Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the massively popular Telegram secure messaging platform, was arrested on Saturday as he disembarked his private jet on the tarmac at Le Bourget airport in Paris.
Durov's alleged offenses, according to major media dutifully reporting the French government's narrative, include: terrorism, narcotic supply, fraud, money laundering, and receiving stolen goods.
Independent media and those with intimate knowledge of the U.S. Deep State relayed what they believe is the actual reason Durov was detained: He refuses to allow the Thought Police to weed out so-called "disinformation" on his platform.
"Pavel Durov left Russia when the government tried to control his social media company, Telegram. But in the end, it wasn’t Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech. It was a western country, a Biden administration ally and enthusiastic NATO member, that locked him away. Pavel Durov sits in a French jail tonight, a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies. Darkness is descending fast on the formerly free world," Tucker Carlson said on his X page.
(Carlson's interview with Durov from earlier this year can be viewed here.)
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French television network TF1 reported that Durov would be held in pre-trial detention and could face up to 20 years in prison.
The network even seemingly acted as a mouthpiece for the French government, citing an unnamed source as saying: "On [Telegram], he allowed an incalculable number of offenses and crimes to be committed, which he did nothing to moderate."
Mike Benz, the founder and Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online an authority of the Deep State and the U.S. government operations in Europe, stated who he believes is behind Durov's arrest – the U.S. State Department.
"I believe the State Department is, at the very least, if not outright pushing, participating in this political prosecution. The State Department has been going after Telegram. Now, they don’t want to shut Telegram down. Let me explain this. Telegram is a double-edged sword for the State Department," Benz said.
"Telegram played a major role in the State Department’s fomenting of the Color Revolution in Belarus in the summer of 2020. The National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. State Department, and USAID were all funding the major organizers of the street riots in Belarus and using Telegram as the main channel to organize those street riots because Telegram has such ubiquitous use in Eastern Europe, also in Russia, also in Ukraine. So they loved Telegram as a way to organize, rent a riots, to destabilize Lukashenko’s government."
Benz continued: "So what they want to do is not kill Telegram like they wanted to kill Wikileaks. They want to control it. And the problem was, is they didn’t have the ability to put sufficient pressure on Pavel to break his will. So he was living in Dubai. Now they have leverage. I believe that’s the purpose of this prosecution, not to establish a legal precedent that every encrypted chat app, its founder, is personally responsible for all illegal conversations or transactions on the platform, but rather to force Telegram to become WhatsApp."
I will be the bad guy & say what needs to be said, even if that upsets some people I like.
If the House Foreign Affairs Cmte does not wake from its coma as the US State Dept it oversees pushes global government censorship outcomes, this critical committee needs a new chairman. pic.twitter.com/yP0B2Igwi4 — Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) August 25, 2024
#FreePavel
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 25, 2024
pic.twitter.com/B7AcJWswMs
CIA cut-out rep from Bellingcat bragging about the utility of arresting Telegram’s founder for being able to control Telegram’s use to win the military war on Russia and you’re telling me you don’t think The Blob (State + Pentagon + CIA) backchanneled Pavel’s arrest pic.twitter.com/MhRTWE5Kcs
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) August 25, 2024
The disgraced Alexander Vindman, one of the star witnesses in the Democrats' attempt to impeach President Donald Trump, took to X, where he knows he won't be censored, to encourage more censorship and to even warn Elon Musk that he may be the next social media platform owner to be arrested. Vindman was ratioed six ways from Sunday.
While Durov holds French citizenship, is arrested for violating French law, this has broader implications for other social media, including Twitter. There’s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be… https://t.co/GyPMquKtKV
— Alexander S. Vindman ❎ (@AVindman) August 25, 2024
