The arrest in Spain of Russian citizen Stanislav Lisova has all the hallmarks of the beginnings of another railroading of an innocent person for political expediency. Stanislav Lisov, who was detained on foot of an FBI warrant on Jan. 13 while he was vacationing with family in Spain a 31 year old and reportedly works as a systems administration specialist and website developer for a local company in the southern Russian city of Taganrog.

After his arrest and indictment, the US media immediately started a campaign of vilification and proclaimed his guilt on charges of “interference in US internal affairs and cyber fraud”. The extradition case began at the same time as the enquiry into alleged hacking into US presidential elections.

The extradition paperwork from US Department of Justice, along with FBI agent’s statement lacks firm evidence but relies on language such as;- “in our honest opinion Lisov is guilty”, “Lisov and an unidentified group attacked users’ computers”, “Unidentified financial organization suffered a severe loss”, “attacks were committed from unidentified hosting companies in Germany and USA”. Towards the end of this amorphous paper, they provide an alleged chat log between Lisov and unidentified people. Any extradition based on suce so-called evidence cannot be allowed under the convention of human rights, and considering a sentence of up to 30 years awaits someone found guilty of this type of crime, it behoves the court that a high level of evidence be produced.

European human rights convention states:
“In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. Judgment shall be pronounced publicly.”

“Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.”

Already in the US. Some human rights organisations have taken a keen interest in this case, considering it to be purely political in nature. In recent years the US administration have come down heave against those they consider to be challenging them. Chelsey Manning, Edward Snowden and Julien Assange are but three of the high-profile people the US has either hounded or incarcerated, many lower profile people have been extradited to face what is increasingly seen as a conveyer belt to long jail terms with little or no evidence of wrongdoing.

When the Us administration, through their legal system consider someone to be guilty, there is little or no chance of a fair trial. The fact that Stanislav Lisova is a Russian citizen, in the present US climate there is no chance of a fair and impartial trial.

It is incumbent on all right-thinking people to oppose this political extradition, pressure needs to be brought on the Spanish court system to see this for what it is; an attempt to implicate Russia using this man as a simple pawn.

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