Is Gulnara Karimova dead? The source of today’s reports is Galima Burkabaeva, who is a first class journalist. She personally spoke with the Uzbek security service (SNB) source who told her Gulnara was killed by poisoning on 5 November. Galima does not vouch for the story’s truth, but she believes the source had credibility, and she is well placed to make that call.
Gulnara was once the wealthiest female oligarch in Moscow society. She had amazing friends. Unfortunately she failed to notice that the kind of friends who do not care if you made your money out of child forced labour in the cotton fields, are the same kind of friends who will not care if you are chained to an iron bedstead in an ex-Soviet mental institution being pumped full of lobotomising chemicals with only a tin potty for company.
You see, it is not only the “celebrities” who just want someone to quietly disappear once their supply of the readies to splash around dries up. Not one western government has inquired of the new President of Uzbekistan, Shavrat Mirziayev, what he has done with his predecessor’s daughter, not to mention her children, who have also vanished.
A lot of people in the West would be most happy if she is dead. Especially in Sweden, where the massive Telesonera scandal over payments to Gulnara for mobile phone contracts implicates an important swathe of Sweden’s tight-knit business and political elite. While the Swedish police are very anxious to interview Gulnara, Swedish politicians are very anxious she never stands up in a witness box. The same is true in France, and in Switzerland, in both of which the police want her. In the United States, where $550 million of her assets have been frozen, there are some major Texas families anxious she is permanently silent. Weirdly enough the UK is the only country where she had a house and major assets but is not wanted by police, because no matter how immoral and twisted your activity, it is probably not illegal in the City of London.
In short, the 1% in the West would very much rather Gulnara were dead than speaking out from witness boxes. That is something she has in common with Osama Bin Laden and with Muammar Gadaffi. Bin Laden could have given fascinating information about his long term relationship with the CIA and the involvement of major Saudi Royals in funding Al-Qaeda and 9/11. Gadaffi would have been very interesting on, among other subjects, his deals with Tony Blair and BP, extraordinary rendition and Lockerbie. Much better for the Western 1% that these people just die. That is why no Western Embassy will ever ask the Uzbek government where Gulnara is.
But there is more than that. It is true that Gulnara joins many thousands who have simply “disappeared” and probably been killed in the Uzbek dictatorship. It is true there are thousands of more deserving political prisoners. But Galima Burkabaeva, who is in exile for bravely opposing everything Gulnara and her family stood for, is genuinely concerned for Gulnara’s safety and that of her children – because Gulnara is a human being. That is true of other Uzbek human rights activists too, and the same networks are now being put into operation, feelers being put into the system, that swing into action when it is a human rights activist, journalist, poet or imam who has been “disappeared”.
There are no phone calls going in to the Presidential Palace in Tashkent from the Clinton Foundation, from Sting or from her former (ahem) close associate, tycoon Joan Laporta, who disgraced Barcelona football club by its links to the Uzbek dictatorship.
Because when it comes down to it, the only people who actually care about Gulnara as a person are the human rights activists she despised, and who her rich “friends” would never deign to notice.
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Doesn’t her likely death raise the question of what really happened to her father?
Looks to me that he too was murdered, and the people who did or approved it, like some western intelligence service, especially SiS, didn’t want her to talk because she knew who did it.
He was old. People die.
I was just his age when Leon Panetta’s hit squad tried to poison me during February 2009 in the Shanghai Restaurant on Sveavagan near where another one started stalking Olof Palme to his murder.
Fortunately, naive me had finally gotten the idea of what it was up to by then, and I didn’t leave my seat and try anything from the buffet.
And I have lived another eight years without any serious problems.
A slick murder plot by someone’s spooks is generally written off as a natural one unless they can make it look like a suicide.
A son and a daughter have lost a mother presumably.
What’s the Mish-Mish on Gulnara Karimova?
An anonymous source says she’s dead, another anonymous source says she’s alive.
By Catherine Putz
November 23, 2016
http://thediplomat.com/2016/11/whats-the-mish-mish-on-gulnara-karimova/
Locked up in an asylum according to the Mail last month in this flowery piece which includes a reference to Craig.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3814310/Billionaire-princess-daughter-former-Uzbek-president-not-seen-public-TWO-years-locked-mental-institute-father-s-successor.html
Sting has been busy performing at the Ba-ta-clan and as for Clinton, who knows, off with the fairies judging from his pre election appearances.
Are you trying to take take piss out of the Bataclan by writing it in that peculiar way?
If you are, then shame on you.
If not, please register that it’s spelled “Bataclan” and not “Ba-ta-clan”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataclan_(theatre)
Your point, Squonk?
Take a look at their current sign logo
https://www.bataclan.fr/
Also zoom in on the name oin the building in this historical one http://www.billboard.com/files/media/bataclan-1865-bparis-billboard-510.jpg
Please apologize.
Certainly not. What for?
For your insulting comment. I too had looked at the sign and noticed the way it was spelt.
Where is Sting you say, well most recently he was at the Bataclan in Paris performing. But the less we say about that, and the dubiety that surrounds it the better.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/13/sting-reopens-the-bataclan-in-emotional-gig-a-year-after-paris-terror-attacks
More to the point, does anyone really care about Gulnara Karimova, and her likely demise?
Unless of course, the hunt is on for any fortune she may have stashed away, whilst her psychopathic father brutally ruled the roost.
I wonder if Gordon Sumner, is a British agent?
“because Gulnara is a human being.”
As is Imelda Marcos, and so was Elena Ceausescu, Eva Braun, Elizabeth Báthory, Ranavalona I, and a whole host of other women either in power or attached to it through marriage or birth.
I doubt many tears will be shed for Gulnara.
Aside from assassinating enemies not being ideal under any system, I think you missed the point about her appearing as a witness.
And the question of her children, who I presume you wouldn’t deem so dispensable.
RoS
“More to the point, does anyone really care about Gulnara Karimova, and her likely demise?”
There are those who care about human rights and who think about human rights, and there are those to whom human rights are simply an obstacle to be cast aside.
That was a noble post, Craig, and it befits you much better than a couple of your other recent ones.
And as the various comments which have already appeared and which will surely follow show, you deserve better followers.
I agree its a good post sad too. But on followers might it not be the case that, as with gurus, one gets who one deserves. And – you only have to read some of the other blogs out there to see how belligerent and obscene many are.
Off topic but of interest to those mulling over US political direction Jayne Mayer’s new book on the Koch brothers and fellow libertarian new / old rightwingers Dark Money: How a secretive group of billionaires is trying to buy political control in the US. Apparently they raised US889000000 for the recent election, were initially said to be at odds with Trump, but there is obviously a need for a new chapter covering this Autumn.
I always try to give Craig the benefit if the doubt. But I admit it’s sometimes difficult (eg wheb he writes about “Israeli genocide”…)
Yes I suppose the likes of you, will always find the truth “difficult” to swallow, regarding Israeli activities.
Spot on!
I had a simple rule at my place: I would delete comments for any reason I saw fit but I would always say whose comment was deleted, what it said, and why this was objectionable. All in my own terms, sure – it was my blog. But that notwithstanding I’d always explain. Curiously my deletions were split evenly between neo-nazis and zionists. Go figure.
I understand that you’re a busy chap, but this is a blog, and you are running it, and to delete high-handedly and without comment is both lazy and counterproductive, ie. it’s unenlightening to the point of making a chap wonder if you aren’t an arbitrary and whimsical fellow who likes to play favourites. Best I can tell, shmoozing helps.
Perhaps I’m wrong. But who can tell?
Just continuing O/T although the Koch brothers appear to have opposed Trump more than all the other GOP candidates they have apparently long supported Pence. So they’re in there. In power with a Whitehouse. Fortune, influence, networks, industry, think tanks and now the outside. On the outside Trump a growling bear potential to goodness knows what but certainly a potential to deconstruct the state. On the inside their quieter man who appears to represent the Koch core values.
Interesting times….
All the mish-mish I have read about Islam, particularly Daniel Hannan’s piece in The Spectator, is that he had outlived his usefulness, and likely died in a most painful way, sounding more like what happened to Yasser Arafat and Sasha than any natural one..
Don’t like killings, especially ones with torture.
Life after all is a sexually transmitted condition which is in the end always fatal.
Öff topic, but interested in the Assange watchers reaction to this http://www.euractiv.com/section/trade-society/news/ecuadorian-vp-eu-trade-deal-is-unlike-other-agreements/?nl_ref=25291753
I like that first line. Real humour! 🙂
Life after all is a sexually transmitted condition which is in the end always fatal.
Yes, a lot more deadly than Aids. In fact, in over a hundred million years there has never been even a single survivor. What is more, the fatal result is perfectly correlated with birth. (The moral is, when someone dies you can celebrate their birth – birth life and death are inseparable).
Aleksei Volosovich thinks her death is unlikely for the following reasons.
Three weeks for the story to get out is too long and does not ring trueto him. Her children would have questioned her whereabouts. There is no need to poison her since being out of the public eye she is not in anyone’s way and not a threat. Being allegedly buried in the cemetery at Minor EU officials would want evidence by calling for her body exhumed.
Allegedly a spokesperson for the Uzbek ministry of foreign affairs has said not to read the tabloids and wait for an official responseю
A separate source says the following questions have been put by the press to the office of the ministry.
1. Is it true that 44-year-old Gulnara Karimova died on 5 November?
2. Has there been a medical examination with expert opinion about the cause of her death?
3. Is it true that she is buried in the cemetery “Minor” in Tashkent?
4. If she’s alive, could she be given the opportunity to meet people and make a statement?
5. Who benefits from her disappearance or death? Does she have the protection of government agencies as the daughter of the first President?
6. Where are her children, Islam and Iman. Are they in Tashkent?
7. Is the office of the President still responsible for the family of the first President, and if so are they protected from infringements, other benefits and rights?
At the moment no answer has been given to these questions.
Liked that, Craig. You raise some interesting questions about Gulnara’s unacknowledged associates. And Telia Sonera’s, which, in passing, also include some Aliyevs, unsurprisingly:
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/69036
But Lola, Gulnara’s craftier sister, still seems to be in circulation, and their old mum, Tatanya, with whom Gulnara had a pyrotechnic falling-out shortly before being restrained by Dad. Unlikely that anyone will ever know for sure, but my money’s on Lola, in the garden shed, with the cyanide koumiss.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/81361
Fascinating and chilling reads (your links) but they make Tony Blair seem like a babe in arms in comparison.
“While the Swedish police are very anxious to interview Gulnara, Swedish politicians are very anxious she never stands up in a witness box. ”
__________
So the Swedish politician’s would like Gulnara, to disappear, yet the Swedish authorities are hellbent on making Julian Assange, reappear in a courtroom.
×××××××××××××××××××
“because no matter how immoral and twisted your activity, it is probably not illegal in the City of London.”
_________
I’m finding it very difficult to disagree with your above statement.
I hope RoS the Swedish prosecutors will realise that Julian Assange has no case to answer, that his self-imposed detention in the Ecuadorian Embassy has been a price already too severe even if they consider he did commit a crime that they will drop their investigation.
Assange is very popular, especially in America, and now is a good time to vote for him in the Time Magazine person of the year award. You can vote for more than one person. But he is doing quite well. 🙂
http://time.com/4578520/julian-assange-donald-trump-person-of-the-year-poll/
hear hear! I quite agree with you. A zeitgeistian voice in the brooding Orwellian Tempest of gloom.
Speaking of which, has the postponed interview of Mr Assange now taken place?
If so, what was the outcome?
Any news? RoS, perhaps (since you raised the topic)?
Don’t tell me there’s been another “hitch” !
I’m only going to buy his book because, despite flaws, I reckon Mr Murray is relentlessly one of the best things happening online in 2016.
That’s very kind of you, both to say that and to buy the book. I do hope you will join the ranks of those who have discovered the book is unexpectedly fascinating!
Must confess to buying the book more as thanks and encouragement for this blog than for its content 🙂
Were is Sting? Get stung by Sting because its a Sting.I wonder if he did the Exegesis course? Like Mike Oldfield.Their cult leader charged his followers £££ to work in the gardens of his manor house.. “Help harvest Sting’s Tuscan grapes olives for £200 a day (you pay him)Former lead singer of Police says tourists welcome to roll up their sleeves – at a price.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11057371/Help-harvest-Stings-Tuscan-grapes-olives-for-200-a-day-you-pay-him.html
Poor old Stink, he made one or two records over the years, now he’s on the upper rungs of the Tony Blair Ladder of Pariahs that leads down into Hades.
Fascinating article, thank you very much. I’ll make sure to buy a book later this week. Warm regards and respect. L
o/t
It’s just amazing how America can cherry-pick its heroes.
Today President Obama presented the nation’s highest civilian honor to Maya Lin. designer of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington.
While I have no objection to her getting the award, the person who got Congress to provide the money for the project, John P, Wheeler, Jr., was murdered, and nothing has happened about it, as its investugation has a lid on it.
No matter who killed him, his familty deserves similar recognition, and the most obvious reason it doesn’t is because Wheeler leaked nuclear information to the Iranians, and the Obama administration saw to his brutal murder apparently.
Wheeler’s murder happened six years ago, come the end of December.
Good to know Craig is slipping further and further into the so-called ‘Conspiracy’ network!
Bravo! Nothing to lose, but your chains!
The sad thing about the above comment is that Barbara is being perfectly serious.
The funny thing about the above comment is that Habbabkuk is being perfectly serious.
This is such uncomfortable reading. Such a stinging rebuke. and it is clear that it will be very difficult to take down the vast edifices of narcissism and disordered and corrupted mental condition that sustains this condition. I fear that Trump is in the same mould as the ill-fated Karimovas, disconnected from their humanity-sustained by a fantasy world based on extinguishing their connections to the rest of humanity.
I wonder how many of those mentioned or those connected to those mentioned will ever be aware of the post. I think such people get to a point where their moral foundations are so eroded that they have nowhere to go- except maybe denial.
If true that she has been killed, will Ms Karimova even have been aware of why she was being eliminated in this way?
May I put something O/T here.
The execrable Kamm is attacking David Morrison, a friend of Peter Oborne. The usual stuff – Srebenica related. Peter Oborne is defending his friend.
http://twitter.com/OborneTweets
Picked-up here;
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/peter-oborne-issues-legal-warning-to-oliver-kamm-of-the-times-kamm-says-my-reps-are-ready/
Interesting that Craig omitted Saddam Hussein from his list of Dead Men Tell No Tales; probably a hang-up from his time when he was in charge of denying Iraqis everyday essentials during the genocidal sanctions, by declaring most things as possible “dual-use”.
According to Daniil Kislov, editor of Fergananews, the source is not as credible as Galima thinks. But who knows. As it happened many times in the past these kind of sources reveal true information even though it was hard to believe in it. What makes me certain is that noone can and shall trust Uzbek officials.
I however; have another theory. I think that Gulnara’s disappearance and possible “death” was staged. Considering that she is being wanted by law enforcement agencies around the world, and considering her sharkish attitude towards big businesses, criminals and uzbek officials, her “death” would be the best possible scenario for her to start new life. With the money she still has access to and with some support from uzbek security services this will not be a problem. She was kept aside for 3 years on her father’s order and considering that dust has settled in terms on power transition in Uzbekistan, she is no longer representing danger to the power brokers in Uzbekistan.
Even in Uzbekistan with one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world there is a bond that unites power elite. There have been number of high profile dismissals during karimov’s presidency but there have never been a case of long prison sentence (or even any prison sentence) for those representing power elite. And there has never been assassination case of someone who has lost karimov’s trust. So why would eldest daughter of the former president (who is still respected as founding father of the nation) would be cold bloodily assassinated?
I am convinced that uzbek government will continue to keep its silence for a long time and will then reveal that karimova has died of natural causes (her heath issues are known) and was buried.
I am pretty sure Babur Usmanov was killed. Gulnara doesn’t have the temperament to live anonymously in suburban secrecy. She is either dead or incarcerated.
I had not appreciated who Diora Usmanova, is related to.
‘Diora Usmanova, 27, is the niece of Uzbekistan Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev and the niece-in-law of Arsenal tycoon Alisher Usmanov.’
Inside the Life of a Rich Girl Whose Dictator Uncle Tortures People to Death
http://nextshark.com/diora-usmanova-instagram/
March 2016
Behind every assassination there is a reason and/or people benefiting from it. Even when millions have been killed and starved to death in Soviet Gulag there was a reason, many reasons in fact.
But what is the reason for killing Babur Usmanov? Who has benefited from it? Was it to prevent Usmanov from allying with Mirziyaev? But Mirziyaev is de facto president and can now dismiss any other official in Uzbekistan if he wants. Usmanov has long had some (in recent years very minor) business interests in Uzbekistan and never had expressed presidential ambitions. If Usmanov has any enemies they are certainly outside of Uzbekistan, and most probably in Russia itself.
The death of Babur was suspicious but I personally know several cases when people died in car crash accidents by dangerous driving, and most of these cases were where rich young people have been involved. They are the ones who has little to no respect for law including driving rules.
As for Gulnara I am sure that she realised that times have changed. Then she was eldest daughter of the most powerful man in Uzbekistan. She knew that no matter what she will be protected by whatever resources and authority her father had. First she was stripped of all her influence on her father’s order (which she felt offended with and thus resisted) and then with her father’s death she must have realised that being wanted by law enforcement agencies around the world, she must disappear from public eyes if she wants to continue to enjoy her life. Her millions (if not billions) will be great help for her and her children.
Is it possible that she met not only Clinton but also Trump? Trump grabbed her by the p _ _ _ _ _ and she joined his harem in Trump Tower….
Has Assange gone missing?
Where Is Julian Assange? – By Milo Yiannopoulos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNaiZcUZXus
A brilliant and fascinating analysis of the tectonic shifts in global relations and strategic partnerships that might take place under a Trump presidency by Federico Pieraccini:
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/11/23/complicated-decisions-await-donald-trump.html
Of course, to what extent it will turn out like this is anybody’s guess, but it is a fascinating – and hopeful – analysis.
Grim stuff.
Who’s the chubby fella in second pic?
That’s Gérard Depardieu that is.
Blimey, he’s put on a bit since his musketeering days.
Usmanov has never managed to have this cartoon taken off the web.
Usmanov-watch: Revealed as yet another grasping, greedy megalomanical oligarch.
http://www.septicisle.info/2007/10/usmanov-watch-revealed-as-yet-another.html
Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a chat with him about recent events in Uzbekistan!
I’m not sure I would want to go to war with this navy. RT: Not again! US Navy ‘stealth’ destroyer towed into port after another breakdown.
I suspect that a growing number would be quite happy to go to war with it.
By ” …not want to go to war with this navy” I think lysias means not wanting to serve as a US sailor.
I know Mick, just teasing.
I wonder where Hillary Clinton is on this issue…. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html?mid=facebook_nymag
As in baseball, it ain’t over ’til it’s over.
The details.
https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-was-hacked-look-at-the-ballots-c61a6113b0ba#.i3bncv5j9
One suspects Googoosha will pop up again.
However Craig you weren’t exactly a fan of hers, not that she had many!
Just to calm everyone down
“Uzbekistan: Islam Karimov Junior says mother’s death “rumours””
http://enews.fergananews.com/news.php?id=3187&mode=snews
How do you get a square named after you in Moscow?
You just need to order boiling alive few dozens of people, order shooting few hundreds including women and children, forcing millions into slave labour, reducing nation into poverty all that by keeping considerable distance from Kremlin’s neo-soviet policy. And of course the main criteria, you need to die from brain haemorrhage while being leader of the nation for over 25 years.
The article is in Russian but you can transtale it via google to get sence.
http://www.fergananews.com/news/25646