Russian deputies and senators demanded on Sunday (August 25) that France release businessman Pavel Durov, creator of the encrypted messaging service Telegram, who was arrested the night before.
“I call on Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to ask the French authorities to release Pavel Durov,” said Vladislav Davankov, deputy chairman of the State Duma (lower house of the Federal Assembly), on his Telegram channel, stressing that ‘hardly anyone has done more for the development of digital services in Russia and the world’.
He and other Russian deputies and senators claim that the arrest is politically motivated, aimed at gaining access to confidential information about users of the social network. Former president Dmitri Medvedev said that, for Moscow’s enemies, Durov “is Russian and therefore unpredictable and dangerous”.
In addition to Russian citizenship, Pavel Durov has French and United Arab Emirates citizenship, having lived in Dubai since 2017. Together with his brother Nikolai, in 2013 he launched the instant messaging app for electronic devices, Telegram, as an alternative to WhatsApp.
“Accomplice to terrorism, drug trafficking, fraud, pedophilia”
Russian-French-Emirati billionaire Pavel Durov, 39, was arrested on Saturday evening on the tarmac at Paris-Le Bourget airport as he was getting off his private plane from Azerbaijan. The warrant for his arrest was issued by the Office for Minors (Ofmin) of France’s National Criminal Investigation Directorate, based on a preliminary investigation.
The French judiciary argues that the lack of moderation on Telegram and Durov’s refusal to cooperate with the authorities, coupled with the tools the platform offers, such as disposable numbers and encryption, make him an accomplice to numerous crimes.
According to the Azerbaijani press, before being arrested, the Telegram co-founder spent three weeks on the Caspian coast, a stay that coincided with a visit to the country by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. He will now have to answer to an investigative court for terrorism, drug trafficking, fraud, money laundering and distribution of pedophile content, among other charges.
Russian politicians condemn France, the US and “Western global government”
“Pavel Durov is a political prisoner, a victim of the West’s witch-hunt. His imprisonment means that freedom of expression is dead in Europe,” Russian MP Maria Butina told the Reuters news agency.
The chairman of the Senate Constitutional Committee, Andrey Klishas, mocked France for its fight for “freedom of expression” and “European values”; while the head of the League for a Safe Internet, Yekaterina Mizulina, known for her fight against the repression of online dissent, accused the United States of being behind the arrest.
“For Andrei Svintsov, deputy head of the State Duma’s Information Policy Committee, Durov is the victim of a decision by the “Western global government”, which wants to control “practically all the world’s information resources”: “I don’t think it will be possible to release him soon. I think he will be in custody for several years.”
For his part, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Senate Information Policy Committee warned: “The liberal dictatorship does not support individualists who aspire to freedom and follow other rules. Elon Musk, get ready,” referring to the owner of the social network X, who, according to some press outlets, had also demanded Durov’s release.
av (Lusa, EFE, Reuters)