Tag: Bukovsky

Update on the Bukovsky Trial

Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
2615
 

BukI just received this press release from Vladimir Bukovsky. You may recall that he sued Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service for libel over a statement it issued in April announcing that he was being charged with “making” child pornography. Bukovsky strenuously denied the allegations, and took the unusual step of issuing a writ against the CPS in the high court in London. Unfortunately — but unsurprisingly — the court has found against him:

The CPS has made no allegations of Vladimir Bukovsky’s involvement in sexual abuse of children, the High Court has ruled today. The judgement of Mr. Justice Warby in Mr. Bukovsky’s libel claim against the CPS states: “Mr Bukovsky has not been charged with or accused of being a participant in or present at the scene of any child sex abuse, or of taking photographs of such abuse. The CPS has not alleged, and does not allege, that he was guilty of or reasonably suspected of any such conduct.”

The judgement is a victory for the CPS, who has staunchly denied that it “libelled” Mr. Bukovsky in its press-release on April last year.

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The Week in Europe

Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
3817
 

The GOP convention has probably drowned out the news from Europe in the US, but it’s been a dramatic week. I’ve been unable to take my eyes or my mind off events in Turkey. I wrote this piece for City Journal:

… It will be many years, if ever, before we fully understand what just took place. But some of the conclusions hastily drawn in the Western media make no sense. Many commentators have been quick, for example, to accept Gülen’s intimation that the scale of the purge indicates the coup attempt was staged by Erdoğan himself, in some kind of Turkish Reichstag fire. True, lists of people to purge were prepared long in advance, but that doesn’t mean that Erdoğan staged the coup. It’s no surprise to anyone in Turkey that these lists were ready; the government had already said as much. To understand why, you’d need to be familiar with events in Turkey from the time the AKP came to power to the present, as well as the way, beginning in 2012, the AKP visibly, explosively, and publicly fell out with Gülen’s flock. The president has taken advantage of the coup plot to accelerate a purge, but it doesn’t mean he staged it. Nor is it evidence for Gülen’s involvement, though it would be credulous to dismiss that idea out of hand.

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