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A professor from Israel, who was arrested in Cyprus on a US warrant, says his prosecution is politically motivated and further alleges that the Justice Department is trying to discredit him over dirt he has on Hunter Biden’s deals with China.
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Israeli professor Gal Luft took to Twitter on Sunday following his arrest last week at Larnaca International Airport, after Cyprus Police detained him on illegal arms dealing charges.
Luft, an executive director at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in Washington, was preparing to catch a flight to Israel on Thursday when he was stopped by officers before boarding the plane.
Luft says he is not an arms dealer and further alleges US authorities are trying to discredit him over incriminating information he has in a corruption case against Hunter Biden
The 56-year-old, who had also served as lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army, is awaiting extradition trial after his Friday arraignment on charges of arms trafficking and fraud for offenses allegedly committed between 2015 and 2023.
But Luft says he is not an arms dealer and further alleges US authorities are trying to discredit him over incriminating information he has in a corruption case against Hunter Biden.
“DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim & Hunter Biden,” a statement read on Luft’s a Twitter account.
“Shall I name names?” it continued.
Defense attorney Mordechai Tzivin says his client’s arrest is politically motivated and an attempt to silence him.
“The arrest came four years after Luft cooperated with FBI and Department of Justice investigators to help them with information about the case,” the attorney told Ynetnews.
Testimony against Bidens would be devastating
Tzivin, who made the statement after the arrest in Cyprus, was referring to a 2019 meeting in which the defense and energy expert allegedly gave incriminating information on the younger Biden.
“His testimony will be very devastating, it will divert attention to the president himself as well," he added.
US President Joe Biden, who traveled unannounced to Ukraine on Monday morning to meet with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, has been engulfed in a political scandal after data from his son Hunter’s laptop, including emails, pointed to shady deals.
Critics say they are suspicious of an email about Ukraine that Hunter allegedly sent in mid April 2014 to a business partner about doing business with Burisma, an energy firm from Ukraine that is based in Cyprus.
In late April 2014, then-VP Biden visited Ukraine while two weeks later he also traveled to Cyprus on an official visit to the divided island’s capital in Nicosia.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who implicated Cyprus in his claims against the Bidens, says the family has been using their political influence to enrich themselves through wrongdoing in China and Ukraine, an allegation rejected by both the president and his son.
In December 2020, Hunter announced he had been under federal investigation into alleged tax crimes.
But critics say there has not been enough attention to questions into other claims, including alleged dealings with suspected criminals in China as well as an executive appointment at Burisma for Hunter in the same month as his father’s visit to Cyprus.
Giuliani has further claimed that Ukrainian chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was looking into possible wrongdoing at Burisma, had been removed under sinister motives.
President Biden, who took credit for Shokin’s ouster, told an audience in 2018 at a forum in Washington that the prosecutor was corrupted, stalling investigations, and that European governments also wanted the prosecutor gone.
Luft, who is expected to fight his US extradition in a Cypriot court, has been a vocal critic of American foreign policy under the Biden administration.
During a conference on democracy and human values in Beijing in 2021, Luft described the Biden administration’s commitment to democracy as “going only as far as its interests allow."
A recent report by the Analysis of Global Security, which is co-directed by Luft, accused Washington of "pursuing illegal economic policies" against other nations including Russia.
I've been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the US.
— Gal Luft (@GalLuft) February 19, 2023
The US, claiming I'm an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren't tragic.
I've never been an arms dealer.
DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe,Jim&Hunter Biden.
Shall I name names?
