[WSMDiscuss] (Fwd) Extradition of Julian Assange? time to protest (e.g. at British High Commissions on May 2) Re: [social-movements] Fwd: Julian Assange's arrest is a direct assault on press freedom and a threat to freedoms everywhere
Patrick Bond
pbond at mail.ngo.za
Sat Apr 13 09:46:55 CEST 2019
(At least that's one view <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0IgKGQ7gmM>.
"/Assange is scheduled to have his first hearing on the extradition
issue before a judge on May 2/.")
Arrest of Wikileaks co-founder, Julian Assange
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0IgKGQ7gmM>
<https://www.youtube.com/user/sabcdigitalnews>
SABC Digital News
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8yH-uI81UUtEMDsowQyx1g>
Published on 12 Apr 2019
The arrest of the co-founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, was splashed
across front pages around the world today. He was arrested at the
Ecuadorian embassy in London. Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012
to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that has now
been dropped. He now faces US federal conspiracy charges related to one
of the largest ever leaks of government secrets. To discuss this and
other international news we're joined by Professor of Political Economy
at Wits School of Governance, Professor Patrick Bond.
***
Assange Arrest a Warning from History
April 12, 2019
/Consortium News/
Real journalism is being criminalized by thugs in plain sight, says John
Pilger. Dissent has become an indulgence. And the British elite has
abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and justice.
*By John Pilger <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/john-pilger/>*
*T*he glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean
embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle
against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a
sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in
almost seven years.
That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna
Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies.
Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the
recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a
signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its
Working Party on Arbitrary Detention.
But to hell with that. Let the thugs go in. Directed by the quasi
fascists in Trump’s Washington, in league with Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno, a
Latin American Judas and liar seeking to disguise his rancid regime, the
British elite abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and
justice.
Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in
Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs, for onward dispatch to the dock
in The Hague. By the standard of Nuremberg, Blair’s “paramount crime” is
the deaths of a million Iraqis. Assange’s crime is journalism: holding
the rapacious to account, exposing their lies and empowering people all
over the world with truth.
The shocking arrest of Assange carries a warning for all who, as Oscar
Wilde wrote, “sew the seeds of discontent [without which] there would be
no advance towards civilization.” The warning is explicit towards
journalists. What happened to the founder and editor of WikiLeaks can
happen to you on a newspaper, you in a TV studio, you on radio, you
running a podcast.
Assange’s principal media tormentor, /The Guardian,/ a collaborator with
the secret state, displayed its nervousness this week with an editorial
that scaled new weasel heights. /The Guardian/ has exploited the work of
Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor called “the greatest
scoop of the last 30 years.” The paper creamed off WikiLeaks’
revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them.
With not a penny going to Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped
/Guardian/ book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors,
Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on their source, abused him and
disclosed the secret password Assange had given the paper in confidence,
which was designed to protect a digital file containing leaked US
embassy cables.
*Revealing Homicidal Colonial Wars*
When Assange was still trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy, Harding joined
police outside and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the
last laugh.” /The Guardian/ then published a series of falsehoods about
Assange, not least a discredited claim that a group of Russians and
Trump’s man, Paul Manafort, had visited Assange in the embassy. The
meetings never happened; it was fake.
But the tone has now changed. “The Assange case is a morally tangled
web,” the paper opined. “He (Assange) believes in publishing things that
should not be published …. But he has always shone a light on things
that should never have been hidden.”
These “things” are the truth about the homicidal way America conducts
its colonial wars, the lies of the British Foreign Office in its denial
of rights to vulnerable people, such as the Chagos Islanders, the exposé
of Hillary Clinton as a backer and beneficiary of jihadism in the Middle
East, the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the
governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown, and much more.
It is all available on the WikiLeaks site. <https://wikileaks.org/>
/The Guardian/ is understandably nervous. Secret policemen have already
visited the newspaper and demanded and got the ritual destruction of a
hard drive. On this, the paper has form. In 1983, a Foreign Office
clerk, Sarah Tisdall, leaked British Government documents showing when
American cruise nuclear weapons would arrive in Europe. /The Guardian/
was showered with praise.
When a court order demanded to know the source, instead of the editor
going to prison on a fundamental principle of protecting a source,
Tisdall was betrayed, prosecuted and served six months.
If Assange is extradited to America for publishing what /The Guardian/
calls truthful “things,” what is to stop the current editor, Katherine
Viner, following him, or the previous editor, Alan Rusbridger, or the
prolific propagandist Luke Harding?
What is to stop the editors of /The New York Times/ and /The Washington
Post/, who also published morsels of the truth that originated with
WikiLeaks, and the editor of /El Pais/ in Spain, and /Der Spiegel/ in
Germany and /The Sydney Morning/ Herald in Australia. The list is long.
David McCraw, lead lawyer of /The New York Times/, wrote: “I think the
prosecution [of Assange] would be a very, very bad precedent for
publishers … from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic
publisher’s position and the law would have a very hard time
distinguishing between /The New York Times/ and WikiLeaks.”
Even if journalists who published WikiLeaks’ leaks are not summoned by
an American grand jury, the intimidation of Julian Assange and Chelsea
Manning will be enough. Real journalism is being criminalized by thugs
in plain sight. Dissent has become an indulgence.
In Australia, the current America-besotted government is prosecuting two
whistle-blowers who revealed that Canberra’s spooks bugged the cabinet
meetings of the new government of East Timor for the express purpose of
cheating the tiny, impoverished nation out of its proper share of the
oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea. Their trial will be held in
secret. The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, is infamous for
his part in setting up concentration camps for refugees on the Pacific
islands of Nauru and Manus, where children self harm and suicide. In
2014, Morrison proposed mass detention camps for 30,000 people.
*Journalism: a Major Threat*
Real journalism is the enemy of these disgraces. A decade ago, the
Ministry of Defense in London produced a secret document which described
the “principal threats” to public order as threefold: terrorists,
Russian spies and investigative journalists. The latter was designated
the major threat.
The document was duly leaked to WikiLeaks, which published it. “We had
no choice,” Assange told me. “It’s very simple. People have a right to
know and a right to question and challenge power. That’s true democracy.”
What if Assange and Manning and others in their wake — if there are
others — are silenced and “the right to know and question and challenge”
is taken away?
In the 1970s, I met Leni Reifenstahl, close friend of Adolf Hitler,
whose films helped cast the Nazi spell over Germany.
She told me that the message in her films, the propaganda, was dependent
not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void”
of the public.
“Did this submissive void include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I
asked her.
“Of course,” she said, “especially the intelligentsia …. When people no
longer ask serious questions, they are submissive and malleable.
Anything can happen.”
And did. The rest, she might have added, is history.
*John Pilger <http://johnpilger.com/> *is an Australian-British
journalist and filmmaker based in London.*//*Pilger’s Web site
is:**www.johnpilger.com* <http://www.johnpilger.com/>*. ***In 2017, the
British Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and
filmed work. The British Film Institute includes his 1979 film, “Year
Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia,” among the 10 most important
documentaries of the 20^th century. Some of his previous contributions
to Consortium News can be found here
<https://consortiumnews.com/tag/john-pilger/>.
*
***
Extraditing Assange Promises to Be a Long, Difficult Process
/New York Times/
By Richard Pérez-Peña <https://www.nytimes.com/by/richard-perez-pena>
* April 12, 2019
LONDON — With the arrest in London of the WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange, and the news of a criminal case against him in the United
States, anyone expecting him to appear in an American courtroom should
be warned: Extraditing him will not be quick, and it will not be easy.
The American authorities made a preliminary extradition request on
Thursday, soon after Mr. Assange was jailed for jumping bail
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/europe/julian-assange-wikileaks-ecuador-embassy.html?module=inline>,
but that was just the first in a long series of legal filings, hearings,
appeals and administrative decisions. And in the end, experts say, the
result is far from certain.
The process is mostly up to the courts, but politicians will have a hand
in it, too, and were already drawing battle lines over Mr. Assange.
Complicating matters, prosecutors in Sweden could reopen a rape
investigation involving Mr. Assange and request extradition to that
country, forcing the British government to decide which case would take
precedence.
“It’s not simple, and the defense will argue everything they can,” said
Rebecca Niblock, a partner at the British law firm Kingsley Napley who
specializes in extradition law. “I think it is going to be a long one.
I’d say minimum a year and a half, but if things get complicated, it
could be much longer.”
Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, wrote on
Thursday <https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1116424423953903616>
on Twitter, “The extradition of Julian Assange to the U.S. for exposing
evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the
British government.”
The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of
atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British
government.pic.twitter.com/CxTUrOfkHt <https://t.co/CxTUrOfkHt>
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) April 11, 2019
<https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1116424423953903616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
The Conservative Party government has avoided taking a position, while
signaling that it takes a much less favorable view of Mr. Assange — and
sees in him a potent political issue.
Sajid Javid, who as home secretary has a role in the process, said in
Parliament on Thursday that he “won’t be drawn into the request for
extradition” or discuss “the details of the accusations against Mr.
Assange, either in the U.K.’s criminal justice system, or in the U.S.”
But, he added, “Whenever someone has a track record of undermining the
U.K. and our allies, and the values we stand for, you can almost
guarantee that the leadership of the party opposite will support those
who intend to do us harm.”
Diane Abbott, Mr. Javid’s Labour counterpart, said, “Julian Assange is
not being pursued to protect U.S. national security; he’s being pursued
because he has exposed wrongdoing by U.S. administrations and their
military forces.”
The partisan divide raises the prospect that a change of government
could change Mr. Assange’s fortunes, because his case could take years
to end. Britain’s next scheduled general election would be in 2022, and
there is widespread speculation that Prime Minister Theresa May might
call early elections.
For years, Mr. Assange has been simultaneously hailed as a hero for
transparency, and cursed as a reckless anarchist and publicity-seeker.
In 2016, WikiLeaks published stolen Democratic Party emails
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/assange-timed-wikileaks-release-of-democratic-emails-to-harm-hillary-clinton.html?module=inline>,
damaging the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russian
interference in that election, reported in court documents that Russian
intelligence was the source of those emails, which Mr. Assange has denied.
But Mr. Assange has been in the sights of American officials since 2010,
when WikiLeaks published an immense trove of classified material
<https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/world/middleeast/23intro.html?module=inline>,
primarily about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, taken from military
computer systems by Chelsea Manning, an analyst in Army intelligence.
Ms. Manning was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 35 years in
prison
<https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/us/manning-sentenced-for-leaking-government-secrets.html?module=inline>,
and spent nearly seven years in prison before her punishment was
commuted
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/us/politics/obama-commutes-bulk-of-chelsea-mannings-sentence.html?module=inline>
by President Barack Obama.
WikiLeaks and its defenders argue that it was following a standard
practice of news organizations, publishing information of public
interest, even if the person who supplied the information obtained it
illegally.
The case is about the “publishing of documents, of videos of killing of
innocent civilians, exposure of war crimes,” Kristinn Hrafnsson, a
WikiLeaks editor, told a news conference on Thursday. “This is journalism.”
But the indictment unsealed on Thursday
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/us/politics/assange-indictment.html?module=inline>alleges
that Mr. Assange, a native of Australia, went further, conspiring with
Ms. Manning, then known as Bradley Manning, to help her hack into the
military network.
Mr. Assange’s defenders, including a number of human rights activists,
contend that the case against him is not about hacking, but about
releasing information that embarrassed the United States.
For extradition to proceed under British law, the United States must
submit a full extradition request, and Britain’s home secretary must
certify that it is legally valid and send it to the courts — all by
mid-June, Mr. Javid said. Then the matter goes to an extradition hearing
before a judge, whose rulings can be appealed all the way up to
Britain’s Supreme Court.
Two recent, high-profile cases could point the way for Mr. Assange’s
defense. The American authorities sought the extradition of Lauri Love
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42946540>, a British man charged
with hacking into dozens of United States government computer systems,
and Stuart Scott
<https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/31/former-hsbc-banker-wins-appeal-against-extradition-to-us-stuart-scott-charges-foreign-exchange-rigging>,
a banker charged with currency manipulation.
In each case, a judge ruled against the defendant but the decision was
overturned on appeal, partly on the grounds that the alleged illegal
acts occurred in Britain, which meant any prosecution should take place
in Britain.
If the courts uphold extradition, it is up to the home secretary to
actually order it. The law gives the home secretary some leeway to defy
the ruling and refuse extradition, though not much.
In another hacking case, the United States sought to prosecute Gary
McKinnon
<https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/world/europe/01britain.html?module=inline>,
who was accused of gaining unauthorized access to dozens of government
computers, in search, he said, of information about U.F.O.s.
After a decade of legal battles, the British courts ultimately decided
against him. But in 2012, the home secretary at the time, Mrs. May,
refused to order extradition
<https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/world/europe/britain-refuses-to-extradite-computer-hacker-sought-in-us.html?module=inline>
based on Mr. McKinnon’s mental health and the risk that he might commit
suicide.
Since then, court decisions have narrowed the range of discretion
available, but the courts could take Mr. Assange’s condition into
account, said Ms. Niblock, the extradition lawyer.
“His physical and mental health have undoubtedly deteriorated over the
past seven years,” she added.
In 2010, Swedish prosecutors ordered the arrest of Mr. Assange, who was
living in Britain, to be questioned about allegations of sexual
misconduct and rape in Sweden. While free on bail, he fought extradition
to Sweden — which he said would turn him over to the United States —
until he exhausted his appeals in 2012. Mr. Assange has denied the
allegations
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/world/europe/assange-gives-detailed-account-of-rape-accusation.html?module=inline>
against him.
Rather than submit to extradition, he took refuge in the Ecuadorean
Embassy in London, and the country granted him asylum
<https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/world/americas/ecuador-to-let-assange-stay-in-its-embassy.html?module=inline>.
British prosecutors charged him with violating the terms of his bail.
In 2017, Swedish prosecutors set aside the rape case and the extradition
request, saying that the effort was moot with Mr. Assange in the embassy.
On Thursday, Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status after
almost seven years, and allowed British police to enter the embassy and
arrest him. He was swiftly convicted on the bail charge, for which he
could be sentenced to up to a year in prison.
The next day, the Swedish Prosecution Authority said it was looking into
the possibility of reopening its case against him.
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Block Extradition of Julian Assange for 1st
Amendment-Protected Journalism
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 15:16:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Reuel Naiman, Just Foreign Policy
<info at justforeignpolicy.org>
Just Foreign Policy
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ywZa7kY8J7w38HnBms3Z02chHPoAsxu3>
*
Urge Congress to block the extradition & prosecution of Julian Assange
for actions protected in the U.S. by the First Amendment.**
Sign the petition
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ZvfIRHzghZIH6CcW%2BkhMuWchHPoAsxu3>
*
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested in London and
threatened with extradition to the United States to stand trial on
charges related to publishing U.S. government documents that exposed
U.S. government war crimes.
In response to the arrest, the *ACLU* said
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=4XWdd6exWVJthtN3ilTRfGchHPoAsxu3>:
“*Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks’
publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional*, and
would open the door to *criminal investigations of other news
organizations*. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating
U.S. secrecy laws would set an *especially dangerous precedent for U.S.
journalists*, who *routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver
information vital to the public's interest*.
In response to the unsealed indictment, the *ACLU* said
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=bMLyPrTUSIvYzmLgW5iud2chHPoAsxu3>:
"*Criminally prosecuting a publisher for the publication of truthful
information would be a first in American history, and
unconstitutional.* The government did not cross that Rubicon with
today’s indictment, but the worst case scenario cannot yet be ruled out.
*We have no assurance that these are the only charges the government
plans to bring against Mr. Assange. *Further, while there is no First
Amendment right to crack a government password, *this indictment
characterizes as ‘part of’ a criminal conspiracy the routine and
protected activities journalists often engage in as part of their daily
jobs, such as encouraging a source to provide more information*. Given
President Trump’s and his administration’s well-documented attacks on
the freedom of the press, such characterizations are especially worrisome.”
All American journalists, publishers and editors need the protections of
the First Amendment to be strong in order to do their jobs. *All
Americans need the protections of the First Amendment to be strong*, not
only to protect our rights to speak and write, but to *protect our right
to know*, particularly to know about actions of U.S. government
officials that U.S. government officials might be hiding. Some secret
U.S. government actions might be against the interests of the majority
of Americans. *Some secret U.S. government actions might be
unconstitutional or otherwise illegal.* This is especially important
with respect to *ending and preventing unconstitutional wars*. There’s
*no way* Americans can fulfill our responsibilities to hold U.S.
government officials accountable for what they are doing in other
people’s countries *if we can’t find out what the U.S. government is
doing*.
*The Pentagon lied for years to Congress and the American people about
its unconstitutional role in the Saudi war in Yemen.* It took opponents
of the war *three years* just to prove to the satisfaction of the
majority of Congress that *the Pentagon was lying* about its
participation in the war. *If we could have exposed the U.S. role in the
war sooner, we could have ended the war sooner.*
*This is why protecting the First Amendment is so important to opponents
of unconstitutional war*- and why the apologists for unconstitutional
war have the First Amendment in their crosshairs. They want to chill
national security reporting,*because they don’t want the American people
to know what they are doing.*
This is why the Congress that just voted to end unconstitutional U.S.
participation in the Saudi war in Yemen should vote to *prohibit the
Department of Justice from spending any of our tax dollars to extradite
or prosecute Julian Assange for alleged actions which would be protected
by the First Amendment if Julian Assange had been a U.S. journalist
standing on U.S. soil* when he performed the alleged action.
For example, the Department of Justice authorization or appropriation
could be amended thus:
/*"No money in this bill shall be used for the extradition of Julian
Assange or any WikiLeaks employee or volunteer to the United States, nor
for the prosecution of Julian Assange or any WikiLeaks employee or
volunteer in the United States, for any alleged action which would be
protected by the First Amendment if performed by a U.S. citizen
journalist, publisher, or editor while standing on U.S. soil." */
*Urge Congress to block the Trump Administration’s attempts to leverage
the Assange case to undermine First Amendment protections for
journalists, publishers, editors, and the American people's right to
know by signing our petition
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=40v0RZxvrg2SA%2FNGctpdEGchHPoAsxu3>.
*
Thanks for all you do to help U.S. foreign policy become a bit more just,
Hassan El-Tayyab, Sarah Burns, and Robert Reuel Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
***
It Could Be Years Before Julian Assange Steps Foot In The United States
Extradition cases between the UK and the US can take years to sort out.
Zoe Tillman BuzzFeed News Reporter
<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/zoetillman>
April 12, 2019, at 4:09 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — Julian Assange’s dramatic arrest this week by United
Kingdom authorities at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and the
unsealing of an indictment in federal court in Virginia ended years of
speculation about whether the WikiLeaks founder would face criminal
charges in the United States.
But Thursday’s flurry of activity was just the first step in what could
be a yearslong legal battle to bring him to the US.
The UK is pursuing Assange’s extradition on behalf of the US government,
but extradition cases between the two countries are complex affairs.
Assuming the defendant doesn’t agree to surrender and contests the
removal, there are not only multiple levels for appeals, but multiple
forums, too. Defendants have spent years in custody as they fought
extradition — one terrorism suspect, Babar Ahmad, who eventually pleaded
guilty
<https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/british-nationals-who-supported-terrorism-are-sentenced>,
was arrested in the UK in 2004 and held for eight years before he was
extradited to the US in 2012.
There’s a good chance that however long it takes, Assange will remain
behind bars. He was arrested this week not only on the US indictment,
but also on a charge in the UK that he violated bail in 2012 to avoid
extradition to Sweden, where he faced sexual assault allegations. Amy
Jeffress, a lawyer who previously oversaw cooperation between US and UK
authorities for the Justice Department, said Assange’s past bail
violation would undermine any argument he made for release now.
“He’s already shown he's noncompliant with conditions and I think it’s
unlikely a judge would release him given that history,” Jeffress said.
A federal grand jury in Virginia indicted Assange in March 2018 on one
count of conspiring to commit computer intrusion by allegedly working
with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak classified
military documents in 2010; prosecutors say Assange agreed to try to
break a password that would enable Manning to access US Department of
Defense computers to obtain documents she couldn’t otherwise get.
Assange faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson told reporters on Wednesday that
Assange planned to fight extradition, saying it would set a “dangerous
precedent” for journalists “having published truthful information about
the United States.”
Assange is scheduled to have his first hearing on the extradition issue
before a judge on May 2. The Justice Department won’t participate in the
UK legal proceedings, but will coordinate with their UK counterparts as
the case proceeds.
Extradition between the US and the UK is governed by a treaty signed in
2003 <https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/187784.pdf>. In order
to extradite someone, the US government has to provide not only the
charging documents, but also information that would show a “reasonable
basis to believe” that the person committed the crime at issue.
The Justice Department hasn’t submitted its final package of extradition
materials to UK authorities yet, though. Instead, they asked for a
“provisional arrest,” which requires less information at the start about
the underlying evidence. The Justice Department has 60 days to make the
formal extradition request. Until they do, they can bring more charges
against Assange; but once the package is in, they can’t add any more.
If the Justice Department brought a charge that had the potential for
the death penalty, that would complicate the extradition proceedings —
the 2003 extradition treaty states that the UK can refuse extradition
for a crime that doesn’t carry the death penalty in the UK unless the US
promises that capital punishment is off the table. Ecuadorian President
Lenín Moreno also announced this week that the UK had confirmed it would
not send Assange to a country where he faced the death penalty.
Assange made his first court appearance this week before the Westminster
Magistrates' Court in central London; criminal cases begin in the
magistrates’ court. A judge found him guilty of breaching his bail
conditions when he failed to surrender in 2012 and took refuge in the
Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden.
Assange’s bail breach case will move next to the Crown Court, which
handles more serious criminal offenses, where he’ll be sentenced on the
bail breach issue. But the extradition case will stay in the Magistrates
Court — the two cases can proceed at the same time.
In many cases, the home secretary in the UK, and not a judge, is the
final decision-maker on extradition. At each level, judges decide
whether to send the case to the secretary to approve or deny an
extradition request. If the judge handling his case now rules in favor
of sending his case to the secretary, Assange can still appeal to the
High Court, the equivalent of an intermediate appeals court in the US.
If the secretary decides to approve extradition, Assange could then try
to appeal to the High Court. A ruling by the High Court can be appealed
up to the UK Supreme Court, the equivalent of the US Supreme Court.
Assange can raise a host of defenses against extradition, including
arguing that he should be protected as a journalist and that the
prosecution is politically motivated. Given the prominent role of the
home secretary in the process, Assange could pursue a public relations
campaign to place pressure on Home Secretary Sajid Javid. In 2012,
then–home secretary Theresa May — the current prime minister — blocked
the extradition <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-19957138> of Gary McKinnon,
who was wanted in the US on computer hacking allegations. May said at
the time that McKinnon was “seriously ill” and that extradition would
violate his human rights.
Javid released a statement
<http://www.ukpol.co.uk/sajid-javid-2019-statement-on-arrest-of-julian-assange/>
Thursday saying he was “pleased” that Assange’s case would go before a
court, but he declined to comment on the details of the allegations
against Assange.
Even if Assange loses at every level of the UK court system, he still
has options. He could petition the European Court of Human Rights to
intervene. That court, established in 1959, considers cases claiming
violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. The UK is a
member of the court, which is separate from the European Union, so even
if the UK goes ahead with its exit from the EU, Assange could still
appeal to that court.
There’s also a question of what happens if Swedish authorities reopen a
sexual assault case against Assange. That case was dismissed in 2017
after prosecutors decided there was no way for them to pursue it while
Assange was protected in the Ecuadorian Embassy, but left open the
possibility of resuming the investigation if Assange became “available”
to the Swedish courts. A lawyer for the woman who said Assange sexually
assaulted her released a statement on Thursday calling for the case to
be revived.
If Sweden were to reopen the case and file an extradition request, a UK
judge would have to decide if the Swedish request gets priority because
of its earlier request, or if Sweden now has to get in line behind the US.
***
/The Guardian/
Whatever you think of Julian Assange, his extradition to the US must
be opposed
Owen Jones <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/owen-jones>
Extraditing the founder of WikiLeaks is an attempt by the US to
intimidate anyone who exposes its crimes
Fri 12 Apr 2019
States that commit crimes in foreign lands depend on at least passive
acquiescence. This is achieved in a number of ways. One is the
“othering” of the victims: the stripping away of their humanity, because
if you imagined them to be people like your own children or your
neighbours, their suffering and deaths would be intolerable. Another
approach is to portray opponents of foreign aggression as traitors, or
in league with hostile powers. And another strategy is to cover up the
consequences of foreign wars, to ensure that the populace is kept
intentionally unaware of the acts committed in their name.
This is what the attempted extradition of Julian Assange
<https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/11/julian-assange-arrested-at-ecuadorian-embassy-wikileaks>
to the US is about. Back in 2010, the then US soldier Chelsea Manning
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/chelsea-manning> downloaded
hundreds of thousands of classified documents relating to US-led wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, US state department cables
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-embassy-cables-key-points>,
and inmates imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. Assange’s alleged role
consists
<https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/11/julian-assange-charged-with-computer-hacking-conspiracy>
of helping Manning crack an encrypted password to gain access to the US
defense department computer network.
It is Manning who is the true hero of this story: last month, she was
arrested for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating
WikiLeaks, placed in solitary confinement for four weeks, and now
remains imprisoned. We must demand her freedom
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/23/chelsea-manning-jail-solitary-confinement-wikileaks>.
These leaks revealed some of the horrors of the post-9/11 wars. One
showed a US aircrew laughing
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack>
after slaughtering a dozen innocent people, including two Iraqi
employees of Reuters, after dishonestly alleging to have encountered a
firefight. Other files revealed how US-led forces killed
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-military-leaks>
hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, their deaths otherwise airbrushed
out of existence. Another cable, which exposed corruption and scandals
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/01/201112314530411972.html>
in the court of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the western-backed
then-dictator of Tunisia, helped fuel protests, which toppled him
<https://psmag.com/news/tunisian-activist-describes-mannings-leaks-helped-topple-dictator-65243>.
Assange does have a case to answer: but it is not this. It is widely
circulating around the internet that the case of a Swedish woman who
alleged rape has been kicked out by authorities. This is profoundly
misleading: in 2017, prosecutors concluded that “at this point, all
possibilities to conduct the investigation are exhausted”, that because
Assange was holed up in Ecuador’s embassy, and Ecuador would not
cooperate, the investigation had to be discontinued
<https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/19/swedish-prosecutors-drop-julian-assange-investigation>,
but could be resumed if Assange “makes himself available”.
Separate allegations of sexual assault, made by a second Swedish woman,
were dropped by Swedish authorities in 2015 after expiring under the
statute of limitations. You cannot be a progressive if your response to
someone making an accusation of rape is to dismiss her simply because
you admire the man who is accused – worse, to portray a woman as a
lying, Machiavellian schemer trying to bring down a great man is
misogyny. If the case is resumed, Assange must answer the accusation in
Sweden <https://www.theguardian.com/world/sweden> without the threat of
extradition to the US.
That Swedish case must be entirely disentangled from the US extradition
attempt. And while opposing Assange’s rightwing libertarian politics
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2013/08/17/assanges-politics-rand-paul-and-libertarian-wing-of-gop-represent-only-hope-in-u-s/#2547734e1f22>
is perfectly reasonable, it is utterly irrelevant to the basic issue
here of justice. There remain elite supporters of Hillary Clinton who,
unable to accept the failure of their “centrist” ideology in an age of
political unrest, still look for scapegoats for the defeat of 2016, and
will happily watch Assange festering in a jail in Donald Trump’s US as a
consequence.
But Assange’s extradition to the US must be passionately opposed. It is
notable that Obama’s administration itself concluded
<https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/>
that to prosecute Assange for publishing documents would gravely imperil
press freedom. Yes, this is a defence of journalism and media freedom.
But it is also about the attempt to intimidate those who expose crimes
committed by the world’s last remaining superpower. The US wishes to
hide its crimes so it can continue to commit them with impunity: that’s
why, last month, Trump signed an executive order to cover up civilian
deaths from drones
<http://theconversation.com/trumps-executive-order-on-drone-strikes-sends-civilian-casualty-data-back-into-the-shadows-113165>,
the use of which has hugely escalated in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and
Pakistan.
Silence kills, because a public that is uninformed about the slaughter
of innocent people by their own government will not exert pressure to
stop the killing. For the sake of stopping crimes yet to be committed,
this extradition – and the intentionally chilling precedent it sets –
must be defeated.
• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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