA World Cup in Russia, former British-Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were allegedly poisoned in the English city of Salisbury.
British officials blamed Russian agents and the Soviet Novichok poison but could prove neither. Instead, the available evidence suggests a British false-flag operation or a staged deception. Indeed, the incident took place during an exercise run by the nearby Porton Down chemical warfare research facility, the Skripals were “discovered” by the chief nurse of the British Army, the entire operation was monitored by the notorious British military-intelligence “Integrity Initiative”, and a British intelligence officer in touch with Sergei Skripal was involved in the Russiagate deception.
As a result of the Skripal incident, Britain and other Western countries expelled Russian diplomats, and relations between NATO countries and Russia further deteriorated.
Video: Skripal Affair: The Magic of Novichok (Kollerstrom/Hall, 2019)
Alexander Litvinenko (2006)
In November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer and whistleblower who had defected to Britain and became a British intelligence consultant or agent, died of poisoning by radioactive Polonium-210.
British authorities and media blamed two Russian intelligence agents and the Kremlin, but Litvinenko himself accused an Italian “security consultant” who was involved in nuclear black market operations and whom Litvinenko had met on the day of his poisoning.
Litvinenko himelf had apparently been involved in the smuggling of radioactive material as well as in blackmailing Russian oligarchs and other public figures living in Europe.
Intriguingly, the claim that Litvinenko had been poisoned by Russian intelligence was first spread by London-based Russian-Jewish oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, who had been chased out of Russia by Russian President and former Russian intelligence director, Vladimir Putin.
In 2016, after a British inquiry found that President Putin “probably” authorized the murder, Litvinenko’s brother stated that Britain had more reason to kill Litvinenko than the Russians.
The case of Litvinenko’s death remains unsolved and even an accidental poisoning cannot be ruled out, given that the quantity of Polonium-210 he ingested was worth some $10 million.
Podcast: Alexander Litvinenko: The Berezovsky and MI6 Connections (BCfm, 2016)
Kim Jong-nam (2017)
In February 2017, Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated with VX nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur International Airport by two Asian women who believed they were participating in a harmless Youtube prank. While Western media quickly blamed the North Korean leader for the assassination, the mastermind’s identity remains a mystery.
Video: The Mysterious Assassination of Kim Jong-Nam (SHM, 15 min., 2017)
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