The Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Docket Project is pursuing secret arrest warrants for journalists in Europe whose reporting is favorable to Russia in a move that a Kremlin spokesperson has labeled “insane.”
By now, we’re all painfully aware that facts and truth don’t matter to a lot of people if they don’t align with their views, and now this foundation, which was founded by actor George Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, is trying to use legal processes to stop professionals from doing their jobs.
The Docket Project’s legal director, Anna Neistat, recently told Voice of America radio that they are attempting to obtain the arrest warrants by appealing to the European countries that have laws against “war propaganda.” She announced: “We are submitting requests to initiate criminal proceedings in countries where this provision exists in the criminal code."
She added: "If the warrant is issued, it essentially becomes an EU-wide warrant through Europol. This means journalists could potentially be arrested and extradited to the country investigating them."
She would not disclose the names of the journalists they are targeting but did admit that they were focusing on “the most prominent Russian propagandists.”
She seemed to take particular delight in the idea of catching the journalists they are targeting off guard, explaining how they are seeking secret warrants.
"We are asking prosecutors to issue secret arrest warrants... so the names are not revealed. We want these individuals to travel to other countries and be arrested there. It’s better if they are left guessing rather than receiving a clear warning," she said.
They are also looking into asking the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate certain journalists’ involvement in what she termed “incitement to genocide.” Although she conceded that this is legally complex and the court is already overloaded, it appears they are looking into every avenue possible to censor reporters whose information they find inconvenient or unflattering.
Russian authorities complain of double standard
Russian authorities are complaining about a double standard here, saying that Western countries do nothing when Russian journalists are persecuted by Ukraine. Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said that Kiev often boasts about killing Russian journalists. He listed several journalists who have recently died at the hands of Ukrainian special services, including Izvestia war correspondent Semyon Yeremin, who was killed in April by a Ukrainian kamikaze drone. He also named Sputnik war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev, Rossiya-24 war correspondent Boris Maksudov, Vladlen Tatarsky, and Darya Dugina.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chair Dmitry Medvedev called out Clooney and his foundation on social media in a posting on X that also denigrated his acting skills. He wrote: “A certain mediocre actor called George Clooney has decided to use his Foundation to hunt down Russian journalists all over the world and persecute them.”
He added: “The effort would be wasted, however: our professional journalists will find him first. They are very attentive and highly trained people. And they are going to have a chat "from dusk till dawn."
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed the move. She pointed out that one of the stated goals of the Clooney Foundation for Justice is protecting journalists; to the Clooneys, this apparently means “hounding them by the means of politically and ethnically motivated criminal prosecution."
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