The justice system has failed to defend the principles it should protect in the case of WikiLeak founder Julian Assange, so the public must wake up to the need for peaceful global protests to run parallel to Assange’s legal battle, writes Sara Chessa.
The UK Home Secretary Priti Patel said recently that she had it no reason to block the extradition of Julian Assange.
Assange’s lawyers have announced that they will appeal, which also draws the attention of the High Court to the fact that the British government recently acknowledged espionage actions carried out to the detriment of one of Assange’s lawyers.
Priti Patel has announced her “yes” to the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States and presented it as a recognition of court results, according to which Assange’s extradition to America will be “legal”.
At the time, I was talking to a European lawyer who said:
In fact, even though it is difficult to accept, human nature exists in individuals who serve a legal system. And within human nature itself, you can find the desire for truth and justice as well as the opportunity to serve special interests that have nothing to do with the passion for truth.
Assange’s legal team announces “new developments” at court hearing
Although we have had – at the moment – journalists like Assange who help the public to identify inaccuracies in national security and other sectors, this does not mean that we – the public – can give up the responsibility of observing and judging reality.
Since everyone can see with their own eyes that the judicial system has failed to defend the basic principles it should protect, here is a list of reasons that should make the public aware of the need for a peaceful global protest, in parallel with Julian Assange’s legal struggle:
- a treaty There is a ban on extradition for political reasons, but the most political extradition in decades has now been approved;
- one of Assange’s lawyers, Jennifer Robinsonwas spied on by the British government, which acknowledged for infringing articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR);
- a witness on whose statements the United States based its accusations admitted to having liedbut the extradition to the country that wants to prosecute Assange on these charges goes on;
- the Wikileaks the publisher is prosecuted for making the public aware of actual war crimes, but Article 10 of the EKMR States that “the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without the interference of public authority and regardless of frontiers”;
- the The Espionage Act from 1917 is Used against Assange – allegations are that he will be given a fair trial, but that is clearly impossible because this US law is the only one that prevents journalists from releasing such classified documents in the public interest; and
- the hacking fees are taken into account unfounded by the expert who analyzed them and testified at the hearing, but Assange’s extradition continues anyway.
These are all facts that Assange’s legal team could take to the High Court in the next appeal, given Patel’s political statement.
The judge at first instance did not include these points among the reasons for blocking Assange’s extradition. That is why the Supreme Court may be called upon to rule on the possibility of including such fundamental issues as grounds for refusing extradition.
The judiciary has so far skipped them, but the public has a right to hope that it will now act differently.
At the same time, we must not forget what has happened so far: a publisher has been held in an arbitrary detention that authorized by UN experts (UN) – previously on Ecuadorian embassy and later at Belmarsh Prison – with Professor in the UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer announces clear signs of psychological torture.
The importance of civil protests was proposed to me several years ago by the former Icelandic Minister of the Interior รgmundur JonassonWHO stayed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) when he heard that its plan was to frame Assange.
At the time, Jonasson told Independent Australia:
The FBI tried to make Iceland an accomplice ally in framing Julian Assange
Here are six additional frauds that the public needs to know to realize that defending this Australian journalist is as important as participating in the popular resistance to Nazi fascism:
1. The false story that portrays Assange as an irresponsible person
Testimony in court is more valid than propaganda. There are plenty of them from authoritative people who have explained that WikiLeaks made a great effort in terms of human resources and financial investment to ensure that the names of US sources were removed from the documents and encryption used to protect the original copies that still contain these names. One of them is John Goetzan investigative journalist for THE MIRROR.
2. The unfounded claim that Assange is not a journalist
During the trial at first instance, when the American prosecutor told the founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Trevor Timm that the US government did not consider Assange a journalist, Timm answered that it is not up to the government to decide who is a journalist as “it is everyone’s right” and Assange was clearly “engaged in journalistic activity”.
Mark FeldsteinProfessor of Journalism at the University of Maryland, confirmed this. He said that in the journalism school he runs, students also learn how to obtain classified information by interacting with sources, which is exactly what Assange is accused of.
It is certainly easier for the US government to spread a story according to which Assange is not a journalist, but this does not change reality. Even Secretary-General of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Anthony Bellanger confirmed it, proverb he has personally written on Assange’s press card.
Silence about the CIA’s alleged conspiracy to poison Assange
The Spanish Supreme Court is hearing case of David Moralesowner of the company responsible for monitoring at the Ecuadorian embassy.
Morales has been accused by whistleblowers of secretly working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), does whatever he is asked to do to the US Bureau to listen to Assange’s conversations, even with his lawyers and doctors.
According to witness statements so far, it appears that a complex system has been put in place to allow information to flow into the CIA headquarters without Ecuador realizing that it did.
In this context, yahoo! News published an article revealing a conspiracy to kill Assange in retaliation for his publication of “Vault 7According to that story, there were talks of kidnapping or assassinating Assange at the ‘highest levels’ of the Trump administration, with high-ranking officials demanding “sketches” or “alternatives” to kill him.
4. The untrue claim that people were killed because of WikiLeak’s revelations
No one has died as a result of WikiLeaks’ revelations. For over ten years, the United States could not find a case where this happened. During Assange’s extradition trial, even known whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg where asked by the court that people in Iraq and Afghanistan have been forced to leave their homes after being named by WikiLeaks as American sources.
Ellsberg replied:
Another witness, Professor John Sloboda, testified that since there were more than 400,000 documents in the information database, a huge amount of human resources would have been required to control them manually and computer software was designed to automate the process. The software would check the documents for non-English words and delete them, thus ensuring that no Iraqi names were published.
Is not it time for Australia to bring home Julian Assange?
5. The cunning in the Biden administration’s diplomatic assurances
As IA has reported in recent months, Amnesty International Considers the United States to assure that Assange will not be detained under the special administrative regime (SAM) are absolutely not reliable, as they include the ability for US officials to change their minds at any time.
These insurances were also presented only after the first instance hearing, when the defense could no longer examine them. As explained in September 2020 by witness Maureen Baird – who worked for Federal Bureau of Prisons for 27 years – SAM means being kept in a cell 23 hours a day without having contact with other inmates. Monthly phone calls are limited to one 30-minute call or two 15-minute calls and these would be monitored by an FBI agent.
Whenever the United States wants to change its mind about not placing Assange in a similar detention regime, it can do so entirely in accordance with the promises made.
6. The illusion of having the case handled by impartial authorities
Using the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi requested access to documents held by UK authorities about WikiLeaks journalists and Assange.
Through her FOIA fightMaurizi discovered that when Sweden wanted to interview Assange regarding allegations of sexual harassment (which never became accusations and eventually dropped), the British prosecutor advised the Swede not to interview Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy and to extradite him instead. This proposal prevented Assange from being able to clarify his position for several years.
Two weeks after Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador, an article in a news outlet suggested the possibility that Sweden would close the investigation. A British officer then wrote to the Swedish prosecutor and said: ‘Do not dare!’.
Maurizi train the British Public Prosecutor’s Office (CPS) to court, to obtain additional documents that could explain what is behind the handling of the case in the UK. Many papers are still unavailable or are being edited, but the ones Maurizi received should make the public think about Britain’s approach – especially about a number of important emails between the Swedish and British prosecutors that were deleted by CPS.
The duty of world citizens for the future of Julian Assange
Try to deceive the public if Julian Assange has been carried out, as shown above. Peaceful mass protest is the only way to help the world not step into a dark place where we will not see true investigative journalism or genuine democracy.
And even if both the Trump and Biden administrations have waged such a war on journalism, that does not mean that American society wants this shame. The reality is –United States Constitution‘is one of the main victims of this war against Assange.
That is why the Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese and all world leaders have one more reason to speak out. The only way to be “friends of America”, as so many want to be, is to have the courage to tell the United States that they are losing their souls.
Source: sn.dk