Julian Assange

From Wikipedia

“Julian Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.[a] These leaks included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video (April 2010),[4][5] the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and Cablegate (November 2010). After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks.[6]

In November 2010, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for Assange over allegations of sexual misconduct.[7] Assange said the allegations were a pretext for his extradition from Sweden to the United States over his role in the publication of secret American documents.[8][9] After losing his battle against extradition to Sweden, he breached bail and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London in June 2012.[10] He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012[11] on the grounds of political persecution, with the presumption that if he were extradited to Sweden, he would be eventually extradited to the United States.[12] Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in 2019, saying their evidence had "weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question".[13]

During the 2016 U.S. election campaign, WikiLeaks published confidential Democratic Party emails, showing that the party's national committee favoured Hillary Clinton over her rival Bernie Sanders in the primaries.[14] In March 2017, WikiLeaks published a series of documents which detailed the CIA's electronic surveillance and cyber warfare capabilities,[15] after which senior CIA officials discussed potentially kidnapping and assassinating Assange.[16]

On 11 April 2019, Assange's asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with the Ecuadorian authorities.[17] The police were invited into the embassy and he was arrested.[18] He was found guilty of breaching the Bail Act and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison.[19] The United States government unsealed an indictment against Assange related to the leaks provided by Manning. On 23 May 2019, the United States government further charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Editors from newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as press freedom organisations, criticised the government's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, characterising it as an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press.[20][21]

On 4 January 2021, UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the United States' request to extradite Assange and stated that doing so would be "oppressive" given concerns over Assange's mental health and risk of suicide.[22] On 6 January 2021, Assange was denied bail, pending an appeal by the United States.[23] On 10 December 2021, the High Court in London ruled that Assange could be extradited to the US to face the charges.[24] In March 2022, the UK Supreme Court refused Assange permission to appeal.[25] On 17 June 2022, Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition.[26]

Assange has been confined in Belmarsh, a category A prison, in London since April 2019.”

AAPP - Julian’s case is a serious threat to press freedom, as it intimidates journalists everywhere with the threat that if they publish material critical of US actions they could be charged and extradited to the US without having ever been there or broken any law in their own country. Julian is charged under the Espionage Act without ever having been in the US. He was given the material he published, he did not source it himself and Chelsea Manning, the US intelligence officer who gave him the information, has since been pardoned by Obama. Other media outlets have published his material without repercussions. He was never charged with a sexual offence and offered to answer questions of Swedish investigators, but the UK authorities deterred them from coming to the UK.

Julian’s treatment has been described by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Prof Nils Melzer, as Psychological torture. His treatment is inhumane and a travesty of justice. His health has deteriorated massively and he is reportedly at risk of suicide if he were to be extradited. The US, with the complicity of the UK government, have engaged in a propaganda war against this honest and courageous publisher. Their main witness for the case has admitted to lying in his evidence, and the US has been found to have conspired to kill Julian. The US’s claims regarding his treatment in the US if he were to be extradited have no credibility.

Thousands of parliamentarians and journalists around the world have called for his freedom and he has received many journalism awards.

The Morrison Government did nothing to seek to obtain this Australian citizen’s freedom. The Albanese Government must obtain his freedom as a matter of urgency.

It’s all political: Julian Assange appeals his extradition, Binoy Kampmark, Pearls and Irritations, 3 September, 2022