The ruthless hounding of Julian Assange is a disgrace to humanity. It must stop. NOW
One of the greatest embarrassments in our modern history is closing in on a courageous truth-teller and on everyone who understands the importance of a free press and of political accountability
The 14-year-long vindictive persecution of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange has been marked by so many and so egregious violations of due process, human and civil rights, political and judicial overreach, covert operations, blackmail, media corruption and moral depravity, that it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around how we, the public even allowed this to happen.
In the more recent history of humanity, and the so-called democratic world, in particular, the trial against Assange, along with the extermination of life that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza, are the most shocking and shameful acts we’ve witnessed and have failed to stop in decades.
Assange’s appeal hearing in the Royal Courts of (in)justice in London at the end of last month, demonstrated yet again, the farcical nature of the judicial process and the absolute corruption of the British judiciary, as well as the gross instrumentalisation of formal power in order to crash dissent, silence the truth, evade accountability, and intimidate the public.
With its vengeful treatment of Julian Assange and its devoted support of Benjamin Netanyahu’s passion for genocide, United States has officially sealed its statute as the world’s greatest bully.
What transpired during the appeal hearing on 20-21 February, was something everyone who has been paying attention to the case, already knew and was worried about. The defenders of the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the CIA, by extension, made it abundantly clear to the judges, that once on U.S. soil, Julian Assange will not be granted protections under the First Amendment of the American Constitution (even though he is indicted under a U.S. law), and even more alarmingly — giving him the death penalty cannot be ruled out.
Calls for Assange’s murder have been casually aired long ago by American politicians like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as media pundits who are so ignorant and arrogant that they seem to think everyone on this planet owes some twisted allegiance to America and is a traitor if they have the audacity to expose U.S. criminality.
The presiding judges in the appeal hearing — Jeremy Johnson and Victoria Sharp, who, as Declassified revealed, have connections with the British intelligence and Ministry of Defense, got to hear for the first time in court about the CIA’s covert plans to poison, kidnap or assassinate Assange during his asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, even though that information was revealed three years ago.
CIA’s murderous plot and spying operations have been corroborated by a Yahoo News investigation and witness testimony of former employees of the security firm UC Global, which illegally spied on Assange while he was living in the embassy, and sent over his privileged conversations with lawyers, colleagues, doctors and his family across the ocean.
Although the appeal hearing gave the pretence of something resembling an independent judicial process, namely the fact that the judges demonstrated interest in the arguments put forward by two of Assange’s lawyers and at least seemed to challenge the prosecution’s story, it’s hard not to envision the British courts delivering the last blow to the WikiLeaks founder and the future of the free press by signing the extradition request and sending him off to the darkest hellhole that is the American prison system.
In the state-loyal Eastern District Court of Virginia, he’ll get anything but a fair trial — similar to what he’s been getting in Britain but far worse. He’ll be forever disappeared from the public eye, although observers of the case predict the public attention will grow exponentially if the U.S. succeeds in bringing Assange on American soil and the public scrutiny and anger over his trial will not be good publicity for the White House and the Pentagon to put it mildly.
Cases related to U.S. national security and whistleblowing have systematically involved the imposition of special administrative measures (SAMs) or similar, which include prolonged solitary confinement, evisceration of confidential communication with legal counsel, extreme restriction on family visits and written communication, as well as even more degrading forms of physical and psychological torture like sleep and sensory deprivation, keeping the prisoner in stress positions, dark, cold and confined spaces, strip-searching, prohibition of recreational activities, medical negligence.
After 14 years of arbitrary detention, abuse and severed connections to the outside world, Assange has already experienced the effects of this cruel and inhumane punitive treatment, as medical experts, UN Special Rapporteurs on Torture and human rights and press freedom organisations have previously established.
The added benefit to us, ordinary citizens, which stems from Assange’s potential extradition and conviction for his journalistic activity, will be that the already severely restricted media freedom will be given the final punch.
In many ways, the United States government and the CIA have already achieved what they wanted. Assange’s mental and physical health is almost completely destroyed, rendering his ability and willingness to continue to reveal government wrongdoing if he’s finally released highly questionable; the muzzling of journalism that is unfavourable to the powerful elites is flourishing in otherwise democratic countries like the UK, Canada, EU member states; media self-censorship has never been so effective, and justice has never been and likely never will be served for the state-sanctioned criminal acts which WikiLeaks exposed. I guess at this point, saving a courageous man whose life has been ruined and trying to protect the leftovers of our civic freedoms as much as we can, is the extent of what we can get. Jailing the real criminals and avenging their victims is a bridge too far.
Despite all the atrocities around this case and others like it, though, there is still a glimmer of hope that the growing public support and calls to free Assange, will finally deliver the scraps of justice which he gets to receive after more than a decade of character assassination, arbitrary detention, deprivation of dignity and denial of rights that he’s stoically endured. The political pressure which individual politicians, parliamentarians and international political organisations are exercising on the Biden administration, is also immensely important.
I encourage you to read Chip Gibbons’ account of the case and the appeal hearing, Chris Hedges’ eloquent depiction of the charade that is this persecution, as well as watch Richard Medhurst’s detailed report of the proceedings. All three of them were there in the court room, albeit obstructed by the court rules to observe in a meaningful way. So were other journalists like Stefania Maurizi, Matt Kennard, Taylor Hudak, Mohamed Elmaazi, surely there were more that I was not aware of.
The corporate media which for the first time in so many years expressed some tormented interest in the case — the BBC, CNN, Sky News, etc., showed up NOT to signal genuine concern for a fellow journalist and the fate of the profession they claim to be practicing. They were there to smirk and continue to spread lies and smears, doing the bidding of their overlords in the American and British government, and their secret agencies.
As Chris Hedges has pointed out on many occasions, the mainstream media, including WikiLeaks’ former media partners like the Guardian and the New York Times, have never regarded Julian as one of their own. They didn’t turn on him, they just used WikiLeaks to win a few prizes and then went off to became the government’s most trusted henchman.
The mass media bears the greatest responsibility and blame for the “slow-motion murder” of Assange, as Nils Melzer described what’s being done to him. This case would never have seen a day in court if the so-called papers of record had remembered what their role truly is. But these people have likely never been real journalists, they are just obedient stenographers in flashy clothes regurgitating state propaganda to advance the agenda of the ruling class.
“Real journalists”, the former leader of the Labour Party in Britain Jeremy Corbin said in front of the court, “take risks, real journalists go for the truth, whatever the cost. That has cost the lives of 80 journalists in Gaza already, and in many other conflicts around the world. What we need is Julian’s voice to be out there. So the idea that Julian should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act in the United States, the same legislation that was used against Daniel Elsberg and others that tried to bring truth to the US body politic, is beyond appalling. So this court today has an opportunity, an opportunity to ensure that Julian’s case is heard, that Julian’s search for justice is achieved, and that ultimately, Julian is able to walk free. But it also depends on the political process and atmosphere in the United States. President Biden could end this incarceration in two minutes, he could withdraw the whole case against Julian Assange if he believes in press freedom, as he says he does, if he believes in a pluralistic democracy, as he says he does, then let Julian go, let Julian tell the world the truth of the horrors and inequality that exist on this planet.
So we’re here today in support of Julian, we’re here tomorrow in support of Julian, and I say to the court very gently and very persuasively: whatever, whatever your decision, we ain’t going away. We are supporting Julian as long as it takes.
During his recent appearance on the Kim Iversen Show, Kevin Gosztola did a fantastic job outlining the threats to press freedom, the precedent that’s being set, as well as clarified some of the popular misconceptions about WikiLeaks and Assange’s work. He’s a U.S.-based journalists who’s been reporting on Assange for years but wasn’t granted permission to monitor the proceedings via a remote link. Access via a video link was denied to all journalists that were not in the UK physically.
The two-day appeal hearing did not produce an immediate result. We can have the judge’s final ruling as early as tomorrow, or they might decide to deliberate for a few more weeks. Their civilised demeanor during the hearing which was the first time in the course of this case the presiding judges did not express outright resentment and bias against Assange, might be a sign that they will grant him the right to appeal on at least some of the grounds laid out by his lawyers. This surely is the more preferable outcome but it could also be intentionally designed to further prolong the judicial theatrics until the U.S. presidential elections are over later this year or until Assange loses his mind or decides to take his own life. Whichever comes first.
If the appeal is denied, however, Assange might be on a plane to the United States in a matter of hours or days after the ruling although his lawyers are determined to challenge the decision in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. This is Assange’s absolute final avenue for appeal, but as one of his attorneys Jennifer Robinson has said, out of 36 requests to the ECHR to stop extraditions which were submitted last year, only one was approved.
A natural consequence of all the abuse that’s been inflicted on Assange, as well as the broader political, military and social landscape around the world in the past decades, is the growing disenfranchisement among the general population. Although a small minority of devoted believers in the neoliberal creed still exists, most people in the democratic West have long realised that the supposed appreciation of their political leaders for the rule of law, democratic convictions, civill liberties, freedom of speech and environmental protection, is nothing more than a giant sham.
We cannot allow the government to decide who is a journalist and what journalism is. We cannot be bullied into submission to normalise war and genocide for fear of retaliation. We cannot surrender our liberties and agency in the interest of short-term gains while those in power use the distraction to establish a democratically authoritarian police state.
As Richard Medhurst reminded us of Assange’s words when he was being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy, we must resist. Neither the United States, nor any other country can be given extraterritorial jurisdiction to indict, imprison and torture journalists or anyone else for publishing evidence of their war crimes and malfeasance, for giving the public truthful information in their interest and for daring to defend a moral principle.
We must free Assange and everyone else who is being held hostage by a rogue state apparatus before it’s too late. Both for them and for us. We’re already painfully late.