Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards’: Sanctions of Jacques Baud Through the Looking-Glass
Dec. 25—A Swiss citizen is stranded in Belgium. His bank accounts are frozen. His friends are legally barred from helping him. No charges have been filed. No court has ruled. Yet the sanctions stand, imposed by the European Union.
And for what was he sanctioned?—for having the temerity from the beginning of NATO's provoked war in Ukraine, to say just that—that the Russian invasion was provoked by NATO, following a crazy plan to destroy Russia through proxy warfare, and to have said that from the outset, this policy was militarily doomed to failure, and that in the end NATO's foolishness would not only not destroy the hated Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Russia, but would destroy Europe. In other words, Baud was sanctioned for telling the truth—or more precisely the truth the European Union cannot face and does not want its NATO-captive populations to know.
This is the reality facing Jacques Baud—and it has now drawn scrutiny from Switzerland’s oldest German-language daily, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which garbling Baud's message, is quite clear about where this suppression of free expression can and will lead.
In a three-part series—1, 2, 3—published just before Christmas, NZZ dismantles the EU’s sanctions against the former intelligence officer as politically motivated, legally dubious, and yet quietly accepted by Switzerland. When Baud warned the Swiss mission to the EU that sanctions were imminent, it took ten days to receive a response. Switzerland was never consulted before the decision was taken.
The paper asks: How far is Switzerland willing to abandon rule-of-law protections for its own citizens?
Baud had in his writing on the war questioned why the Swiss, known only for its cuckoo clocks and its neutrality, even during World War II, should choose to stupidly abandon its neutrality and its possible role as a peacemaker, for the slavish support for a Ukraine and its regime heavily infiltrated with Nazis, of the Stephan Bandera stripe. Such precise attacks drew the ire of Swiss government officials, but may have found some sympathy from the Swiss bankers, for which the NZZ is their mouthpiece.
The EU presents itself as a guardian of fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression. Yet, as NZZ notes, freedom of expression applies precisely to views outside the mainstream. Baud was sanctioned first and granted the right to defend himself only afterward—an inversion of legal norms that exposes the decision as political rather than judicial, the NZZ and the legal experts it cites say.
Once dubbed the “Swiss James Bond,” Baud is now labeled a Russian stooge, by the NATO propaganda machine and the EU. His lawyers are preparing challenges before the Council of the European Union and the European Court of Justice.
Ultimately, this is about more than Jacques Baud. Will Europe act in coherence with the lofty concepts it claims to stand for? Or will political expediency replace principle?
As NZZ puts it, “the EU is not doing itself any favors with arbitrary acts such as the Baud sanction,” whose actions resemble those of the Red Queen: “Sentence first—Verdict afterwards.” The literary reference is telling, the Red Queen, whose favorite phrase is "Off with his Head" is no less crazy than the Euro=lords of the EU, which has pronounced this insane verdict, which has now stirred up a firestorm of protest from around the world. Thinking that this action would quell dissent against a policy for continuing their lost cause in Ukraine, it could feed the very protest it so desperately wants to avoid.