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this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
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I don't trust European governments considering their support for Israel, but even if that were true, does that give them the right to punish young children?
Does a mother become immune from judicial persecution just because she has a child? Kids aren't a get-out-of-jail-free card.
What did the mom do, other than being married to a guy convicted of antizionism?
We don't know, as far as I know it hasn't been publicized.
Guilty until proven innocent, then?
Freezing accounts is a preventative measure. The German government must have evidence that there's likely criminal proceeds on these accounts, plus a real risk that these funds would be transferred elsewhere. A court case usually follows fairly quickly.
If a billionaire is accused of fraud, you wouldn't want to allow them to transfer all their wealth out of the country before you can fine them, right?
Yeah, if the German government persecutes someone, that means they must have evidence to justify it...
Yeah, it prevents you from living
It doesn't, he's explicitly allowed to withdraw enough money to cover basic needs. Dogru confirmed this in one article on this, but he's also dishonest about it in his tweets where he suggets he's not allowed to withdraw anything.
You don't understand anything about this case or about how sanctions work.
There are no "criminal proceeds" because they have not committed any crime, and they have not been accused of any crime. There is no investigation and no court case. Their accounts were frozen because the EU imposed sanctions on them. He was sanctioned for his journalism and she was sanctioned for "helping him circumvent sanctions" by paying the bills when he no longer could because his accounts were frozen. They are not allowed to contest the sanctions in court because the sanctions are not a legal measure, they are an administrative measure applied by Brussels which the German government supports and complies with.
He is allowed to withdraw enough funds to cover the basic bills. She was sanctioned because he got a new car insurance in his name and used her account to pay for it.
There has been an investigation, and a ruling from the European Commission. He has also appealed that decision, which failed.
And the idea that they can't challenge the sanctions in court is utter bullshit. You absolutely can challenge them before the GCEU/ECJ, which has made several rulings on applied sanctions in the past.
Again, you are clearly a child and have never had to pay bills if you think that the tiny amount they are allowed to withdraw is enough even to pay rent and food for a family with children.
More importantly it doesn't matter that they are being allowed a tiny amount of their own money. This is not stolen money, they have committed no crime, and they have not been accused of a crime. The crime is denying them their own money.
And no, there has not been an investigation or a court case, because, and I don't know why you seem incapable of understanding this simple fact: THEY DID NOT COMMIT A CRIME! Paying bills is not a crime.
The sanctions come from the European Commission. Oh, wow, so you mean to tell me the EC said We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong? Shocker. Appealing to them is like appealing to Hitler to ask that you be released from the concentration camp.
Except the only courts they can challenge this in are in Brussels and the sanctions ban them from traveling outside of Germany. Are you being purposely obtuse or are you just that dense that you don't understand how this is deliberately set up so they can't do anything?
They are accused of A) violating sanctions placed on Russia and B) attempting to circumvent sanctions. Since these are part of the European sanctions programme, sanctions are the punishment. These sanctions are put in place after an investigation by the EC.
The ECJ is located in Luxembourg, not Brussels. You also do not need to physically travel there to start a court case. You can either attend digitally, or you can simply travel there since travelling to- and from a court case is exempt from any travel restrictions; this stems from the same right that allows a prisoner to attend their court case or to sue, despite not being allowed to leave prison.
Oh btw, another fun tidbit: any contracts signed before the sanctions may still be paid with funds from the frozen accounts. In other words: if he signed his lease before the asset freeze, he may freely use those funds to make rent. German social programmes can help take care of food.
Again, these sanctions certainly aren't fun, but if he or his kids are going to starve because of them, that's entirely voluntary. They can still make rent, they can still feed their kids. That's why he's still posting away on X instead of living under a bridge. These are sanctions designed to prevent asset flight, not starve someone.
Isn't that deeply disturbing to you? They can enact collective punishment like that and don't even need to publicize why? This is what they keep telling us to slander the democratic peoples republic of korea
We don't know if this is collective punishment, you've assumed so but we have no proof of that.
I don't mind protecting people's privacy and publicizing what crimes someone has been accused of, since just the accusation can have serious consequences. Imagine someone is accused of terrorism, this gets out to all the neighbours, and finally the judge clears their name; will those neighbours still trust them?
The people whose accounts are concerned will receive the reason why the accounts were blocked. They too haven't publicized it.
Edit: op mended with the journalists account of what happened. This is really scary. https://x.com/hussedogru/status/2038203613567144354
Do you think they'll just come out and say that? Her husband is a pro-palestine journalist and she gets her bank accounts frozen because of it what else would you call it?
She is already facing the sentencing though. The punishment is already doled out, without a trial.
There is no formal charge, there is no trial, the EU can just sanction you apparently and you have to fight them while under sanction.
Apparently the husband tried to (perhaps unwittingly) circumvent the sanctions placed on him through the accounts of his wife. That will get your accounts frozen alright.
I also don't quite buy the whole narrative that he was sanctioned strictly for being pro-Palestine. There's loads of journalists telling the Palestinian side of things, hell even a lot of state media is pretty critical of Israel these days.
I've seen the "evidence pack" that Dogru published (even though we have no idea if that's a complete story). There's definitely some stuff in there that I'd classify as pro-Kremlin falsehoods.
There's also definitely some dishonesty going on from his side: he publicly claims he has no money left and can't withdraw anything from his accounts (or his wife's). But that's simply not true, as he and his wife are both allowed to withdraw enough money to cover basic needs (not even to mention the social safety nets that Germany has, there's no reason for his kids to go hungry).
He's also stated he believes the invasion of Ukraine to be an illegal act by Russia, yet simultaneously promotes the viewpoint that NATO started a proxy war in Ukraine. There's also some very precise wording going on, e.g. stating he's not involved with Red anymore after Russia invaded Ukraine, but Red was controlled by AFA Medya, which he was still very much involved with. That same Red was also taking on employees who were also involved with RT.
I think there's some very good reasons that unions and NGOs, which historically have taken on loads of cases of journalists being unfairly censored, aren't touching this guy with a 10ft pole. The appeals process here is imo too nebulous, but regardless I doubt that he'd actually win the appeal.
I was wondering how you could still be defending imperialist narratives and then checked your modlog, you believe in the collective punishment of people through sanctions, you're not human
I don't universally support all sanctions. I don't support sanctions on Cuba for example, but I do support sanctions on Israel. If you want to consider me monstrous for that, go ahead.
Sanctions kill over half a million people worldwide every year, from preventable deaths. I'll never agree with that. And with Israel you just need to stop sending them military supplies and other forms of support and they'll fall apart overnight. There's no need to prevent them from buying fucking medicine and food.
Okay, you should be aware that that study you're referring to the numbers of, was done by iirc a scientist linked to a Venezuelan thinktank whose stated purpose is sanctions relief. The study itself also has some questionable methods, for example: if a country previously provided aid in some form, but then stopped, this is counted as a "sanction" and any loss of life is thus included in the figure. So suppose country A supports country B with some aid program, but then B has a violent military coup. A now stops the aid, as there are clear signs that the junta in B is seizing the resources for themselves. The potential deaths the aid could have prevented when the aid was effectively being administered are included in the calculation for a period when that aid more than likely couldn't be effectively administered. Aid programs with a limited duration are also included as "sanctions" once the programs end.
This inflates the numbers in quite a big way. Of course it's still horrid that thousands die due to sanctions, but those numbers don't paint an accurate image (this is not to discount the entire study btw, but it's important to be aware of the nuance here).
Then there's the question of: what is the alternative? Doing nothing at all? Declaring war? Sanctions do have an effect after all. Take apartheid South-Africa, eventually apartheid fell due to the severe economic pressure from international sanctions, spearheaded by India at the time. You'll also have to ask yourself how many more people in SA would have suffered and died if no sanctions had been instated and apartheid had been allowed to fester unopposed internationally. And this effect was never taken into account into the study either.
Of course you could also hypothetically attribute the deaths to whatever triggered the instatement of the sanctions in the first place. If country A declares a war and gets sanctioned because of it, are the extra deaths in country A on the hands of A's government or on the international community applying sanctions?
There's plenty of ideologically motivated sanctions, especially levied by the US, that are total bullshit and just harmful (see: Cuba). I'll always oppose those.
Because he literally couldn't pay bills anymore due to the sanctions! Are you a child? Do you not understand that adults have bills to pay? How do you pay your bills when all your accounts are frozen? She was sanctioned because she paid bills for the family when he no longer could.
Who decides what constitutes as "falsehoods"? Is it illegal to publish speech that contradicts the narrative that the state has declared to be "true"? Clearly the German government doesn't think what he did is illegal because he has not been accused of a crime! These sanctions are entirely extrajudicial. He has violated no laws. The EU just doesn't like his reporting.
According to you, is writing so-called "pro-Kremlin falsehoods" punishable by homelessness and starvation for you and anyone who tries to help you survive? What about pro-NATO falsehoods and pro-EU falsehoods? Or pro-Ukraine falsehoods? What about pro-Israel falsehoods? Why don't we punish those?
It is objectively true and acknowledged even by NATO leaders that the war in Ukraine is a proxy war. And yes it was started by NATO when the US and EU orchestrated the illegal overthrow of the legally elected government in Ukraine by armed fascists to install a proxy puppet which proceeded to start a war on its own people.
There, i said it. Should i now also be sanctioned for saying that? Should my wife be sanctioned for paying my bills when i can no longer do so? Should our children starve because i had the audacity to contradict your sacred narrative?
All entirely irrelevant. None of that is illegal. It is not illegal to work with or for RT (which he doesn't and never did).
They aren't involved because they are either intimidated that they will be targeted next, or because like many Germans, they too are ghouls who support the silencing of pro-Palestinian voices and voices which have been falsely accused of being pro-Russian.
And of course the appeals process is nebulous because it was intentionally designed to be that way! There is no legal appeal, because, once again: the courts were not involved since they committed no crime! They have to appeal to a labyrinthine and unaccountable bureaucracy, and of course they are unlikely to succeed because they are forced to appeal to the very institutions and people who applied these sanctions and who hate him for his uncompromising pro-Palestinian stance.
And ghouls like you will no doubt feel vindicated when he fails because you cannot tolerate dissenting voices and will gleefully celebrate seeing their children starve for their "crime" of saying something you don't like.
Did you miss the part where he's still allowed to withdraw enough funds from the account to pay for the essential bills? He's not starving and he's not homeless either. He qualifies for several German social programs that will keep him afloat. He has been sanctioned for nearly a year now, if he was starving he'd have done so by now.
She was apparently hit with sanctions because he put a new car insurance in his own name on her account; that's clearly circumventing sanctions and a pretty stupid thing to do, especially for a non-essential expenditure like that.
You also keep harping on about the pro-Palestinian stance being an issue, but there's tons of pro-Palestinian media in the EU, all unsanctioned. Even the state media routinely calls the Israeli crimes in Gaza a genocide, bringing in experts that explain why it should be considered one. It makes no sense that only this guy would get sanctioned for that, and not the thousands of others who report on it just the same. The public evidence just doesn't support that claim.
Nobody is starving here. You've fallen for a narrative that isn't true. I also don't support these sanctions, but I also don't believe this guy's narrative here, which contains several distortions of the truth. Hence why I think that even a judge would not revoke the sanctions here and an appeal is likely to fail.
Neither is molesting them enough for a "get into jail free card" or at least a "get impeached free card", seeing all the people on The List.
They blocked his wife's bank account, I assume she's not a young child.
They have young children
Sure, but they are not going to starve as written in the title. That's just a blunt lie. They live in Germany and there are plenty of support options.
If the parents commit a crime related to their bank account, it's reasonable to block these accounts.
The more relevant question is whether anything illegal has happened through his wive's bank account. If so, block it. If not, don't you dare block it. Simple as that
https://x.com/hussedogru/status/2038203613567144354
You seem to assume that she did something illegal based on the account being blocked, but that doesn't always work like that
Did you even read my comment? This is precisely the point. If something illegal happened through her bank account, that would be the only viable reason to block it. If not, there is no justification to block it.
The account blocking has taken a form recently that I condemn, I don't think this should be used in the political discourse.
From the information I could gather about the case, I can't say what happened through her account. There are some vague statements from the Bundespressekonferenz that make it seem like the government/EU takes that position. The family and lawyer claim the opposite.
In this case, I would tend to side with the family until we know more. My point was just that there is quite a stretch between blocking a bank account and starving children.
I read it and didn't get this even from re-reading now
It looks like we were agreeing, but it was hard to say
name them
Caritas, Diakonie, churches, several others. You must be trolling at this point
no, i'm german with a disabled wife andstwo kids. I know you are talking out your ass because those institutions don't offer services to poor people in terms off food assistance. The only notable such service is "die tafel" but good luck finding one that isn't booked up for the next two years. There are some "lebensmittelrettung" whatsappgroups but they are first-come first-serve and usually just want to offload their stuff asap which, for people with kids this means you usually get the leftovers of what already are leftovers.
Caritas und Diakonie geben bei Bedarf z.B. Einkaufsgutscheine raus, weiß ich aus erster Hand. Das ist doch Quatsch, wir können doch nicht behaupten hier verhungern Kinder weil ein Konto gesperrt wird.
Du kannst doch nicht ne vierköpfige Familie mit Diakonie und Caritasgutscheinen ernähren? Erstmal ist dies eine außerordentliche Situation da die Armut dieser Familie gezielt durch EU Sanktionen herbeigeführt wurde, es also rechtlich alles mögliche unklar ist, einschliesslich ob solche Hilfe nicht selbst schon EU Sanktionen verletzt.
Dann sind diese Einkaufsgutscheine in der Regel nur als temporäre Maßnahmen gedacht, von persönlichen Spenden finanziert, das ist doch keine Lebensgrundlage während man gegen eine internationale Regierung kämpfen muss??
Ausserdem gibts es Kinderhunger und Armut in Deutschland, Leute die sterben weil sie keine Krankenversicherung haben etc. Meine Mutter bspw. hatte ein halbverhungerten Säugling in der Beratung weil dessen Mutter nicht genug zu essen hatte und deswegen keine Milch produzieren konnte. Gerade unter Leuten die am Rande der Legalität leben müssen (wie im Fall Dogru hier) ist die Not teilweise immens. Unser Sozialsystem ist längst nicht so robust wie die meisten Leute die nicht darauf angewiesen sind denken. Sie hat nur sehr gute PR und Kritik daran kommt bei den arroganten Deutschen (aber ich wiederhol mich ja) immer sehr sehr übel an als ob man das ganze Land mit den VSA oder schlimmer noch nicht-NATO Ländern vergleichen könne....
"Are there no poor houses!"
Anyone who offers them assistance makes themselves guilty of "violating sanctions". They are not allowed to receive help.
There aren't support options because the way sanctions work is that anyone offering them any help becomes guilty of "violating the sanctions" and becomes sanctioned themselves. That is how the wife became sanctioned, by paying bills he could no longer pay due to sanctions. This means if anyone offers them any money, goods or services, including food, they automatically count as "attempting to circumvent sanctions" and will receive the same treatment. The sanctions are designed so that there are no support options other than having your children taken away by the government due to inability to feed them.
Neither of them have committed any crime whatsoever. They were not legally charged with anything and they have no right to a court trial. These are EU sanctions. That means they don't need to be legally justified and there is no court other than in Brussels where they can be appealed, but the sanctions include a travel ban which means he cannot travel to Brussels, or to any country where he is not sanctioned. This is effectively a slow death sentence. He was sanctioned for journalism which the EU alleges "destabilizes society" (by reporting on the Gaza genocide), and she was sanctioned for supporting their family financially.
Nothing illegal happened through her bank account, nor through his. I repeat: this is not about a crime. They have committed no crime nor have they been charged with a crime.