Alisher Usmanov and Schillings: back again
Remember a few weeks ago when lawyers acting for Uzbek billionaire and potential Arsenal buyer, Alisher Usmanov, had Craig’s Murray’s, Tim Ireland’s, Boris Johnson’s and a bunch of others’ websites taken down? And do you remember the wave of publicity those actions received?
Well, they’re at it again, and this time it’s the mighty Indymedia on the receiving and of the threats.
Indymedia UK has been issued with a takedown notice [10th of September & 21st of September] from lawyers acting for Alisher Usmanov. The notice served to Indymedia charged Indymedia with publishing allegedly libellous accusations about Usmanov, one of the richest men in Russia, recently linked to a possible hostile takeover of Arsenal FC.
This only makes Usmanov’s charm offensive this week, involving the flying via private jet of at least 9 British journalists to his offices in Moscow, then putting them up in a five star hotel all the more shallow. He says he’s not a vindictive man and that some of Murray’s allegations are beneath his dignity to respond to, yet his lackey of legal brown-nosing sycophants are still trying to remove all mentions and republishing of Murray’s original post, while still failing to respond either to Murray’s request for them to sue him or to even explain how inaccurate his allegations are, apart from their completely untrue argument that Usmanov was pardoned by Gorbachev.
If Usmanov and Schillings want to keep digging this hole, I for one don’t mind shovelling in the dirt on top of them. Usmanov has the money and the lawyers to fight libel cases from here to judgement day. There can be only one reason he doesn’t want to – just like why Gordon Brown doesn’t want to fight an election – because he doesn’t think he can win on a level playing field.
Spread the word.
Posted on October 7th, 2007 at 10:21 am
| See also • The Mainstream Media and Alisher Usmanov: Fair and Balanced • It’s been a privilege • 291 |
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• Filed under Alisher Usmanov, Civil liberties, Culture, media and sport |
• 9 Comments |
Word duly spread, sir!
And again.
And again.
[...] Alisher, don’t you learn? As Chicken Yoghurt notes today, Usmanov’s recent claim that Craig Murray’s statements about his past were [...]
[...] This time they’re targeting IndyMedia UK. [...]
Word spreaded a little wider still.
Usmanov and Schillings can go fuck themselves…
Who’s heard the phrase “when you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the fist thing to do is stop digging”? Not Alisher Usmanov, the Russian/Uzbek billionaire who’s been described as a “gangster and racketeer” in the …
Here we go again…
Hia,
just to say that we had a pretty long discussion about if to pull the article or not, and in the end, we compromised that we would at least temporarily because we did not get any reply from Craig Murray when we emailed him in the week of decision-making to ask him about upholding his allegations.
And as he is apparently very keen to be sued himself, we thought that it might in a weird way round help him with that aim.
And unfortunately nobody yet volunteered from the collective to take on responsibility for the publishing of the article and to potentially go to court.
cheerio and well done and thanks everybody.