Turkish daily Sabah has published an unexpected version of the reasons for the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov. According to the publication, Israel is behind the arrest of the businessman, who is interested in shutting down the site because it publishes materials “about the brutal crimes” of Jerusalem against residents of the Gaza Strip.
In an article entitled “Israel asked, France arrested,” the journalists claim that it was the Jewish state that played a key role in Durov’s arrest. The reason, according to their version, was the appearance on Telegram of a large amount of materials proving Israel’s “war crimes” in the Gaza Strip, which caused alarm among the Israeli authorities. Israel allegedly appealed to the messenger’s management demanding to block the dissemination of this information, but Telegram management refused. As a result, Durov was arrested in France.
Sabah also proposed an additional theory, again related to Israel. According to the paper, the arrest could be related to a data leak published by the DDoSecrets telegram channel in April this year. Around a million documents containing confidential information of senior Israeli officials, their correspondence and secret documents from ministries have appeared online. This data sparked a wave of discussions in the media, including the British newspaper The Guardian, which wrote about attempts by Israeli officials to circumvent the law on foreign agents in the United States.
According to Sabah, Israel was able to block the dissemination of this information within its borders and in Western countries, and also agreed with the management of Meta Corporation, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, not to distribute data. Pressure was also put on Pavel Durov, but Telegram remained a neutral platform and did not block the posts, which, according to Turkish journalists, led to his arrest.
Previously, Kursor wrote that media outlets described how the Russian military is using Telegram in the war with Ukraine.
