1 Jun, 2024 02:04

George Clooney’s foundation ‘hounding’ Russian journalists – Moscow

The Foreign Ministry has slammed the push to secure arrest warrants for media figures

The organization co-founded by Hollywood A-listerGeorge Clooney has declared open seasonon Russian journalists, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. The statement comes after it was revealed that the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) has been pushing forsecret arrest warrants for Russian media figures.

Actor and filmmaker George Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, founded the CFJ in 2016 with the aim to “fight systemic injustice against vulnerable communities” around the world, according to its mission statement.

Since 2022, the foundation’sThe Docket projecthas been pushing for the prosecution of so-called “Russian propagandists,” alleging that Moscow’s media is complicit in “incitement to genocide” in Ukraine. The legal director of the Docket, Anna Neistat, said thather team is “documenting Russian crimes” and submitting cases to prosecutors in various countries.

Neistat, who previously worked at Amnesty International and Human Rights Warch, told US state funded Voice of America on Thursday thatshe does not want to identify “propagandists” by namebecause her team wants prosecutors to issue sealed arrest warrants. “We don’t want these people to know about the warrants. On the contrary, we want them totravel to other countriesand be arrested there,” she said.

In a Telegram post on Friday, Zakharova noted that one of the foundation’s stated goals is theprotection of journalists. “As it turns out, the protection of journalists – the way the Clooneys understand it – is hounding them by the means ofpolitically and ethnically motivated criminal prosecution,” she wrote.

“It is no secret that Russophobia pays well in the West. Apparently, these two PR specialists are ready todo anything for money. That is why they have decided to embark on ajudicial safari targeting Russian journalists,”Zakharova said.

Moscow has accused Ukrainian troops of deliberately targeting Russian journalists covering the conflict between the two countries. In April, Semyon Yeryomin, who worked for the newspaper Izvestia, was killed by a Ukrainian kamikaze drone. Other fatalities include war correspondents Rostislav Zhuravlyov and Boris Maksudov, both of whom were killed in 2023.

https://www.rt.com/russia/598608-george-clooney-foundation-zakharova/