Had that been proven, sure, you could have maybe worked from there. But it wasn't. All that was shown was a free speech violation.
How do you know it wasn't proven? If it was, such proof would not be public and would stay between the SBU and US embassy.
Ironically, SBU decided to legally bag him on the publicly very provable Russian propaganda law, possibly to avoid the secrecy issue.
There wasn't actually free speech in the US at the time, the US opinion towards anti-war speech changed rapidly after we got real free speech protections. So that's a totally irrelevant standard.
If Ukraine had arrested him as a spy, an argument could be made. But for a free speech violation? Nope.
Free speech? In wartime? Propagandizing for the invading power? No, that's not just your garden variety free speech violation. It was activism, not journalism. They suffered his bullshit for years before the war, which demonstrates a lot of tolerance for disagreeable speech, and then some. But it was war and he was on notice.
We do this all the time for people who make stupider decisions, like those who visit North Korea, who we are still at war with. Yes, Lira was stupid. But the US was perfectly positioned to get him back, and the US not doing so for a journalist is bad.
Those are merely retarded, not getting in trouble for supporting a third side that USA also hates. The latter alone gets him into a whole another layer of shit.
Lira wasn't convicted of spying, nor tried for spying, nor arrested for spying. He was arrested for journalism. The US's first duty should be to it's citizens, not another country.
No, he was arrested for being an agent of influence for a country in active war against the arresting country. He was even tolerated for doing the same before the active war part happened and then for months too, but he was *really* trying to get into trouble despite warnings.
By doing that, he was serving that country, not USA. USA has duty towards its citizens, but it gets more complicated if said citizen commits legitimate crimes against the country in question, especially if USA also sees them as such, and then it's up to the government to weight these concerns.
Say, a US citizen goes to some poor country and gets caught committing cannibalmurderrape.
As common in poor countries, the prisons there are nasty, uncomfortable and dangerous.
USA has no duty to put the same effort, or any at all, into protecting him and helping him as if it would give to another citizen who was arrested for no good reason or something very iffy.
