Prosecuting Assange But Not the War Criminals He Exposed

 

#FreeAssange: Sign to Urge UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to Reject Julian Assange’s Extradition to the United States! By Reporters Without Borders, April 21, 2022 If extradited to the United States, Assange could face up to 175 years in prison on 18 charges related to Wikileaks’ publication in 2010 of hundreds of thousands of leaked classified military and diplomatic documents, exposing war crimes and human rights violations and informing extensive public interest reporting around the world. RSF fully believes that Assange has been targeted for this important contribution to journalism.

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UK Home Secretary Priti Patel Was Part of CIA-linked Lobby Group with Husband of Assange Judge By Matt Kennard, April 22, 2022 Priti Patel sat on the Henry Jackson Society’s (HJS) advisory council from around 2013-16, although the exact dates are unclear as neither the HJS nor Patel responded to Declassified’s requests for clarification. She has also received funds from the HJS, and was paid £2,500 by the group to visit Washington in March 2013 to attend a “security” programme in the US Congress.

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“Wiki-Gate”: Julian Assange Was Framed by the People Who Supported Him By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 21, 2022 Statements by US prosecutors suggest that Assange would not be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act. What is contemplated are accusations of conspiring “to commit unlawful computer intrusion based on his alleged agreement to try to help Ms. Manning break an encoded portion of passcode that would have permitted her to log on to a classified military network under another user’s identity.” (NYT, April 11, 2019).

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Julian Assange Has Been Imprisoned in British Guantanamo for Three Years. It’s a Crime Against Us All By DiEM25, April 13, 2022 The UK and US governments rightly express outrage over reports of war crimes in Ukraine. Yet while doing so, they make an example of Assange for revealing, with definitive proof, their own war crimes. While the media decries the spread of disinformation and attacks against journalists, most stay silent as an actual journalist slowly dying in prison for doing his duty of informing the public.

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Assange Extradition: On to the Next Hurdle By Craig Murray, March 17, 2022 The legal grounds which the High Court had previously ruled to be arguable, were that the USA government should not have been permitted to give at appeal new (and highly conditional) diplomatic assurances about Assange’s treatment, which had not been offered at the court of first instance to be considered in the initial decision. One important argument that this should not be allowed, is that if given to the original court, the defence could argue about the value and conditionality of such assurances; evidence could be called and the matter weighed by the court.

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War, Dissent and Julian Assange: Why We Must Stop this Extradition By Morning Star, March 16, 2022 Assange is not a US citizen, let alone an employee of the US military. He is not accused of having leaked classified information. He is accused of having published classified information that was passed to him. The airwaves are now full of the horror being inflicted on Ukrainians by Russian bombers and artillery. So we should think back to the content of the Afghan and Iraq war logs published by Wikileaks.

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Rotten Rulings: Julian Assange and the UK Supreme Court By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, March 15, 2022 District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser initially ruled on January 4, 2021 against the US, finding that Assange would be at serious risk of suicide given the risk posed by Special Administrative Measures and the possibility that he would end his days in the ADX Florence supermax facility. It took little to read between the lines: the US prison system would do away with Assange; to extradite him would be oppressive within the meaning of the US-UK Extradition Treaty.

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The Political Persecution of Julian Assange: Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture By Saturday Morning, February 21, 2022 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is being made an example of by the US government to deter investigative journalists from exposing state abuses, the current UN Special Rapporteur on torture says. Nearly 12 years ago Wikileaks published the Afghan War Diary, one of the biggest leaks in US military history. More documents would folliow, exposing state secrets and allowing journalists to scrutinise and hold politicians to account.

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