Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has called the raid on his home by the FBI and state police “a chilling effect on free speech.”
The search warrant which “allowed them to look for electronic equipment,” according to Ritter, was “related to concerns apparently the US government has about violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act.”
“I will say that things like this have a chilling effect on free speech,” he said, adding that he believes “there’s no doubt that I’m being targeted because of statements I’ve made about US policy in Ukraine.”
“I am not in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. I have not done anything that do it and hopefully, by executing the search warrant and taking the materials that they did, they will rapidly reach that conclusion,” Ritter told reporters in front of his home on Wednesday afternoon.
He also said, “The idea that you have a free speech right in America, when you execute it in a manner that the US government takes exception to, and they launch a search warrant, that is an intimidation factor.”
Ritter, an outspoken critic of US foreign policy, has over the past few months been vocal about Israel’s ongoing military assault on the Gaza Strip.
‘Perverted Parody’
On Monday, Ritter told Judge Andrew Napolitano on the Judging Freedom’ YouTube show that “Israel has become, literally, the worst incarnation of what we could imagine Nazi Germany was like back in the day.”
Referring to recent reports of Palestinian detainees being raped and sexually abused in Israeli detention centres, Ritter said “I think we’ve got to the point where it’s gone beyond perverted parody.”
“When the Israelis jailed nine soldiers for raping Palestinian prisoners, and then Israeli citizens rise up and say that the Talmud, interpretation of Jewish law, says it’s not a crime to rape non-Jews and that these men should be freed,” the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer added.
“Not only that, then they sent hundreds of people to the Palestinian prisons demanding to be allowed in so they can rape the Palestinian prisoners because they’re permitted to under Jewish law,” Ritter continued.
“This is reality happening in Israel right now…that’s happening in Israel as we speak,” he stressed.
Ritter also drew attention to Israel’s bombing of schools in Gaza saying “They blew up a school today with students in it. The students were inside the school burning to death.”
“That happens on a daily basis,” he emphasized.
The former weapons inspector said he wouldn’t go as far as saying “the Nazis weren’t this bad,” but he thinks “killing millions of people in horrific fashioin is as bad as it gets.”
“I think Israel’s approximating the scope and scale of that behavior,” he added.
‘Hold Israel Accountable’
In a recent post on X, Ritter said “I will continue to hold Israel accountable for its genocidal actions. And I will continue to try and stop a nuclear conflict between Russia and the U.S.”
On his Scott Ritter show as well as various interviews on other platforms, he has over the past few months provided a military analysis of the unfolding events in the Middle East.
Ritter said following Wednesday’s raid, “I can say that I am not intimidated, and I will continue to speak out, and I will continue to do what I do because that’s my responsibility as an American citizen, and I will continue to operate in that manner.
Also a critic of the 2003 Iraq war, Ritter served as a member of the UN team overseeing the disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction from 1991 to 1998, a post he quit in protest. | via The Palestine Chronicle
This article ‘Intimidating Factor’ – FBI Raids Home of Outspoken US Foreign Policy Critic, Scott Ritter was originally published in The Palestine Chronicle.
