Naama Issachar, the young American-Israeli woman who was busted at the Moscow airport for cannabis possession, is now free after being detained since April 2019 and making international headlines for the extremity of her case.<\/p>\n
Issachar\u2019s release is certainly good news for her and her family, but this victory came at a cost. Over the past few months, it has become clear that Issachar\u2019s case was wrapped up in a web of international intrigue and political rivalries, and there\u2019s reason to believe the precedent set by Issachar\u2019s release could encourage further arrests of travelers under the guise of cannabis possession.<\/p>\n
In April 2019, Issachar was changing planes\u00a0in Moscow as she headed back to Israel from a yoga retreat in India. A check of her bags turned up a few grams of pot, about a third of an ounce.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In October 2019, Russian courts sentenced her to an outrageous seven and a half years in the slammer \u2014 yet another example of a foreign national being caught by the harsh drug laws of an authoritarian regime, akin to notorious cases we\u2019ve seen in recent years\u00a0from Indonesia<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Singapore<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in Issachar\u2019s case, the political intrigue was evident from the start. Her family was initially hoping she would be swapped for Aleksey Burkov, a Russian hacker being held by Israel. Burkov had been arrested by Israeli authorities on an Interpol warrant in 2015. He was awaiting extradition to the U.S., where he was wanted for various cyber-crimes, including stealing millions from credit card accounts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Issachar, languishing in a Moscow jail cell, found herself at the center of a\u00a0three-way diplomatic wrangle<\/a>\u00a0between Israel, Russia and the U.S. There was widespread speculation in the Israeli press that she may have even been arrested by the Russians precisely as a bargaining chip to win the release of Burkov.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Issachar family\u2019s hopes were dashed in November 2019, when Burkov was\u00a0put on a plane to face charges in U.S. federal court<\/a>\u00a0in Virginia.\u00a0<\/p>\n This seemingly left Russia\u2019s leader Vladimir Putin pondering what else he could leverage Issachar\u2019s freedom for \u2014 and, before long, he appeared to find it.<\/p>\n Issachar\u2019s role to play between Russia and Poland became evident with the ugly politicking around the\u00a0World Holocaust Forum<\/a>\u00a0that opened in Jerusalem on Jan. 23, commemorating the liberation of the Nazi death camps in 1945.<\/p>\n In January, the Israeli press was\u00a0rife with speculation<\/a>\u00a0that Russia would release Issachar if Israel took Putin\u2019s side in his\u00a0spat with Poland<\/a>, sparked by the approaching 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. Because Poland is a member of NATO and the European Union, Putin already sees the country as a rival geopolitical camp. But the tension between Russia and Poland\u00a0took on a new intensity with the World Holocaust Forum, as both sides put out competing versions<\/a>\u00a0of the two countries\u2019 roles in the war, and which government had capitulated more to Hitler.<\/p>\n The Polish president, Andrzej Duda,\u00a0refused to attend<\/a>\u00a0the Holocaust commemoration after Putin was invited to speak and Duda wasn\u2019t. Lithuania also\u00a0announced it would boycott<\/a>\u00a0the commemoration in solidarity with Poland. The whole thing made a\u00a0politicized farce<\/a>\u00a0out of what should have been a very solemn event.\u00a0<\/p>\n Afterward,\u00a0Yad Vashem<\/a>, the Jerusalem Holocaust museum that hosted the event, actually\u00a0issued an apology<\/a>\u00a0for the video presentations at the commemoration, which glorified Russia\u2019s wartime role while downplaying that of the other Allies. The statement said the videos \u201cincluded inaccuracies and a partial portrayal of historical facts that created an unbalanced impression.\u201d<\/p>\n And by the version of events popular in the Israeli press, at least, a cannabis bust was at the center of it all, used by Putin to assure he won pride of place at the Jerusalem confab, while his rival was sidelined.<\/p>\n There was even speculation\u00a0that Putin would bring Issachar with him when he flew to Israel for the event. That probably would have been a little too blatant, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did actually fly to Russia to\u00a0personally accompany her home on his official jet<\/a>\u00a0on Jan. 30 \u2014 hours after\u00a0Putin signed her pardon<\/a>.<\/p>\n And this also came just as the Israeli prime minister had been\u00a0indicted on corruption charges<\/a>, and the Palestinian Authority\u00a0broke all ties with Israel<\/a>\u00a0over its embrace of\u00a0Trump\u2019s \u201cpeace\u201d plan<\/a>\u00a0(which betrays all of the Palestinians\u2019 longtime demands). Flying home with the cannabis convict provided Netanyahu with a good media bounce at a critical moment.<\/p>\n So Issachar was just as convenient to Netanyahu as she was to Putin. To make it all the more blatant, a Netanyahu aide\u00a0publicly scolded<\/a>\u00a0Issachar\u2019s mom after she failed to mention the prime minister in a Facebook post thanking those who campaigned for her daughter\u2019s release.\u00a0<\/p>\n This was hardly the first time that Russia has used cannabis charges as a political tool. Oyub Titiev, the leading human rights activist in Russia\u2019s southern republic of Chechnya, was arrested on cannabis charges in January 2018 and\u00a0sentenced to four years in prison<\/a>.\u00a0Human Rights Watch called the charges<\/a>\u00a0against Titiev \u201cblatantly fabricated.\u201d He was\u00a0paroled<\/a>\u00a0in June 2019, following an international campaign in his support.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Russian cannabis crackdown goes right along with Putin\u2019s whole reactionary agenda, which is also\u00a0anti-gay<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0anti-woman<\/a>. But it can additionally prove convenient on a tactical level.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Nor is Russia alone in seeking to leverage a foreign drug convict for political advantage.<\/p>\n In China, we\u2019ve witnessed the very blatant case of Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian who was initially\u00a0sentenced to 15 years in prison<\/a>\u00a0for methamphetamine trafficking by a court in the northeast city of Dalian in December 2018. But the following month, he was ordered to stand retrial as prosecutors said that his sentencing had been too light. In a one-day retrial, he was given a death sentence. The retrial was widely seen as retribution for Canada\u2019s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of the Chinese technology company\u00a0Huawei<\/a>. Meng had been arrested in Vancouver that same December at the request of U.S. authorities, who accuse her of helping the company evade sanctions against Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n Schellenberg is currently\u00a0appealing his sentence<\/a>, while Meng is\u00a0facing extradition hearings<\/a>\u00a0in the Canadian courts. The government of Chinese leader Xi Jinping is\u00a0threatening<\/a>\u00a0Canada with \u201cgrave consequences\u201d if she is not released.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a similar cannabis bust of an Israeli national just happened in India \u2014 with a\u00a010-year prison term looming<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n His name has not been released, but the 42-year-old Israeli tourist was caught with a bag full of 2.5 kilograms of\u00a0bhang<\/em>\u00a0on Feb. 2, when police searched the bus he was on, headed toward the historic city of Varanasi.\u00a0World Israel News<\/a>\u00a0used the headline: \u201cNot another Naama.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But it may well turn out to be another Naama. India\u2019s authoritarian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, like Putin, has been on very warm terms with Netanyahu, having secured some big\u00a0arms deals<\/a>\u00a0with Israel since coming to power in 2014.<\/p>\n So, these good terms having been established, what further advantages will Modi now bargain for? Hell, it seemingly worked for Putin. It would be surprising if Modi is not at least weighing the question.<\/p>\n Yet another particularly cynical manifestation of the global prohibition regime: Cannabis convicts can be exploited as instruments of policy.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0do you travel with cannabis?<\/p>\n The post When Pot Prisoners Become Geopolitical Pawns<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Naama Issachar, the young American-Israeli woman who was busted at the Moscow airport for cannabis possession, is now free after being detained since April 2019 and making international headlines for the extremity of her case. Issachar\u2019s release is certainly good news for her and her family, but this victory cameContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,35,133,81,130],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41249,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41248\/revisions\/41249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Naama Issachar as a Pawn in Russia-Poland Spat<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Xi Jinping & China Also In on the Game\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\u2028Will Narendra Modi Get a\u00a0Quid Pro Quo, Too?<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: When Pot Prisoners Become Geopolitical Pawns<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"