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Breaking news…
‘Julian Assange denied permission to challenge extradition
The Supreme Court has refused to allow Julian Assange’s latest appeal against extradition to the United States.
A court spokesman said Mr Assange’s application did not raise “an arguable point of law”. The decision is a major blow to his hopes to avoid extradition.
The Wikileaks founder, 50, is wanted in the US over the publication thousands of classified files in 2010 and 2011.
The case will now go back down to the original decision-making judge who assessed the United States’ request.’
This needs to be read in conjunction with Craig’s previous article on this subject:
Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day Oh God It Never Ends
The Supreme Court was asked to consider whether the US authorities assurances of Assange’s treatment were made too late, by presenting them at the US appeal stage so they were never tested in court.
– “By introducing them only at the appeal stage, the United States had evaded all scrutiny of their validity.”
I don’t know what happens next, whether Vanessa Baraitser has to consider them. It seems to me that for Julian, the process is the punishment.
I wonder if the Guardian editorial team are experiencing a twinge of conscience?
Fri 17 Jun 2022 17.34 BST
“The decision by Priti Patel, the home secretary, to extradite the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US ought to worry anyone who cares about journalism and democracy. Mr Assange, 50, has been charged under the US Espionage Act, including publishing classified material. He faces up to 175 years in jail if found guilty by a US court. This action potentially opens the door for journalists anywhere in the world to be extradited to the US for exposing information deemed classified by Washington.The case against Mr Assange relates to hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, which were made public by WikiLeaks, working with the Guardian and other media organisations. They revealed horrifying abuses by the US and other governments that would not otherwise have been disclosed. Despite claiming otherwise, US authorities could not find a single person, among the thousands of American sources in Afghanistan and Iraq, who could be shown to have died because of the disclosures.
Mr Assange, who has a reputation for being a brilliant but difficult character, has suffered enough. Until 2019 Met police had waited seven years for him to emerge from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Since then he has spent three years in Belmarsh high-security prison without being convicted of any crime. Mr Assange should have been given bail to be with his wife and their two young children. To keep track of him, the authorities could have insisted that he be electronically tagged and monitored.
The use of the Espionage Act to prosecute him should be seen for what it is: an attack on the freedom of the press. As the Knight First Amendment Institute’s Carrie DeCell wrote in 2019, when the charge sheet was published, “soliciting, obtaining, and then publishing classified information … [is] what good national security and investigative journalists do every day”.
Ms Patel could have turned down the American request. Britain should be wary of extraditing a suspect to a country with such a political justice department. Her predecessor Theresa May halted the extradition proceedings of Gary McKinnon, who hacked the US Department of Defense. The UK could have decided that Mr Assange faces an unacceptably high risk of prolonged solitary confinement in a US maximum security prison. Instead, Ms Patel has dealt a blow to press freedom and against the public, who have a right to know what their governments are doing in their name. It’s not over. Mr Assange will appeal.
The charges against him should never have been brought. As Mr Assange published classified documents and he did not leak them, Barack Obama’s administration was reluctant to bring charges. His legal officers correctly understood that this would threaten public interest journalism. It was Donald Trump’s team, which considered the press an “enemy of the people”, that took the step. It is not too late for the US to drop the charges. On World Press Freedom Day this year, the US president, Joe Biden, said: “The work of free and independent media matters now more than ever.” Giving Mr Assange his freedom back would give meaning to those words.”
Our host has no masthead about the action in London on October 8th, here, on this site. I hope you can support this action and persuade our host to promote this action for his friend Julian on his own blog.
“Join our Twitterstorm this Friday at 6pm BST highlighting Free Assange #HumanChain on 8 October.
The first time will be in a massive show of solidarity to #FreeAssange. Form a human chain to #SurroundParliament in support of Julian Assange.
Over 3300 people have pledged to surround UK parliament on October 8th by forming a human chain. Sign up and stand with us.”
From his wife Stella.Don’t just sign up, please attend this October 8th., 1300hrs., Westminster, London…_
DiggerUK, thanks for posting about this action. I’m very glad to see Julian’s supporters moving towards direct action to support him.
Please encourage all involved to seek out Non Violent Direct Action (NVDA) and Know Your Rights training; I have found them a set of powerful tools for resisting state suppression of protest. Let’s make full use of them before we lose any more rights!
I hope to join this action. My plan at present is to join the Occupy Westminster actions starting on Saturday 1st of October, and thus to already be in or around the Houses of Parliament on the 8th.
On a personal note, I apologise for implying that you were merely a keyboard warrior in the comments section of one of Craig’s posts.
There are some unusual movements in the traditional print media reporting on Julian that gives me hope.
RT have a report from Caleb Maupin, via the rumble site, with the welcome change in their stance on Julian.
Is this a false hope? I hope not…_However, the Guardian still pretending that Julian is responsible for their release of “unredacted” data by their own Luke Harding:-
” […] This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange, felt the need to publicly criticise his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cables were released […] “
I hope not too.
If this is a sign of a genuine change then it should mark the beginning of a full-scale campaign – which would be most welcome – and not just a number of one-off articles.
We shall see, here’s hoping.
Natasha – the Guardian has become nothing more than a house-rag for GCHQ and the security services. They had an editorial yesterday on human rights in China which had CiF open for an hour or so. I made two posts suggesting the UK had no place criticising other countries when a certain political prisoner was incarcerated in Belmarsh for over three years, despite winning an appeal hearing on extradition last year. Both posts were removed immediately and my account restricted. The documentary on Katherine Gunn recently, showed just how compromised the Guardian has become in the last couple of decades. Thankfully we still have excellent independent investigative journalists like Jonathon Cook, John Pilger and Craig Murray, but as for the Guardian, it’s on the same shelf as the Telegraph and red tops.
I am beginning to get my hopes up. Australian PM on twitter…_
