Let’s face it. Assange has not had justice for the duration of his extended stay in the UK. The only logical prediction for his case going forward is to presume more injustice.
He is an unconvicted man, presumed innocent, who has been excluded from the most fundamental procedures of due process, rule of law and proportionality within the UK justice system. Vivienne Westwood coined the phrase “MisRule of Law” and she is on point. According to some legal experts, “This case isn’t about the law,” says Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.
Back in 2010 UK legal processes were reasonable and Assange actually endorsed British justice. He had faith in the UK. Then after a series of legal contortions and emails obtained through FOIA requests, it became obvious that he would be excluded from the routine application of laws and consequent benefits that other people received. The UK wrote an Assange Exclusion Clause (my phrase) that prohibited him from proportionate extradition measures; UK extradition laws were changed such that only persons who had formal legal charges against him/her would face removal from Britain and sent to the requesting country. Sweden requested him to appear in their courts, in person, for alleged crimes but it never laid formal charges, therefore Assange should have been protected from the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). The UK should have removed all detention and bail orders and Assange should have had his freedoms restored effective 2014.
Assange has never been charged with a crime, up until the US laid 18 charges against him this past Spring, for informing the world about war crimes. The UK prosecution service (CPS) actually halted proceedings on a number of other extradition cases until the law was changed so that they would benefit from the new law. The UK then processed these cases which were pending the outcome of Assange’s challenge but excluded Assange in a specific clause that stated it would not be applied retroactively to outstanding cases, and surprise, surprise, his was the only outstanding case. It was clear bias against him. That is: The law was not fair or proportionate at first. Assange challenged that unfair law. The law was changed because of his challenge. But once it was revised, he did not benefit from the new law. I wrote about this in detail here.
Two years later (2016), the United Nations gave two rulings that said Assange was being arbitrarily detained and that he deserved freedom, safe passage out of the UK and actual compensation for Sweden and the UK’s unjust treatment since Dec. 7, 2010. Those two decisions were based on International Law. But Assange was excluded from benefitting from these decisions and the UK insulted an international body of legal experts by calling the decision “ridiculous”.
Later on again, when Sweden actually revoked the original EAW, Assange requested that the UK drop it’s absolute determination to uphold a revoked warrant a UK judge decided, no, let’s keep it in effect and keep punishing Assange, threaten him with arrest, accuse him of absconding bail when he entered Ecuador’s embassy to avoid extradition to the US, (not Sweden)… let’s plan to arrest him on a bail breach that related to a now non-existent EAW. That’s exactly what they did on April 11 2019. If it were any other human being being kettled by British police for a revoked arrest warrant, chances are fairly high that that person would have had any bail infraction dropped or been asked to pay a small fine. But Judge Deborah Taylor thought differently.
Britain is in breach of international law with respect to Assange. No country should be above the law, especially International Law which states that Assange could seek and obtain asylum and he did that. Seeking asylum is not a crime. It is a human right. The alternative would have been for Assange to surrender for a second time, to UK police. But the Brits said that their local laws actually supercede International law and they could arrest him just for seeking asylum which inconveniently disrupted his bail routine. They treated his asylum seeking as Contempt of Court and accused him of advertising internationally his unflattering view of UK justice.
After he was arrested on April 11, 2019 under the guise of a minor bail infraction, he was placed immediately in Britains maximum prison where terrorists, pedophiles, murderers and dangerous criminals are housed. For bail infraction. At that point the US had not charged him with any offense. He was abducted from the embassy, pushed into a police van, experienced “capture shock”, waited to have access to his lawyers and was then paraded into court for immediate incarceration within Britain’s worst of the worst prison. This alone demonstrates the disproportionate reflex of the UK courts. Assange had no time to prepare a defense, was insulted by the presiding judge and hauled off to Belmarsh.
Between April 11th and the US’s public indictment(s) of Assange, he should have been in a low security prison for a short time. Instead he was treated like a terrorist who was a danger to society because he sought asylum. Since he was put in Belmarsh he has dramatically lost weight, mental clarity, physical strength and basic prisoner rights which other inmates enjoy. He is getting an extreme version of prison conditions which are worse than what the most dangerous criminals get. Assange is excluded from basic prisoner rights within the UK prison even according to this form letter. (link). He is classified as a semi-dangerous criminal, in solitary confinement, no books, laptop, unpredictable mail, limited visitors, legal visits and likely very little privacy. He is getting the Terrorist-Treatment, not that of a man who is presumed innocent and a suspect of crimes in another country.
Recent reports from family members and long time friends have raised the alarm that he could die in there, any day now.
My hypothesis is that the US has penetrated Belmarsh prison, has cameras all around him and the guards assigned to him/ his torture is based on the Russian “punitive psychiatry” tactic of crushing dissent. Essentially Assange is in CIA custody within the premises of a UK prison which would explain why he is excluded from the most basic prisoner rights of Belmarsh. It all makes sense if you shift your paradigm.
This would be impossible for me to verify because:
A. The CIA are experts in secret operations and the agenda to take over everything relating to Assange’s custody in Belmarsh by the CIA would be top secret.
B. Any Belmarsh staff would be threatened if they thought about verifying this hypothesis. They would be punished and targeted.
What makes this case political rather than criminal?
It’s all how you define “political”. If one powerful nation in the world wants to engineer permission to indict, extradite then prosecute a reporter in another jurisdiction, anywhere in the world, then I consider the case to be political rather than criminal. If the US succeeds with Assange’s extradition and show trial, then the US will advance its production of more indictments for more reporters, regardless of where they have travelled, where they reside or their nationality.
Further, Assange is the sole target of the US for his participation in a team of people who gathered in the Bunker of the Guardian to coordinate, copy, sort, upload, catalogue and then publish the materials for which he is being charged. If the case were not political and purely based on who participated in the process of publication, (including journalists and I.T. professionals from the Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais and LeMonde), then the Co-Conspirators would also be indicted by the US, not just Assange. The fact that Assange is being singled-out as the sole criminal suspect is proof that the US charges are political and strategic. It’s a warning signal to every reporter or media outlet on the planet that if they publish, they will perish by the same torture Assange is receiving. The message is clear: You publish, you perish.
Assange is in the grip of the most powerful adversaries on the planet. They want to kill him but not until he suffers publicly. If they delay his death, it is only to exact maximum deterrent impact and grim satisfaction for his calculated humiliation and torture. To prolong his life in the short term is to grant complicit countries enough time to manipulate laws to become skewed against him and set a new precedents for future indictments of other reporters.
The US is interfering in British justice and “calling the shots” in court in plain sight. The US has hijacked the UK courts and is clearly at the helm. It is a textbook case of “Law-Fare” whereby the US penetrates another country’s legal and judicial system to influence cases to generate a predetermined outcome. Witnesses in the court hearing on Oct. 21st state that US lawyers were literally coaching Judge Baraister during the session. She may as well have been wearing a red ball cap with “MAGA” on it or a T-shirt saying “Team USA”. She did not afford Assange’s defence team the freedom to shuttle around the court room, get advice on-the-fly and then offer her instructions on what to say next. She was not impartial in that court room. Her bias in favour of the US prosecution team was blatant. She operated outside of her assigned role to be impartial and fair.
Public access to Assange is being increasingly restricted, clearly at the direction of US prosecutors, not in the public interest. In February Judge Arbuthnot ruled that her definition of “public interest” was to protect the perceived integrity of UK Justice in the eyes of the public. The UK has also denied FOIA access to documents and communications between the UK and the US Department of Justice (neither confirming nor denying) with the excuse that it would undermine international relations with UK allies.
Physically and psychologically Assange is in the grip of powerful adversaries who are enabled by passive Australia. But he is also in the grip of Global Citizens, journalists and politicians who realize that if he dies, the gates will open and they will be next. Guess who the Department of Justice is lining up? Kristinn Hrafnsson, David Leigh, Sarah Harrison, Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Joseph Farrell, Amy Goodman, Afshin Rattansi, Abby Martin, Nick Davies, Alan Rusbridger, Jacob Appelbaum, David Cole, Ewen Macaskill, Laura Poitras, Jennifer Robinson, Vaughn Smith, Carol Rosenberg, Seymour Hersh, Stefania Maurizi… you get it. In China, human rights lawyers are detained, tortured and murdered, behind closed doors. No due process. That’s what is on the horizon if the US succeeds in this politically based extradition.
Going forward, the only certainty in the Assange case is injustice. The US will make sure of it. The only way to stop this from happening is to rise up, get united, organize rallies to inform the public and resist. We must demand public access to all further court hearings en masse.
Public access to the courts also guarantees the integrity of judicial processes inasmuch as the transparency that flows from access ensures that justice is rendered in a manner that is not arbitrary, but is in accordance with the rule of law.
CBC v. Canada (Attorney General) 2011 SCC 2
Assange did not speak very much during the Oct. 21st court hearing, but what he did say was the concentrated truth:
“I don’t understand how this is equitable.” (It’s not. You don’t have equality before the law.)
“This superpower had 10 years to prepare for this case and I can’t access my writings.”
(That’s because Ecuador invited US authorities to raid your private space in the embassy and you were robbed of your entire legal case, notes, documents, laptop and memory devices. Your life was recorded like a Reality TV show, around the clock, to invade your privileged conversations with doctors, lawyers, friends and lay advisors. The US has pretended to be disinterested in your case for 10 yrs but was actually mounting an aggressive military style attack against you and Wikileaks.)
“It’s very difficult where I am to do anything but these people have unlimited resources…”
(Yes, you are trying to survive on a daily basis, likely on shorter intervals of time because the effort to endure even a day is monumental. You can’t do anything about the US exacting revenge on you while you are in Belmarsh with no tools or reliable, private access to your legal team. It is difficult for you to do anything because it appears that you are heavily medicated with psychotrophics which interfere in normal brain functioning, you are exhausted, likely sleep deprived, treated with contempt, under nourished and in physical pain. The cash flow that is feeding your persecution and torture is limitless, likely in the billions by now).
“They are saying journalists and whistleblowers are enemies of the people.”
(Yes, they are making a case that puts your head on a stake, denies you the protections of being an author, publisher and journalist).
“They have unfair advantages dealing with documents.”
(Yes, they have access to all of their communications over the past decade which the UK refuses to disclose under FOIA. They have all of your documents, recordings of your legal and medical meetings, they have probably surveilled the communications of all of your lawyers and doctors as well. They have an army of paid professionals to comb through all of the electronic / digital documents and all of the personal belongings they removed from your private quarters in the embassy. You are up against an army of the US, US allies (ie. UK intelligence agencies, courts and lawyers who take orders from the US). Their army has an unlimited budget and a workforce that expands when necessary if the workload increases.)
“They [know] the interior of my life with my psychologist.”
(Yes, and they have their own army of psychiatrists, psychologists and advisors that have studied you over many years to identify your unique strengths and vulnerabilities. They (US and UK with the complicity of Australia) are putting you in a straight-jacket so that you cannot access your strengths and you are as vulnerable, defenceless and disoriented as they can possibly make you. They know the strength of your mind and will so they are trying to rob you of your ability to think. When you said, “I can’t think properly,” we cannot imagine the intensity of the psychological torture you are enduring and your resilience is nothing short of miraculous. Even a child knows when s/he is being abused and treated unfairly. You are being deliberately abused in order to limit your intellectual acumen. We will fight for you.)
“They steal my children’s DNA.”
(Yes, and they have probably stolen the DNA of anyone who visited you at the embassy, your lawyers and your family members.)
“This is not equitable what is happening here.”
(You can say that again Julian Assange. No, this is not equitable what is happening here. And we will fight for you. Stay strong. You are in the hearts, minds, actions, music, interviews, rallies, blog posts and articles of people who stand in Solidarity with you.
Final note
Assange’s extradition hearing begins on Tues. Feb. 25th behind closed doors in Belmarsh maxiumum security prison. It is scheduled to last 5 days which means the 5th day is Monday March 2nd. It is possible that he will be handed over to US Marshalls for transport to Virginia where both Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond are being detained.
The UK’s coordinated handling of Assange’s extradition case feels more like a stage- managed military operation than an actual legal process. If this continues, Assange will die at the hands of UK authorities who are complicit in his torture, exclusion from justice and eventual staged-rendition to the US where he will be paraded as a political trophy for those that want to silence press freedom.
Take 20 min. to listen to this interview with UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Mr. Nils Melzer. Resist accordingly.
FreeAssange
Just Jude, Jude Fleming 