Jerusalem – Russia offered Israel a package deal through secret and unofficial channels: the handing over of Leonid Nevzlien to Russia, a political rival of the prime minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in exchange to the release of the Israeli citizen lieutenant colonel Yair Klien who is imprisoned in Russia since the summer of 2008.
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These days Klien is conducting his final juridical struggle in the court for human rights by the European council in Strasburg in order to prevent his handing over from Russia to Colombia. Klien’s attorney Mordichai Tzivin, who specializes in representing Israelis abroad and in international affairs, is trying to convince the court that if Klien will be handed over to Colombia his life will be in danger because of the human rights status in Colombia and the harsh conditions of imprisonment that are waiting for him.
Tzivin claims that he holds proof that the Russians offered Israel a package deal: the release of Klien and the handing over him to Israel in exchange to the handing over of Nevzlien, an Israeli citizen and the chairman of the board of governors of the museum of the jewish diaspora, to the Russians.
According to Tzivin, the offer was given to a senior minister in the present government. Tzivin holds a testimony of a senior Russian source who approved that Klien is a trading card and that if Israel will handover Nevzlien Russia will let Klien free. In the past Russia demanded to handover Nevzlien through regular legal ways, however Israel refused by saying there are not enough evidence against him. Governments and courts in the west have said more then once that Russia is demanding the handing over of Nevzlien for political reasons alone.
“Yediot Acharonot” has received tapes in which seniors at the presidents office, at the time of former president Moshe Katzev, are heard approving that during the conversation that Putin and Katzev held on April 2005, Putin clearly demanded the handing over of Nevzlien in exchange to handing over four Israeli diamond dealers that were imprisoned in Russia for smuggling raw diamonds, to continue serving time in Israel. Israel conducted at that time a stubborn struggle in order to transfer the four to an Israeli prison but the Russians refused. Eventually it turned out that they conditioned it with the handing over of Nevzlien.
Advocate Tzivin said yesterday: we have nothing against Nevzlien and we don’t think he has to be handed over. What is happening here is Russia using trade cards against innocent Israelis in order to set internal Russian matters.
Yair Klien was arrested on the summer of 2008 in Moscow as a result of an international warrant after he was convicted, without his presence, in a court in Colombia of unlegal training of an unofficial militia, and from then he is conducting a struggle against his handing over to Bogota.
Nevzliens’s spokesman said yesterday: it has been already a long time that Putin and the K.G.B men around him are trying to silence Nevzlien, Putin’s political rival, in all ways possible including sending different handing over requests that were rejected by the Israeli attorney’s office and by the Israeli supreme court. The Russian attempt to use people who are imprisoned in Russia as trade cards is another sad example of the awful ways the Russian government violates human rights in Russia.
Yup, ladies & gentlemen, the KGB is alive and well.
I thought political silencing people was only in the KGB era. To pressure foreign governments to trade a citizen who has a clean sheet is reminiscent of the barbarism of the Huns, the Goths and the Mongol hords.
Putin is a rabid maniac who took advantage of democracy, hard fought domacracy, that finally came about in Russia to launch a glorified Communist state with the KGB in full swing. DONT FORGET PUTIN WAS A RANKING OFFICER IN THE KGB.
Putin invites the chief rabbis to the Kremlin! Putin attends ceremonies at shuls in Moscow. It might be a political ploy but he supports the yidden there!
Nevzlin did nothing for Yidden when he lived in Moscow. His boss Khodorkovsky is not a Yid al pi Halocho. But the minute the going got rough they pulled out the anti-Semitism card.
I think this is a fair trade, not that I give a hoot about Klein who is one of these Mossad mercenaries that show the values of the medine by hiring themselves out to drug dealers, warlords and who knows who else.
Russia has fallen quite a bit in stature. I mean not just since the United Statews manipulated Russia’s internal collapse, thus forcing it to break up inot smaller countries. I mean that Russia has now resorted to bargain basement negotiations. Hey Russia, maybe you give me a nice used fur hat, in exchange for a good pair of L.L. Bean hiking boots?