Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, is rarely one to be cryptic. “Day X is here,” she posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter. For those who have followed her remarks, her speeches, and her activism, it was sharply clear what this meant. “It may be the final chance for the UK to stop Julian’s extradition. Gather outside the court at 8.30am on both days. It’s now or never.”
Between February 20 and 21 next year, the High Court will hear what WikiLeaks claims may be “the final chance for Julian Assange to prevent his extradition to the United States.” (This is qualified by the prospect of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.) Were that to take place, the organisation’s founder faces 18 charges, 17 of which are stealthily cobbled from the aged and oppressive US Espionage Act of 1917. Estimates of any subsequent sentence vary, the worst being 175 years.
The WikiLeaks founder remains jailed at His Majesty’s pleasure at Belmarsh prison, only reserved for the most hardened of criminals. It’s a true statement of both British and US justice that Assange has yet to face trial, incarcerated, without bail, for four-and-a-half years. That trial, were it to ever be allowed to take place, would employ a scandalous legal theory that will spell doom to all those who dive and dabble in the world of publishing national security information.
Fundamentally, and irrefutably, the case against Assange remains political in its muscularity, with a gangster’s legality papered over it. As Stella herself makes clear, “With the myriad of evidence that has come to light since the original hearing in 2018, such as the violation of legal privilege and reports that senior US officials are involved in formulating assassination plots against my husband, there is no denying that a fair trial, let alone Julian’s safety on US soil, is an impossibility were he to be extradited.”
In mid-2022, Assange’s legal team attempted a two-pronged attempt to overturn the decision of Home Office Secretary Priti Patel to approve Assange’s extradition while also broadening the appeal against grounds made in the original January 4, 2021 reasons of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser.
The former, among other matters, took issue with the acceptance by the Home Office that the extradition was not for a political offence and therefore prohibited by Article 4 of the UK-US Extradition Treaty. The defence team stressed the importance of due process, enshrined in British law since the Magna Carta of 2015, and also took issue with Patel’s acceptance of “special arrangements” with the US government regarding the introduction of charges for the facts alleged which might carry the death penalty, criminal contempt proceedings, and such specialty arrangements that might protect Assange “against being dealt with for conduct outside the extradition request.” History shows that such “special arrangements” can be easily, and arbitrarily abrogated.
On June 30, 2022 came the appeal against Baraitser’s original reasons. While Baraitser blocked the extradition to the US, she only did so on grounds of oppression occasioned by mental health grounds and the risk posed to Assange were he to find himself in the US prison system. The US government got around this impediment by making breezy promises to the effect that Assange would not be subject to oppressive, suicide-inducing conditions, or face the death penalty. A feeble, meaningless undertaking was also made suggesting that he might serve the balance of his term in Australia – subject to approval, naturally.
What this left Assange’s legal team was a decision otherwise hostile to publishing, free speech and the activities that had been undertaken by WikiLeaks. The appeal accordingly sought to address this, claiming, among other things, that Baraitser had erred in assuming that the extradition was not “unjust and oppressive by reason of the lapse of time”; that it would not be in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (inhuman and degrading treatment)”; that it did not breach Article 10 of ECHR, namely the right to freedom of expression; and that it did not breach Article 7 of the ECHR (novel and unforeseeable extension of the law).
Other glaring defects in Baraitser’s judgment are also worth noting, namely her failure to acknowledge the misrepresentation of facts advanced by the US government and the “ulterior political motives” streaking the prosecution. The onerous and much thicker second superseding indictment was also thrown at Assange at short notice before the extradition hearing of September 2020, suggesting that those grounds be excised “for reasons of procedural fairness.”
An agonising wait of some twelve months followed, only to yield an outrageously brief decision on June 6 from High Court justice Jonathan Swift (satirists, reach for your pens and laptops). Swift, much favoured by the Defence and Home Secretaries when a practising barrister, told Counsel Magazine in a 2018 interview that his “favourite clients were the security and intelligence agencies.” Why? “They take preparation and evidence-gathering seriously: a real commitment to getting things right.” Good grief.
In such a cosmically unattached world, Swift only took three pages to reject the appeal’s arguments in a fit of premature adjudication. “An appeal under the Extradition Act 2003,” he wrote with icy finality, “is not an opportunity for general rehearsal of all matters canvassed at an extradition hearing.” The appeal’s length – some 100 pages – was “extraordinary” and came “to no more than an attempt to re-run the extensive arguments made and rejected by the District Judge.”
Thankfully, Swift’s finality proved stillborn. Some doubts existed whether the High Court appellate bench would even grant the hearing. They did, though requesting that Assange’s defence team trim the appeal to 20 pages.
How much of this is procedural theatre and circus judge antics remains to be seen. Anglo-American justice has done wonders in soiling itself in its treatment of Britain’s most notable political prisoner. Keeping Assange in the UK in hideous conditions of confinement without bail serves the goals of Washington, albeit vicariously. For Assange, time is the enemy, and each legal brief, appeal and hearing simply weighs the ledger further against his ailing existence.
Day X is here.
The public hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice will be on 20-21 February.
It may be the final chance for the UK to stop Julian’s extradition. Gather outside the court at 8:30am on both days. It’s now or never. #DayX #FreeAssangeNOW #JournalismIsNotACrime pic.twitter.com/RL3e8FMxoJ
— Stella Assange (@Stella_Assange) December 19, 2023
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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE IMMEDIATELY!!
It is never an offense to expose alleged war criminals even when they include POTUS.
NEC,
You forgot to add a certain John Howard and his gang of sycophantic right wing knobgobblers.
Not sure Assange merits such unconditional support locally when he chose to act and behave in the way he did, along with Wikileaks II (went off piste?), as opposed to the left elsewhere; similar to the Anglo* esp. US left antipathy towards Ukraine (sharing talking points with RW libertarians’ people e.g. Mearsheimer, Sachs et al).
US based indie media and journalists, along with the Mueller Report on Trump, have damning findings on Assange, personally one struggles to support him when there are hundreds if not thousands of journalists, activists etc. being harassed, charged, sentenced and often simply murdered, see Russia, Turkey etc.; but I’d like to hear him ‘sing’ and throw his former associates under a bus (sure they are nervous?).
Many US journalists who analysed the Mueller and other reporting inc. Corn at Mother Jones and Abramson, the issues include stolen DNC emails. documents and liaising with Farage, Trump’s Stone, (indirectly?) Bannon et al, then supporting a conspiracy blaming murdered DNC employee Seth Rich for handing over email/docs and murdered by Clinton’s people, same was promoted on Fox News; latter settled with Rich’s parents, but undisclosed (PBS).
A decent synopsis in the left wing Mother Jones article by David Corn ‘Denounce Julian Assange. Don’t Extradite Him. The prosecution of the conniving WikiLeaks founder poses a threat to American journalism.’
One is guessing there are many on the right in the UK and US, and possibly some Russians too, who do not want Assange going to court…. they seem palpably nervous and avoid scrutiny; allegedly links back to Russian influence around the Tories in parallel with Koch linked Tufton think tanks e.g. Brexit (their Heritage Foundation in US can barely hide its distaste for Ukraine, EU, now NATO and liberal democracy)
One presumes (has been media chatter) that he will be allowed to serve any sentence in Australia (low security prison), he can work in the veggie garden, get some sunlight, eat more vegetables, run the library and write a very interesting book for his super fund.
Assange is a classic case of incarceration without due process.
When was he tried in a court of law, what was the crime, what was the sentence imposed after due deliberation by a jury of his peers ?
In the first hearing, now three years ago, the judge determined that section 91 of the Extradition legislation operating between the UK and the USA should apply and that Assange should be discharged. The relevant section of the Act reads :
“91 Physical or mental condition
(1) This section applies if at any time in the extradition hearing
it appears to the judge that the condition in subsection (2) is
satisfied.
(2) The condition is that the physical or mental condition of the
person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to
extradite him.
(3) The judge must –
(a) order the person’s discharge, or
(b) adjourn the extradition hearing until it appears to him
that the condition in subsection (2) is no longer satisfied.”
The judge ordered his discharge. Ever since that judgement the issue has been under appeal by the USA and Assange has been denied bail.
If anything, the criteria for applying these provisions of the Extradition Act have exacerbated and Assange’s mental and physical condition has further deteriorated.
What has happened here is a flagrant attempt to subvert the laws of extradition and to deny Assange’s right to justice.
Indefinite detention has just been defined as illegal in Australia by the high court. Not so in the UK it would appear, though I thought it was covered in Magna Carta. Or perhaps by reforms during the reign of Richard III. But it seems not to be the case. If a US President has the power to grant pardons, why not the power to drop charges?
Hey Andrew, you forgot to smear Noam Chomsky as a right wing libertarian for his part in also predicting all those years ago that US NATO provocation against Russia would end up badly, just like all the other people who have been warning us about this conflict for decades but whom you prefer to denounce instead of listen to. I notice that you go straight to discrediting people rather than attempting to discredit what they have actually been saying year after year consistantly, and above all, rationally and reasonably. Could it be because you can’t reconcile yourself to the fact that what they warned us would happen has happened just the way they said it would happen? You should treat yourself. Go and listen to some of their ancient podcasts that are still floating around on YouTube and marvel at the prescience of these dissenters.
They will not release Assange, what kind of message does that send to potential whistleblowers?
By the time they release him he will be diagnosed with his death immanent.
The State cannot surrender power to the serfs.