The ruling by the Excessive Court docket in London allowing Julian Assange to enchantment his extradition order leaves him languishing in precarious well being in a high-security jail. That’s the level.
The choice by the Excessive Court docket in London to grant Julian Assange the fitting to enchantment the order to extradite him to the USA could show to be a Pyrrhic victory. It doesn’t imply Julian will elude extradition. It doesn’t imply the courtroom has dominated, because it ought to, that he’s a journalist whose solely “crime” was offering proof of warfare crimes and lies by the U.S. authorities to the general public. It doesn’t imply he can be launched from the high-security HMS Belmarsh jail the place, as Nils Melzer, the UN Particular Rapporteur on Torture, after visiting Julian there, stated he was present process a “slow-motion execution.”
It doesn’t imply that journalism is any much less imperiled. Editors and publishers of 5 worldwide media shops —– The New York Occasions, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL —– which printed tales primarily based on paperwork launched by WikiLeaks, have urged that the U.S. costs be dropped and Julian be launched. None of those media executives have been charged with espionage. It doesn’t dismiss the ludicrous ploy by the U.S. authorities to extradite an Australian citizen whose publication will not be primarily based within the U.S. and cost him underneath the Espionage Act. It continues the lengthy Dickensian farce that mocks probably the most primary ideas of due course of.
This ruling is predicated on the grounds that the U.S. authorities didn’t provide enough assurances that Julian can be granted the identical First Modification protections afforded to a U.S. citizen, ought to he stand trial. The enchantment course of is yet one more authorized hurdle within the persecution of a journalist who shouldn’t solely be free, however feted and honored as probably the most brave of our technology.
Sure. He can file an enchantment. However this implies one other yr, maybe longer, in harsh jail situations as his bodily and psychological well being deteriorates. He has spent over 5 years in HMS Belmarsh with out being charged. He spent seven years within the Ecuadorian Embassy as a result of the U.Ok. and Swedish governments refused to ensure that he wouldn’t be extradited to the U.S., despite the fact that he agreed to return to Sweden to assist a preliminary investigation that was ultimately dropped.
The judicial lynching of Julian was by no means about justice. The plethora of authorized irregularities, together with the recording of his conferences with attorneys by the Spanish safety agency UC International on the embassy on behalf of the CIA, alone ought to have seen the case thrown out of courtroom because it eviscerates attorney-client privilege.
The U.S. has charged Julian with 17 acts underneath the Espionage Act and one rely of laptop misuse, for an alleged conspiracy to take possession of after which publish nationwide protection data. If discovered responsible on all of those costs he faces 175 years in a U.S. jail.
The extradition request is predicated on the 2010 launch by WikiLeaks of the Iraq and Afghanistan warfare logs — a whole lot of hundreds of categorised paperwork, leaked to the positioning by Chelsea Manning, then an Military intelligence analyst, which uncovered quite a few U.S. warfare crimes together with video photos of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 different unarmed civilians within the Collateral Homicide video, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the protecting up of hundreds of civilian deaths and the killing of practically 700 civilians that had approached too carefully to U.S. checkpoints.
In February, legal professionals for Julian submitted 9 separate grounds for a potential enchantment.
A two-day listening to in March, which I attended, was Julian’s final likelihood to request an enchantment of the extradition resolution made in 2022 by the then British residence secretary, Priti Patel, and of lots of the rulings of District Choose Baraitser in 2021.
The 2 Excessive Court docket judges, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Jeremy Johnson, in March rejected most of Julian’s grounds of enchantment. These included his legal professionals’ rivalry that the UK-US extradition treaty bars extradition for political offenses; that the extradition request was made for the aim of prosecuting him for his political views; that extradition would quantity to retroactive software of the legislation — as a result of it was not foreseeable {that a} century-old espionage legislation can be used in opposition to a international writer; and that he wouldn’t obtain a good trial within the Jap District of Virginia. The judges additionally refused to listen to new proof that the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate Julian, concluding — each perversely and incorrectly — that the CIA solely thought-about these choices as a result of they believed Julian was planning to flee to Russia.
However the two judges decided Monday that it’s “debatable” {that a} U.S. courtroom won’t grant Julian safety underneath the First Modification, violating his rights to free speech as enshrined within the European Conference on Human Rights.
The judges in March requested the U.S. to supply written assurances that Julian can be protected underneath the First Modification and that he can be exempt from a demise penalty verdict. The U.S. assured the courtroom that Julian wouldn’t be subjected to the demise penalty, which Julian’s legal professionals in the end accepted. However the Division of Justice was unable to supply an assurance that Julian might mount a First Modification protection in a U.S. courtroom. Such a call is made in a U.S. federal courtroom, their legal professionals defined.
Assistant U.S. Legal professional Gordon Kromberg, who’s prosecuting Julian, has argued that solely U.S. residents are assured First Modification rights in U.S. courts. Kromberg has said that what Julian printed was “not within the public curiosity” and that the U.S. was not searching for his extradition on political grounds.
Free speech is a key difficulty. If Julian is granted First Modification rights in a U.S. courtroom it is going to be very tough for the U.S. to construct a felony case in opposition to him, since different information organizations, together with The New York Occasions and The Guardian, printed the fabric he launched.
The extradition request is predicated on the rivalry that Julian will not be a journalist and never protected underneath the First Modification.
Julian’s attorneys and people representing the U.S. authorities have till Might 24 to submit a draft order, which is able to decide when the enchantment can be heard.
Julian dedicated the empire’s best sin — he uncovered it as a felony enterprise. He documented its lies, routine violation of human rights, wanton killing of harmless civilians, rampant corruption and warfare crimes. Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Labour, Trump or Biden — it doesn’t matter. Those that handle the empire use the identical soiled playbook.
The publication of categorised paperwork will not be against the law in the USA, but when Julian is extradited and convicted, it can grow to be one.
Julian is in precarious bodily and psychological well being. His bodily and psychological deterioration has resulted in a minor stroke, hallucinations and melancholy. He takes antidepressant treatment and the antipsychotic quetiapine. He has been noticed pacing his cell till he collapses, punching himself within the face and banging his head in opposition to the wall. He has spent weeks within the medical wing of Belmarsh, nicknamed “hell wing.” Jail authorities discovered “half of a razor blade” hidden underneath his socks. He has repeatedly referred to as the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans as a result of he considered killing himself “a whole lot of occasions a day.”
These slow-motion executioners haven’t but accomplished their work. Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the Haitian independence motion, the one profitable slave revolt in human historical past, was bodily destroyed in the identical method. He was locked by the French in an unheated and cramped jail cell and left to die of exhaustion, malnutrition, apoplexy, pneumonia and doubtless tuberculosis.
Extended imprisonment, which the granting of this enchantment perpetuates, is the purpose. The 12 years Julian has been detained — seven within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and over 5 in high-security Belmarsh Jail — have been accompanied by a scarcity of daylight and train, in addition to unrelenting threats, stress, extended isolation, nervousness and fixed stress. The purpose is to destroy him.
We should free Julian. We should maintain him out of the palms of the U.S. authorities. Given all he did for us, we owe him an unrelenting struggle.
If there isn’t any freedom of speech for Julian, there can be no freedom of speech for us.
