Journalist and American citizen Gonzalo Lira has reportedly passed away in a Ukrainian hospital after he was imprisoned in the country last summer.
Lira's father, Gonzalo Lira Sr., shared a hand-written letter from his son which he received on Jan. 4 addressed to Lira's sister.
"I have had double pneumonia (both lungs) as well as pneumonthroax and a very severe case of edema (swelling of the body)," Lira wrote. "All this started in mid-October, but was ignored by the prison."
According to Lira, the Ukranian hospital "admitted" he had pneumonia during a Dec. 22 hearing.
"I am about to have a procedure to reduce the edema pressure in my lungs, which is causing me extreme shortness of breath, to the point of passing out after minimal activity, or even just talking for 2 minutes," Lira's letter concluded.
Lira's father confirmed and commented on his son's passing in a statement.
"I cannot accept the way my son has died," the elder Lira wrote. "He was tortured, extorted, incommunicado for 8 months and 11 days, and the U.S. Embassy did nothing to help my son."
Lira Sr. said his son's death was the responsibility of "dictator Zelenskyy" along with the "concurrence of a senile American President, Joe Biden."
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Lira Sr. in a December episode of Tucker on X, also confirmed the younger Lira's passing.
"Gonzalo Lira, Sr. says his son has died at 55 in a Ukrainian prison, where he was being held for the crime of criticizing the Zelenskyy and Biden governments," Carlson wrote. "Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen, but the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture."
The imprisoned Lira made his last public comments in a series of YouTube videos shared in late-July. In the videos, Lira revealed he was imprisoned in Ukraine for nine-and-a-half weeks and was awaiting trial while out on bail.
Lira said he was accused of being a "pro-Russian propagandist" along with "denying the Russian invasion" and faced five to eight years in a Ukrainian prison labor camp. Lira also noted he had a "serious heart condition" and suggested he would not survive his imprisonment.
Believing his imprisonment and death to be certain, Lira decided he would seek political asylum in neighboring Hungary.
"So either I will cross the border into Hungary in the next couple of hours, or I will be arrested again and God knows what will happen to me," Lira told viewers. "If I post again here on the video and on Twitter, then you know that I made it. And If I don't, then you know that I didn't."
"If you don't hear from me again, anybody and everybody who's watching this video, please raise a ruckus, raise a fuss," he added.
Lira said the charges against him are purely based on his opinion of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
"I did no harm to anyone, and they arrested me because they wanted to have ... on the nightly news a short video about how they are fighting the propagandists," he said. "That's it. That's why they arrested me."
Lira also detailed his imprisonment in a thread posted to his X account on July 31.
"If you don't hear from me in the next 12 hours—whelp! I'm on my way to a labor camp!" Lira wrote in his thread. "Wish me luck."
Lira did not post anything to YouTube or X and was later confirmed to have been captured by Ukrainian authorities.
In 2022, Lira was similarly accused of being a Russian agent and imprisoned in Ukraine after posting videos reporting on the war.
