Julian Assange will make his closing attraction this week to the British courts to keep away from extradition. If he’s extradited it’s the dying of investigations into the internal workings of energy by the press.
LONDON — If Julian Assange is denied permission to attraction his extradition to the USA earlier than a panel of two judges on the Excessive Court docket in London this week, he could have no recourse left throughout the British authorized system. His attorneys can ask the European Court docket of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a keep of execution below Rule 39, which is given in “distinctive circumstances” and “solely the place there may be an imminent danger of irreparable hurt.” However it’s removed from sure that the British court docket will agree. It might order Julian’s instant extradition previous to a Rule 39 instruction or could resolve to disregard a request from the ECtHR to permit Julian to have his case heard by the court docket.
The almost 15-year-long persecution of Julian, which has taken a heavy toll on his bodily and psychological well being, is finished within the identify of extradition to the U.S. the place he would stand trial for allegedly violating 17 counts of the 1917 Espionage Act, with a possible sentence of 170 years.
Julian’s “crime” is that he revealed categorized paperwork, inner messages, stories and movies from the U.S. authorities and U.S. navy in 2010, which have been offered by U.S. military whistleblower Chelsea Manning. This huge trove of fabric revealed massacres of civilians, torture, assassinations, the listing of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and the circumstances they have been subjected to, in addition to the Guidelines of Engagement in Iraq. Those that perpetrated these crimes — together with the U.S. helicopter pilots who gunned down two Reuters journalists and 10 different civilians and severely injured two kids, all captured within the Collateral Homicide video — have by no means been prosecuted.
Julian uncovered what the U.S. empire seeks to airbrush out of historical past.
Julian’s persecution is an ominous message to the remainder of us. Defy the U.S. imperium, expose its crimes, and regardless of who you’re, it doesn’t matter what nation you come from, regardless of the place you reside, you can be hunted down and delivered to the U.S. to spend the remainder of your life in one of many harshest jail techniques on earth. If Julian is discovered responsible it should imply the dying of investigative journalism into the internal workings of state energy. To own, a lot much less publish, categorized materials — as I did after I was a reporter for The New York Instances — shall be criminalized. And that’s the level, one understood by The New York Instances, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El País and The Guardian, who issued a joint letter calling on the U.S. to drop the fees in opposition to him.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and different federal lawmakers voted on Thursday for the USA and Britain to finish Julian’s incarceration, noting that it stemmed from him “doing his job as a journalist” to disclose “proof of misconduct by the U.S.”
The authorized case in opposition to Julian, which I’ve coated from the start and can cowl once more in London this week, has a weird Alice-in-Wonderland high quality, the place judges and attorneys communicate in solemn tones about legislation and justice whereas making a mockery of essentially the most fundamental tenants of civil liberties and jurisprudence.
How can hearings go ahead when the Spanish safety agency on the Ecuadorian Embassy, UC International, the place Julian sought refuge for seven years, offered videotaped surveillance of conferences between Julian and his attorneys to the CIA, eviscerating attorney-client privilege? This alone ought to have seen the case thrown out of court docket.
How can the Ecuadorian authorities led by Lenin Moreno violate worldwide legislation by rescinding Julian’s asylum standing and allow London Metropolitan Police into the Ecuadorian Embassy — sovereign territory of Ecuador — to hold Julian to a ready police van?
Why did the courts settle for the prosecution’s cost that Julian shouldn’t be a reputable journalist?
Why did the USA and Britain ignore Article 4 of their Extradition Treaty that prohibits extradition for political offenses?
How is the case in opposition to Julian allowed to go forward after the important thing witness for the USA, Sigurdur Thordarson – a convicted fraudster and pedophile – admitted to fabricating the accusations he made in opposition to Julian?
How can Julian, an Australian citizen, be charged below the U.S. Espionage Act when he didn’t have interaction in espionage and wasn’t primarily based in the united stateswhen he obtained the leaked paperwork?
Why are the British courts allowing Julian to be extradited to the U.S. when the CIA — along with placing Julian below 24-hour video and digital surveillance whereas within the Ecuadorian Embassy — thought of kidnapping and assassinating him, plans that included a possible shoot-out on the streets of London with involvement by the Metropolitan Police?
How can Julian be condemned as a writer when he didn’t, as Daniel Ellsberg did, acquire and leak the categorized paperwork he revealed?
Why is the U.S. authorities not charging the writer of The New York Instances or The Guardian with espionage for publishing the identical leaked materials in partnership with WikiLeaks?
Why is Julian being held in isolation in a high-security jail with out trial for almost 5 years when his solely technical violation of the legislation is breaching bail circumstances when he sought asylum within the Ecuadorian Embassy? Usually this may entail a advantageous.
Why was he denied bail after he was despatched to HM Jail Belmarsh?
If Julian is extradited, his judicial lynching will worsen. His protection shall be stymied by U.S. anti-terrorism legal guidelines, together with the Espionage Act and Particular Administrative Measures (SAMs). He’ll proceed being blocked from talking to the general public — besides on a uncommon event — and being launched on bail. He shall be tried within the U.S. District Court docket for the Japanese District of Virginia the place most espionage instances have been received by the U.S. authorities. That the jury pool is largely drawn from those that work for or have pals and family who work for the CIA, and different nationwide safety companies which might be headquartered not removed from the court docket, little doubt contributes to this string of court docket choices.
The British courts, from the inception, have made the case notoriously tough to cowl, severely limiting seats within the courtroom, offering video hyperlinks which were defective, and within the case of the listening to this week, prohibiting anybody exterior of England and Wales, together with journalists who had beforehand coated the hearings, from accessing a hyperlink to what are purported to be public proceedings.
As standard, we aren’t knowledgeable about schedules or timetables. Will the court docket render a call on the finish of the two-day listening to on Feb. 20 and Feb. 21? Or will it wait weeks, even months, to render a ruling because it has beforehand? Will it allow the ECtHR to listen to the case or instantly railroad Julian to the U.S.? I’ve my doubts in regards to the Excessive Court docket passing the case to the ECtHR, on condition that the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, which created the ECtHR, together with their Commissioner for Human Rights, oppose Julian’s “detention, extradition and prosecution” as a result of it represents “a harmful precedent for journalists.” Will the court docket honor Julian’s request to be current within the listening to, or will he be pressured to stay within the high-security HM Jail Belmarsh in Thamesmead, south east London, as has additionally occurred earlier than? Nobody is ready to inform us.
Julian was saved from extradition in January 2021 when District Choose Vanessa Baraitser at Westminster Magistrates’ Court docket refused to authorize the extradition request. In her 132-page ruling, she discovered that there was a “substantial danger” Julian would commit suicide as a result of severity of the circumstances he would endure within the U.S. jail system. However this was a slim thread. The decide accepted all the fees leveled by the U.S. in opposition to Julian as being filed in good religion. She rejected the arguments that his case was politically motivated, that he wouldn’t get a good trial within the U.S. and that his prosecution is an assault on the liberty of the press.
Baraitser’s determination was overturned after the U.S. authorities appealed to the Excessive Court docket in London. Though the Excessive Court docket accepted Baraitser’s conclusions about Julian’s “substantial danger” of suicide if he was subjected to sure circumstances inside a U.S. jail, it additionally accepted 4 assurances in U.S. Diplomatic Be aware no. 74, given to the court docket in February 2021, which promised Julian can be handled nicely.
The U.S. authorities claimed within the diplomatic word that its assurances “completely reply the issues which triggered the decide [in the lower court] to discharge Mr. Assange.” The “assurances” state that Julian won’t be topic to SAMs. They promise that Julian, an Australian citizen, can serve his sentence in Australia if the Australian authorities requests his extradition. They promise he’ll obtain enough scientific and psychological care. They promise that, pre-trial and post-trial, Julian won’t be held within the Administrative Most Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado.
It sounds reassuring. However it’s a part of the cynical judicial pantomime that characterizes Julian’s persecution.
Nobody is held pre-trial in ADX Florence. ADX Florence can be not the one supermax jail within the U.S. the place Julian may be imprisoned. He could possibly be positioned in certainly one of our different Guantanamo-like services in a Communications Administration Unit (CMU). CMUs are extremely restrictive items that replicate the close to whole isolation imposed by SAMs. The “assurances” usually are not legally binding. All include escape clauses.
Ought to Julian do “one thing subsequent to the providing of those assurances that meets the exams for the imposition of SAMs or designation to ADX” he’ll, the court docket conceded, be topic to those harsher types of management. If Australia doesn’t request a switch it “can’t be a trigger for criticism of the USA, or a cause for relating to the assurances as insufficient to fulfill the decide’s issues,” the ruling reads. And even when that weren’t the case, it might take Julian 10 to fifteen years to attraction his sentence as much as the U.S. Supreme Court docket, which might be greater than sufficient time to destroy him psychologically and bodily. Amnesty Worldwide stated the “assurances usually are not well worth the paper they’re written on.”
Julian’s attorneys will try to persuade two Excessive Court docket judges to grant him permission to attraction plenty of the arguments in opposition to extradition which Choose Baraitser dismissed in January 2021. His attorneys, if the attraction is granted, will argue that prosecuting Julian for his journalistic exercise represents a “grave violation” of his proper to free speech; that Julian is being prosecuted for his political views, one thing which the U.Ok.-U.S. extradition treaty doesn’t enable; that Julian is charged with “pure political offenses” and the U.Ok.-U.S. extradition treaty prohibits extradition below such circumstances; that Julian shouldn’t be extradited to face prosecution the place the Espionage Act “is being prolonged in an unprecedented and unforeseeable approach”; that the fees could possibly be amended leading to Julian dealing with the dying penalty; and that Julian won’t obtain a good trial within the U.S. They’re additionally asking for the appropriate to introduce new proof about CIA plans to kidnap and assassinate Julian.
If the Excessive Court docket grants Julian permission to attraction, an additional listening to shall be scheduled throughout which era he’ll argue his attraction grounds. If the Excessive Court docket refuses to grant Julian permission to attraction, the one possibility left is to attraction to the ECtHR. If he’s unable to take his case to the ECtHR he shall be extradiated to the U.S.
The choice to hunt Julian’s extradition, contemplated by Barack Obama’s administration, was pursued by Donald Trump’s administration following WikiLeaks’ publication of the paperwork often called Vault 7, which uncovered the CIA’s cyberwarfare applications, together with these designed to watch and take management of automobiles, good TVs, net browsers and the working techniques of most good telephones.
The Democratic Celebration management grew to become as bloodthirsty because the Republicans following WikiLeaks’ publishing of tens of 1000’s of emails belonging to the Democratic Nationwide Committee (DNC) and senior Democratic officers, together with these of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s marketing campaign chairman in the course of the 2016 presidential election.
The Podesta emails uncovered that Clinton and different members of Obama’s administration knew that Saudi Arabia and Qatar — which had each donated tens of millions of {dollars} to the Clinton Basis — have been main funders of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. They revealed transcripts of three non-public talks Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs — for which she was paid $675,000 — a sum so giant it will possibly solely be thought of a bribe. Clinton was seen within the emails telling the monetary elites that she needed “open commerce and open borders” and believed Wall Road executives have been finest positioned to handle the financial system, a press release that contradicted her marketing campaign guarantees of monetary reform. They uncovered the Clinton marketing campaign’s self-described “Pied Piper” technique which used their press contacts to affect Republican primaries by “elevating” what they referred to as “extra excessive candidates,” to make sure Trump or Ted Cruz received their celebration’s nomination. They uncovered Clinton’s advance information of questions in a major debate. The emails additionally uncovered Clinton as one of many architects of the struggle and destruction of Libya, a struggle she believed would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate.
Journalists can argue that this data, just like the struggle logs, ought to have remained secret. But when they do, they will’t name themselves journalists.
The Democratic management, which tried guilty Russia for its election loss to Trump — in what grew to become often called Russiagate — charged that the Podesta emails and the DNC leaks have been obtained by Russian authorities hackers, though an investigation headed by Robert Mueller, the previous FBI director, “didn’t develop enough admissible proof that WikiLeaks knew of — and even was willfully blind to” any alleged hacking by the Russian state.
Julian is persecuted as a result of he offered the general public with an important details about U.S. authorities crimes and lying for the reason that launch of the Pentagon Papers. Like all nice journalists, he was nonpartisan. His goal was energy.
He made public the killing of almost 700 civilians who had approached too intently to U.S. convoys and checkpoints, together with pregnant ladies, the blind and deaf, and no less than 30 kids.
He made public the greater than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians and the torture and abuse of some 800 males and boys, aged between 14 to 89, at Guantánamo Bay detention camp.
He confirmed us that Hillary Clinton in 2009 ordered U.S. diplomats to spy on U.N. Secretary Normal Ban Ki-moon and different U.N. representatives from China, France, Russia, and the U.Ok., spying that included acquiring DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and private passwords.
He uncovered that Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CIA backed the June 2009 navy coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya, changing him with a murderous and corrupt navy regime.
He revealed that the USA secretly launched missile, bomb and drone assaults on Yemen, killing scores of civilians.
No different modern journalist has come near matching his revelations.
Julian is the primary. We’re subsequent.