Coach Red Pill Gonzalo Lira’s Father: “Did the US State Department Give the Green Light to Zelensky to Put my Son in Jail?” | The Gateway Pundit | by Richard Abelson


Coach Red Pill Gonzalo Lira’s Father: “Did the US State Department Give the Green Light to Zelensky to Put my Son in Jail?”

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US journalist Gonzalo Lira is being imprisoned and possibly tortured in Ukraine for the crime of criticizing the government. His father charged the Biden Regime with “complicity, or at least tacit approval” of Lira’s custody. The US Embassy in Kiev has so far declined to comment.

Gonzalo Lira became famous as a YouTuber  “Coach Red Pill” 2017, in the first heyday of MAGA YouTube, before leaving the United States for Kharkiv, Ukraine end of 2021, where he happened to end up in the middle of the Russian invasion.

When Russia attacked February 24, 2022, Gonzalo Lira happened to be in Kiev, staying at the Hotel where numerous Western journalists congregated. He became one of the very first critics of Western strategy in Ukraine, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “evil” and trolling Western correspondents as “system pigs.”

On May 5, 2023,  Ukraine’s notorious SBU security service announced they had arrested Gonzalo Lira, calling him “Moscow-aligned” and accusing him “of denying Russian war crimes and insulting Ukrainian troops,”  New Voice of Ukraine reported.

Lira was accused of “denying Russian war crimes” and “justifying Russian aggression,” claiming that Ukraine was “shelling its own territory” and that “a neo-Nazi regime ruled the country.”

“Such activities constitute a criminal offense under Article 436-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (justification, recognition as lawful, denial of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine, glorification of its participants)”, New Voice of Ukraine wrote: The SBU security service “documented Lira’s activities and served the blogger with a notice of suspicion.”

“In May 2023, the court imposed on him a preventive measure in the form of detention with the possibility of bail. He was initially released on house arrest after posting the bail, but was arrested again in July when he attempted to cross the border into Hungary on his motorcycle,” New Voice of Ukraine writes.

On July 31, 2023, Gonzalo Lira posted three videos in which he claimed he had spent “9 ½ weeks in prison” and had been out on bail since July 6. He also posted a Twitter thread containing the charges against him, saying he was due to stand trial on August 2nd.

He was charged with the “production and distribution of materials containing the justification, recognition as legitimate, denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which began in 2014, including by presenting the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine as an internal conflict, justifying, recognizing as legitimate the temporary occupation of part of the territory of Ukraine.

The penalty Lira faces is “5 to 8 years in a prison labor camp”, he said, noting he is 55 and has a “fairly serious heart condition: I’m not gonna survive 5 to 8 years.”

Once inside Sizo pretrial investigation prison (oLukyanivska Prison in Kiev), Lira said he was initially not allowed to post bail. He spoke to representatives of the US State Department three times during the nine weeks he was there, he said. “They made no effort to pull me out. If I’d been a black lesbian druggie or a transgender grifter, I would’ve been out instantly,” Lira said.

Sources told him Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland “hates my guts,” Lira claimed.

Lira said he was “tortured in two of the four cells I was in—by the other prisoners. Guards NEVER beat prisoners—they outsource torture to the other prisoners.  One prisoner actually apologized to me, telling me he had no choice. He wasn’t lying. I understood.”

“I got a cracked rib in my first cell, but it wasn’t too bad. The worst stretch was in my fourth cell.  From 1 pm on June 21 until 7 pm the next day—30 hours—I was beaten and sleep deprived, my arms twisted the wrong way around at the shoulders, and generally beaten pretty bad,“ Lira posted.

Two inmates held his head, and “one of them used a toothpick to scratch the whites of my left eye”, Lira said,  “and the other said, ‘You can read with just one eye, right?’ That really freaked me out.”

He was eventually allowed to post bail, Lira said on July 31, but had to surrender his documents, wear an ankle monitor,  and wasn’t allowed to leave the embattled city of Kharkov. They also confiscated all of his electronic devices and $9000 in emergency cash, Lira said.

When an SBU officed returned his documents and was no longer required to wear his ankle monitor, Lira took this as a tacit nudge from the Ukrainian officials to leave the country, which he then attempted to do.

“I rode my motorcycle across Ukraine—1,400 kms in two days.  I’m going to Hungary to ask for political asylum,” he posted on August 1.

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That was the last that has been heard from him.

 

“Lira is currently being held in the Kharkiv pretrial detention center. His court hearing is scheduled for December 12 and December 21”,  New Voice of Ukraine wrote on Dec.10.

Tucker Carlson spoke to Gonzalo Lira’s father, as Gateway Pundit reported, who said he had not heard from his son, who has been in prison for 7 months without trial, and charged the State Department with complicity.

“He was assigned a Ukrainian attorney who doesn’t speak English,” Gonzalo Lira Sr. said.

The US Embassy in Ukraine “hasn’t done a thing,”  Gonzalo Lira Sr. charged. “Neither I nor his sister living in the USA have been able to communicate” with Lira, his father said. “The Embassy never visited him except

“An American citizen is in jail because he was exercising his right of freedom of speech,” Lira Sr. said. “The US government’s silence suggests a degree of complicity, or at least tacit approval of Gonzalo’s arrest since nothing else convincingly explains the conspicuous lack of response.”

“Last April 27 of this year, Gonzalo posted a video heavily criticizing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Four days later, the Zelensky police detained Gonzalo,” his father noted. “Why was he not detained earlier?”

“Did the State Department give the green light to Zelensky to put my son in jail?” Gonzalo Lira Sr. asked.

Ukrainian law enforcement’s actions were “carried out in accordance with the law,” the Security Service (SBU) told New Voice of Ukraine.

Gateway Pundit has sent inquiries to the US Embassy in Kiev, the State Department, and the Ukrainian SBU. We will update with any reply we receive.

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Richard Abelson

You can email Richard Abelson here, and read more of Richard Abelson’s articles here.

 

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