Alexander Vinnik was taken to France and is in a Paris hospital

Greek lawyer of Alexander Vinnik Zoe Konstantopoulou reported that the authorities forciblythey took him from the hospital and took him away in an unknown direction.

Before this event, Vinnik was in the hospital andcarried out another hunger strike in protest against his extradition to France and further to the United States. As Zoe Konstantopoulou told reporters, prison authorities took him from the hospital, despite doctors' arguments about the prisoner's poor health.

Nothing is known about Vinnik’s whereabouts,communication with him has been lost for more than a day, and the Minister of Justice of Greece Kostantinos Tsiaras (Konstantinos Tsiaras) does not give any comments on this matter. Vinnik’s Russian lawyer Timofei Musatov said that it’s already becoming clear what flight and where Vinnik could have been sent for extradition.

“As Vinnik’s lawyer, I demand that Iimmediately contacted him directly and informed him of his whereabouts. He is sick as he is on the 35th day of his hunger strike. What is happening now is completely illegal and unacceptable,” — said Zoe Constantopoulou.

In December, I visited Alexander Vinnik in the hospitalRussian Ambassador Andrei Maslov due to the detainee’s deteriorating health. In addition, last month Vinnik’s defense filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee regarding Vinnik’s illegal detention in Greece, since an appeal to the head of the Greek branch of the human rights organization Amnesty International was ignored.

Update:On the morning of January 24, it became known that Vinnik was in a hospital in Paris. Thus, the decision was made to extradite him to France and, probably, in the future he will be transferred to the USA.

Konstantopoulou reported that Vinnik is in the Paris hospital of Hotel Dieu and was subjected to forced night interrogation, despite the deterioration of his health due to a hunger strike and lack of sleep.

“While the Greek authorities are silent and dopretending that they know nothing about what happened, they are trying to interrogate the exhausted Alexander, without any communication with lawyers. We have already sent a request to postpone the hearing to the next few days,” — Konstantopoulou wrote on Facebook, calling the situation a complete violation of human rights.

According to Alexander Vinnik through FrenchZoe Konstantopoulou’s colleagues, he was taken from a Greek hospital, put into a car without any explanation and forbidden to send any messages. Once at the airport and seeing the French police, he realized that they intend to send him to France. However, neither the prosecutor nor the translator was in place, and Vinnik was still kept in the dark.

"Greek judges who defended the rights of AlexanderVinnik, discredited the concept of independent justice and the rule of law. This didn’t happen even in the Middle Ages», — stated Konstantopoulou, adding that judging by these data, we can safely talk about the kidnapping, and not about the extradition of a person.

A spokesman for the Russian embassy in France said diplomats had already contacted Vinnik’s defense.

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