Author: admin

The US will break its assurances on Assange. Here’s why

On the 12th December Richard Medhurst offered his opinion in RT News after attending the Assange Extradition Appeal

I’ve been covering Julian Assange’s extradition hearing since 2020. I’ve attended every hearing and ruling. What happened on Friday in the British High Court was a travesty of justice.

To recap where we are in the Assange case: 

  • January 2021: District Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked Julian Assange’s extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States on health grounds.
  • October 2021: the United States appealed this decision on five grounds.
  • December 10, 2021: the High Court ruled in favor of the US, overturning January’s decision, and saying the extradition could go ahead.

I watched Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde read out the ruling on Friday, when I attended the High Court remotely. It was done so casually and quickly – the whole thing lasted barely 10 minutes.

The High Court denied three grounds of the US appeal. It accepted Baraitser’s findings that Assange’s precarious mental state would cause him to take his own life if extradited, making the extradition oppressive. It accepted the medical evidence, despite the US’ attempts to attack the credibility of Prof. Michael Kopelman, the lead medical expert. But it allowed it to go ahead on two grounds: it said it accepted the diplomatic assurances provided by the US, and that the district judge should have notified the US of her provisional view, so as to afford it the opportunity to give these assurances beforehand.

The High Court’s entire decision was based on the assumption that you can trust America’s assurances. You can’t.

When the lead US prosecutor, James Lewis, told the High Court justices that “the United States have never broken a diplomatic assurance, ever”, I guess they decided to believe him. Assange’s lawyers pointed to the case of David Mendoza Herrarte, extradited from Spain to the US in 2009 for drug trafficking. He, too, was given diplomatic assurances by the US, which Lewis said, “are not dished out like Smarties”.

In its ruling on Friday, the High Court judges said they had looked at Mendoza’s case and found the US had not violated its assurances, and that Mendoza’s case did not offer any support to Assange’s claim that US assurances cannot be trusted.

“We take a similar view of two other cases relied on by Mr Assange, namely those of David Mendoza and Abu Hamza [extradited in 2015 from the UK to the US on terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole]. Both can be said to show that the USA may be expected to apply the strict letter of an assurance which it has given, but neither provides any evidence of a failure to comply with an assurance and neither provides any support for Mr Assange’s submission that this court should not regard the offered assurances as reliable.”

It’s astonishing that the High Court justices could reach such a conclusion. I recently published classified documentspertaining to Mendoza’s case. They reveal how the US offered diplomatic assurances for his extradition, only to violate them later. Did the judges see these documents at all? This ruling gives the impression they didn’t.

In Mendoza’s case, Spain placed three conditions on his extradition:

1) He had to serve his sentence in Spain.

2) There should be no life sentence (or similar term of confinement).

3) There should be no “currency-structuring” charge. 

Verbal note sent from the US Embassy in Madrid to the Spanish government, containing diplomatic assurances regarding David Mendoza Herrarte, January 2009. © Richard Medhurst

Here’s the diplomatic note sent by the US Embassy in Madrid. It doesn’t actually say the US will allow Mendoza to serve a sentence in Spain – it says the US does not object to Mendoza “making an application to serve his sentence in Spain”, which is completely different. Every prisoner can apply for a treaty transfer anyway – it’s not up to the US.

As for the life sentence, it says the US “will not seek a sentence of life imprisonment”, but that it “will do everything within its power, that Mendoza receives a determinate sentence of incarceration”. That could mean five months, five years, five centuries or any number of years – a practice not unusual in US courts.

It also lists all the charges brought against Mendoza – including the currency-structuring charge, despite this being explicitly ruled out by the Spanish court.

All this is very reminiscent of the assurances for Assange. The wording is equally ambiguous; even if you take these assurances at face value you simply can’t trust them. They allow the United States to subject the WikiLeaks co-founder to so-called special administrative measures (SAMs) or imprison him at ADX Florence supermax prison, a maximum-security facility in Colorado, if “after entry of this assurance, he was to commit any future act that met the test for the imposition of a SAM”. 

I spoke to Mendoza, who was imprisoned at Englewood, near ADX Florence, where Assange is likely to be sent. He said that any innocent, random conversation Assange has with his partner or lawyers could be interpreted by the US authorities as some sort of “code”, and used as a pretext to lock him up immediately under SAMs in some other hellhole – that’s if they don’t do it the moment he sets foot in the US.

Alternatively, they could also place Assange in a communications management unit (CMU) or special housing unit (SHU) and then say, “See? We didn’t break any assurances, because we didn’t place Assange under SAMs.” The thing is, the reason Baraitser blocked the extradition is because the isolation and psychological torment is what could drive Assange to suicide. Whether it’s SAMs or a CMU or an SHU isn’t the issue here.

The High Court has also accepted an assurance from Washington that Assange could serve any potential sentence in his home country, Australia. As I heard Lewis put it in court, Assange could “look forward” to being jailed Down Under.

Prison transfers don’t work that way. The United States can’t just say Assange can serve his sentence in Australia, in Tanzania or on the Moon and then make it so. The administering state, meaning Australia, must also accept the transfer ahead of time. This is very clearly spelled out under Article 3(f) of the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons.

Having applied numerous times for treaty transfer to Spain, and being so familiar with the system, Mendoza told me that, as the United States and Australia are part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, the US could easily talk to Australia through back channels and simply tell it not to take Assange. Having covered the court proceedings for so long, I can confirm that Australia has said nothing about taking Assange.

In Mendoza’s case, the assurances he got from the US were so vague, the Spanish courts ordered more concrete assurances. The result of this was a contract called the “Acta de Entrega” or “Deed of Surrender”. This document was signed by Mendoza himself, Spain and the United States. Kimberly Wise, an employee at the US Embassy in Madrid, signed the document on behalf of the American government.

The Acta de Entrega, a contract between Mendoza, the US and Spain, stipulating that his extradition comply with the conditions imposed by the Spanish National Court © Richard Medhurst

This contract was very explicit: it didn’t say only that Mendoza had been surrendered to the US authorities, it said he had been surrendered to them “in accordance with what was previously stipulated by Section Two of the National Criminal Court”. That means the US agreed to all the conditions of Mendoza’s extradition i.e., serving his sentence in Spain, no life sentence, etc.

And did the US respect the contract once Mendoza was on American soil? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, it refused to give him a copy of the contract once he got there so he wouldn’t be able to contest non-compliance in court. They told him it was classified and, instead, gave him a copy without his signature.

The US refused to give Mendoza a copy of the Acta de Entrega he signed (left), saying it was classified and that he was not privy to diplomatic communications. They instead gave him a copy without his signature (right) © Richard Medhurst

Mendoza was extradited to the US in 2009 and sentenced to 14 years. He applied three times for a treaty transfer back to Spain. Washington denied his request on every single occasion, and also told him he would have to wait two years before reapplying. I couldn’t find any mention of such a rule in the prisoner-transfer treaty.

The US Department of Justice denying Mendoza’s request for a transfer to Spain to serve his sentence, despite this being a condition of his extradition, July 2010 © Richard Medhurst

Mendoza was allowed to return to Spain in 2015 only after he sued Spain in the Spanish Supreme Court – twice – and won both times. The Supreme Court practically threatened to suspend the Spain-US extradition treaty if the Spanish government didn’t get him back. Mendoza told me this was really when Washington began to feel some pressure, because the Americans wanted to keep extraditing people to the US – having the treaty suspended would have been a legal nightmare and required getting it through the Spanish congress again and having all their dirty practices exposed.

Mendoza also sued the US Department of Justice (DoJ) for breach of contract. He was only able to do so because a Spanish judge, sympathetic to his case, sent him a copy of the original Acta de Entrega with his signature on it.

David Mendoza Herrarte’s civil suit against the United States Department of Justice and then-Attorney General Eric Holder for breaching the conditions of his extradition from Spain to the United States, March 2014 © Richard Medhurst

I spoke to Mendoza’s lawyer, Alexey Tarasov. He recalls how American prosecutors called him up one day and said that if his team dropped the civil suit against the DoJ, Mendoza could go back to Spain. Mendoza said having agreed to drop the suit had been the “biggest regret” of his life. He spent six years and nine months trapped in the United States. He was able to return only after suing both Spain and the US for failing to enforce the conditions of his extradition.

If Julian Assange is extradited, and Washington breaks its diplomatic assurances, what options will Assange be left with? He can’t sue the US in the civil courts. They’ll tell him: you’re not a signatory of the US-UK Extradition Treaty, so you have no claim, which is what they told Mendoza.

Assange’s other option would be to go to the UK courts. Does anyone seriously believe the British government could be compelled into pressuring the US to hold up its end of the deal and raise hell on Assange’s behalf? You can already see the results of the Special Relationship in the extradition itself.

When I spoke with Mendoza, he told me it was very important that any assurances include Assange as a party to the agreement despite his status as a non-signatory of the extradition treaty, so that, in the event of non-compliance, he can contest this in court. Moreover, he said, any transfer to Australia had to be agreed to by Australia in advance, otherwise it would be meaningless. 

Mendoza was fortunate to have the Spanish public, Spanish judges and the Spanish Supreme Court applying pressure on his behalf. Otherwise, he would still be in an American prison. The United States never held up its end of the deal, and the Spanish government did virtually nothing to get him back. Mendoza told me: “I’m a nobody. If they did that to me, what are they going to do to Julian Assange?”

Mendoza’s case is now more important than ever, because it shines a light on how the United States makes false promises and cannot be held to account after the fact. When the High Court says in point 54 of Friday’s ruling that it “can be said to show that the USA may be expected to apply the strict letter of an assurance which it has given”, sure, in one sense, that’s correct. The diplomatic note sent by the US Embassy in Madrid is so purposely vague, the US could get around what it appeared to have promised.

However, in Mendoza’s case, there was an additional document: the Acta de Entrega. Diplomatic assurances can come in different forms and the Acta de Entrega is one of them – hence why the US Embassy in Madrid signed it. Did the judges even see this document? Or did they see only the vague, ambiguous verbal note sent in January 2009? That was nowhere near enough to make an accurate assessment of Mendoza’s case.

I can confirm, at the very least, that the vast majority of the documents I published have not been referenced in court in Assange’s case as of yet. Whether the judges had these documents in front of them, I don’t know. But if they did, and they still arrived at the conclusion that the US’ current assurances for Assange can be trusted, then they are terribly mistaken.

Anyone with a shred of common sense can see these assurances are worthless. Ironically, in that regard, Assange’s case isn’t all that unique. Mendoza told me about the countless Spaniards, Colombians, Mexicans and others he’s seen extradited to the US. It’s standard practice for the US to give these ambiguous assurances to game foreign judges and jurisdictions. It will play whatever games it can to get people into its jurisdiction, whether through the courts or by kidnapping and rendition, because once you’re in its grasp, there’s nothing you can do.

Read original article in RT News

Julian Assange Has a Stroke in Belmarsh Prison

On 12 December 2021, Sarah Oliver reported in The Daily Mail

Julian Assange has had a stroke in Belmarsh Prison, his fiancee Stella Moris revealed last night.

The WikiLeaks publisher, 50, who is being held on remand in the maximum-security jail while fighting extradition to America, was left with a drooping right eyelid, memory problems and signs of neurological damage.

He believes the mini-stroke was triggered by the stress of the ongoing US court action against him, and an overall decline in his health as he faces his third Christmas behind bars.

It happened at the time of a High Court appearance via video link from Belmarsh in October.

A ‘transient ischaemic attack’ – the interruption of the blood supply to the brain – can be a warning sign of a full stroke. Assange has since had an MRI scan and is now taking anti-stroke medication.

Ms Moris, 38, a lawyer, said: ‘Julian is struggling and I fear this mini-stroke could be the precursor to a more major attack. It compounds our fears about his ability to survive the longer this long legal battle goes on. 

‘It urgently needs to be resolved. Look at animals trapped in cages in a zoo. It cuts their life short. That’s what’s happening to Julian. The never-ending court cases are extremely stressful mentally.’ 

She said he was kept in his cell for long periods and was ‘short of fresh air and sunlight, an adequate diet and the stimulus he needs’.

…

But Ms Moris said: ‘I believe this constant chess game, battle after battle, the extreme stress, is what caused Julian’s stroke on October 27. 

He was feeling really unwell, far too ill to follow the hearing, and he was excused by the judge but could not leave the prison video room.

‘It must have been horrendous hearing a High Court appeal in which you can’t participate, which is discussing your mental health and your risk of suicide and in which the US is arguing you are making it all up. 

‘He had to sit through all this when he should have been excused. He was in a truly terrible state. His eyes were out of synch, his right eyelid would not close, his memory was blurry.’

Assange was examined by a doctor, who found a delayed pupil response when a light was shone into one eye – a sign of potential nerve damage.

Ms Moris and Assange have two sons, Gabriel, four, and Max, two, and have been engaged for five years. She said he had ‘more or less’ recovered – but she fears the attack shows his health is failing.

She visited him for around an hour yesterday, taking the children to see him in a prison hall shared by dozens of inmates and their loved ones.

She said Assange was distressed about being kept from his family, adding: ‘He finds the prospect of a third Christmas in prison difficult.’

…

Assange was examined by a doctor, who found a delayed pupil response when a light was shone into one eye – a sign of potential nerve damage.

Ms Moris and Assange have two sons, Gabriel, four, and Max, two, and have been engaged for five years. She said he had ‘more or less’ recovered – but she fears the attack shows his health is failing.

She visited him for around an hour yesterday, taking the children to see him in a prison hall shared by dozens of inmates and their loved ones.

She said Assange was distressed about being kept from his family, adding: ‘He finds the prospect of a third Christmas in prison difficult.’

Read original article in The Daily Mail

Revealed: The shocking conditions at Belmarsh Prison to which Julian Assange is exposed

On the 17th November Kit Klarenberg writes in RT News

As Julian Assange waits to find out if he will be extradited to the US, a new report has painted a bleak picture of the London prison he is being held in, highlighting concerns over inmates’ welfare in particular.

On 12 November, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons published a report on conditions in London’s Belmarsh high-security prison – dubbed ‘Britain’s Gitmo’ – which spells out in some detail the nightmarish environment WikiLeaks founder Assange has been forced to call home since his expulsion from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019.

The report was based on observations made during two “unannounced inspections” conducted in July and August this year. Assange has remained in Belmarsh since Britain’s rejection of the US extradition case in January, which hinged on a psychological assessment that found his risk of committing suicide if sent to face trial in Washington – where he could face up to 175 years in solitary confinement at a supermax jail – was “substantial.”

Inspectors found Belmarsh staff “had not paid sufficient attention to the growing levels of self-harm,” “and there was not enough oversight or care taken of prisoners at risk of suicide,” meaning “urgent action needed to be taken” in order to ensure prisoners were kept safe. Since the inspectorate’s last visit in 2018, there had been four suicides, while recorded incidents of self-harm were four times higher. Figures for attempted suicides weren’t cited, although internal probes into such incidents were said to be “very poor.”

Prisoners judged to represent a self-harm or suicide risk were subject to welfare checks, but wider support for these individuals was said to be “limited,” while assistance provided through the official Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork process was “weak,” with inspectors “not assured that prisoners subject to constant supervision were always kept safe,” no safeguarding processes in place, and the prison’s internal ‘Safer Custody hotline’rarely checked by staff.

The number of recorded incidents of self-harm had doubled due to Covid-19 restrictions, with 315 recorded incidents, involving 94 prisoners, in the 12 months to June 2021. It’s possible Assange is among this number – as Judge Baraitser’s extradition ruling noted, he called the Samaritans, a UK charity helpline providing emotional support to those in emotional distress, struggling to cope, or at risk of suicide, on a “virtually” nightly basis, and when unable to reach them, slashed his thigh and abdomen to distract from his sense of isolation.

The inspectorate paints a disquieting picture of prison officers almost asleep at the wheel in respect of vulnerable inmates. “Many staff” were said to have “routinely failed to collect or turn on body-worn cameras,” over the course of the investigators’ visit, and “officers who were supposed to be supervising the most vulnerable prisoners” were spotted “sitting reading the paper.” Moreover, only 50% of inmates hadn’t experienced any victimisation by prison officers, and “significantly more prisoners than in similar prisons” had received verbal or physical abuse from staff.

Inmates are also at enhanced risk of harm from other inmates. The Inspectorate recorded significantly heightened levels of violence since its last visit, despite Covid-19 restrictions limiting the time most prisoners were out of their cells. Data had been collected on violence and use of force, but it wasn’t put to any tangible use, such as developing a strategy for reducing violence. There had been no formal strategic meeting to address violence for over 18 months. 

In all, 341 violent incidents had been recorded over the previous 12 months, a year-on-year increase of almost 70, most of the rise attributable to prisoner-on-prisoner violence. This created an environment in which “too many prisoners felt unsafe,” with 60% saying they’d felt at risk at some point during their incarceration, and, when the inspectorate came unexpectedly knocking, one in four reporting that they were concerned about their personal wellbeing. Furthermore, internal figures had been fudged to suggest violence had reduced due to fewer incidents, but in reality, this was due to fewer prisoners being in the jail.

Given this grim environment – in which Assange will shortly be married – it is perhaps unsurprising that a psychological assessment diagnosed him with severe recurrent depressive disorder, typified by frequent suicidal thoughts, “loss of sleep, loss of weight, impaired concentration, a feeling of often being on the verge of tears, and a state of acute agitation in which he was pacing his cell until exhausted, punching his head or banging it against a cell wall.” He thought about taking his own life “hundreds of times a day,” and had a “constant desire” to self-harm or commit suicide. 

The assessment concluded that, were Assange held in solitary confinement in the US for a prolonged period, his mental health would “deteriorate substantially, resulting in persistently severe clinical depression and the severe exacerbation of his anxiety disorder, PTSD and suicidal ideas.” At the recent extradition appeal hearing, Biden administration lawyers offered “assurances” that Assange would neither be jailed in the notorious ADX Florence in Colorado, America’s toughest prison, nor subject to excessively harsh ‘Special Administrative Measures’.

Contradictorily, though, Washington’s official legal submissions to the court state that the US “retains the power” to do both. The fate of Joshua Schulte, charged with providing WikiLeaks sensitive CIA documents – the release of which led to then-Agency director Mike Pompeo designating the organization a “non-state hostile intelligence service” – offers a snapshot of what could await stateside.

Court papers filed in January by Schulte’s lawyers outlined how their client had not been outside since entering New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center more than two years prior, and had been held under conditions usually reserved for terrorism defendants, to prevent them communicating with others. Accordingly, when Schulte is moved outside his cell, he is “shackled from head to toe.”

Schulte’s cell was said to be “filthy… the size of a parking space, [and] infested with rodents, rodent droppings, cockroaches and mold,” with no heating, air conditioning, or functioning plumbing, “while sunlight is blocked by a blacked out window,”temperatures fall so low “water in his cell turns to ice and he shivers despite wearing four sets of clothing, five sets of socks, two blankets and three sets of socks on his hands,” and “bright lights are on nonstop.” 

A ruling on Assange’s extradition is expected in December. Until then, he remains in Belmarsh. 

Read original article in RT News

A selection other articles by Kit covering the darker side of the secret services include
Papers reveal what CIA did to captives in Afghanistan
Leaked doc reveals which messengers send the most data to FBI
One Rule for Britannia? UK’s new post-Brexit ‘global’ fund is a front for meddling in Russia’s politics, leaked documents reveal
Declassified CIA files raise further questions about US complicity in Colombian massacres
Activist deceived into relationship with undercover officer wins landmark human rights case against Met Police
A newly declassified pre-9/11 report exposes Al-Qaeda ‘sleeper’ cells across US, so why was the intelligence not acted on?
Shocking leaked files once again expose BBC as insidious UK foreign policy tool
Exposure of elite UK troops stationed at Saudi-occupied torture facility in Yemen offers rare peek into the secret dirty war there
CIA spying scandal in Switzerland shows the best way for intelligence services to read your messages is to OWN the platform
Internal emails reveal that the Dutch government suppressed White Helmets’ financial fraud – what else are they hiding?
BBC secrets revealed: Leaked files indicate UK state media engaged in anti-Moscow information warfare operations in Eastern Europe
Revealed: How Britain is putting its child spies in extreme danger… by a former top undercover cop
Appalling and unnecessary: UK spycops’ needless theft of dead children’s identities under scrutiny
Revealing the real names of undercover spycops who ruined lives is the only way they can be held to account
‘Real world’ wives of UK ‘spycops’ seek justice for lives shattered by the undercover police operation

To list but a few articles full of in sights

UK Caves, Allows Assange to Get Married in Jail

On the 12 November 2021, Stella Maris posted on Twitter

Imprisoned WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange will tie the knot with the mother of his children at a maximum security UK prison, after Stella Moris sued the “creepy” British government for denying them the right to marry.

“Julian and I now have permission to marry in Belmarsh prison,” Moris tweeted on Thursday evening, explaining that the UK government had “backed down” 24 hours before a legal deadline.

“I am relieved but still angry that legal action was necessary to put a stop to the illegal interference with our basic right to marry,” she added.

Moris, who has two sons with Assange, filed a lawsuit against Justice Secretary Dominic Raab and Belmarsh Governor Jenny Louis on Friday, arguing that “creepy elements of the UK government” engaged in “unfair, irrational and sinister”behaviour to illegitimately interfere in their plans.

Assange and Moris have been engaged for five years, and have been asking officials at the maximum-security prison for permission to arrange a wedding since May. When they finally received a reply, they were told the matter had been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

As the CPS represents the US government in the extradition proceedings against the Australian-born publisher, putting them in charge of the marriage basically gives Washington veto powers, which is “completely outrageous,” Moris told Democracy Now.

Speaking with The Independent, Moris said the interference with the marriage request was a bid to “break [Assange] psychologically” and that there were no legitimate reasons for it.

“It’s a really basic, essential thing, a human thing, and it’s not for the intelligence services, our politicians or anyone else,”she said.

Also reported in
RT News
Politico
BBC
The New York Times
The Guardian

Editors Note: Seems marriage escapes the mainstream media ban on reporting about the Assange case

Julian Assange and His Fiancee Bring Legal Action Against Dominic Raab for ‘Preventing Them From Marrying in Prison’

On the 7th November 2021, Sarah Oliver writes in the Daily Mail

Julian Assange and his fiancee Stella Moris are bringing legal action against Justice Secretary Dominic Raab and the Governor of Belmarsh Prison, accusing them of preventing the couple from marrying behind bars.

They fear the obstacles put in the way of their wedding by UK authorities are linked to a US-backed political war against the Wikileaks publisher and campaigner.

In September it was revealed the CIA had drawn up plans to kidnap or kill Assange during his seven years exiled in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. The agency also spied on his family and friends and led a campaign of misinformation against him.

Stella, 38, a lawyer, said: ‘Those catch-or-kill plans were not implemented but other hostile measures were and this is the sting in the tail.

‘It’s part of an enormous conspiracy against Julian which makes itself felt in all that we try to do.

‘A wedding would be a moment of happiness, a bit of normality in insane circumstances. Julian needs things to hold on to because daily life is a struggle for him in Belmarsh and there is so much uncertainty about his future.

‘Our love for each other is the one thing which has carried us through and being married would be another bulwark in our emotional defences.

‘There is no reason for political interference in what is a basic human right. The CIA revelations show the lengths some agencies are willing to go to in their persecution of Julian.’

Assange, 50, and his fiancee have been engaged for five years, have two children and are both practising Catholics. They have been asking since May for help to arrange their wedding in Belmarsh.

He is being held on remand in the maximum security jail while the US tries to extradite him to face allegations of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following Wikileaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Stella is adamant their wedding ceremony would have no legal impact on extradition since his right to a family life in the UK is determined by the fact that their sons Gabriel, four, and Max, two, are British citizens. She also has rights of residency, having lived in Britain for 20 years, although she was born in South Africa.

On Friday, the couple opened legal action paving the way for a judicial review. The case is brought against the Justice Secretary and Belmarsh Governor Jenny Louis.

The wedding stand-off began in May when Stella approached the prison chaplain to ask about arranging a ceremony. After an initial response, no further help was forthcoming. On October 7, Assange formally asked the Governor’s office to agree to a Belmarsh wedding, but he has had no reply.

Read original article in the Daily Mail
Also reported in RT News

The Australian Broadcasting Commission Posts Three Times More Articles About Alexei Navalny than Julian Assange Year to Date

On the 31st of October 2021 the editors reviewed the potential for news bias by the ABC ( Australian Broadcasting Commission )

A quick review of ABC articles referring to Alexei Navalny counts 51 articles referencing Alexei Navalny by name

A similar review of ABC articles referring to Julian Assange shows 17 articles referencing Julian Assange name being
January 7
February 1
March 1
July 3
August 2
October 5
With the months with more articles coinciding with court hearings

The reporting of the CIA Kidnapping and Assassination plot was posted on the ABC on October 1 and first published on Yahoo News on the 26th September. This was prompted by a letter from prominent Australian to the Prime Minster and not based on outrage at the US Government plotting against an Australian citizen

The editors found no report in the ABC on the retraction of crucial evidence by Sigurdur Ingi (Siggi) Thordarson as published in the Icelandic paper Stundin on the 7th September.

The ABC is slightly more balanced than the British Guardian with nearly 5 times the articles in favour of Navalny (78 to 16 articles)

Of interest is is that Claire Daly, Irish MEP, addressed the European Parliament Nalvany saying ‘Navalny is a vicious anti-immigration racist on maybe 4% of the population support rallying support of hundreds or thousands in cities with populations of millions. We would not be discussing if not raised in Russia. Meanwhile Julian Assange has been incarcerated for almost ten years and we cannot mention his name.’

And Julian Assange is an Australian citizen and a world famous journalist.

While the ABC has a track record of autonomy ad news worthy reporting to bring the Government and big business to account and many issues. There appears a definite blind spot for the Australian citizen Julian Assange.

Amnesty International: US Assurances on Treatment of Assange Not Worth the Paper They are Written On

On the 28th October 2021, Amnesty International legal adviser Simon Crowther reports on Twitter

Re-reported on RT News

Amnesty International legal adviser Simon Crowther has slammed the US government’s assurances it would not keep WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in solitary confinement, saying they’re “not worth the paper they’re written on.”

During the second day of Washington’s appeal in London’s High Court to extradite Assange, Crowther warned that the assurances made by lawyers representing the US should not be trusted, pointing out that the country has a problem with respecting basic human rights.

Noting that Amnesty International considers prolonged solitary confinement to be a form of “torture or other ill treatment,”Crowther said, “These assurances are not worth the paper they’re written on because where a state has to give such an assurance, it really is an indication that that state’s human rights record has a problem.”

You wouldn’t have to give an assurance that you weren’t going to hold someone in solitary confinement if prolonged solitary confinement wasn’t so widespread in the US

Crowther also warned that the US government’s assurances “have huge holes in them” and pointed out that they are not legally binding promises. He expressed fear that the US would make an excuse to backtrack on them if Assange were extradited.

“Amnesty are really worried about any kind of diplomatic assurance because it’s not legally binding and prolonged solitary confinement often constitutes torture or other ill treatment,” he concluded.

Why the Julian Assange case is the most important battle for press freedom of our time

On the 28th October 2021, Chris Hedges publishes in Scheer Post

If Assange goes to prison for exposing war crimes, it will mean the death of real national security reporting

For the past two days, I have been watching the extradition hearing for Julian Assange via video link from London. The United States is appealing a lower court ruling that denied the US request to extradite Assange not, unfortunately, because in the eyes of the court he is innocent of a crime, but because, as Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January concluded, Assange’s precarious psychological state would deteriorate given the “harsh conditions” of the inhumane US prison system, “causing him to commit suicide.” The United States has charged Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of trying to hack into a government computer, charges that could see him imprisoned for 175 years. 

Assange, with long white hair, appeared on screen the first day from the video conference room in HM Prison Belmarsh. He was wearing a white shirt with an untied tie around his neck. He looked gaunt and tired. He did not appear in court, the judges explained, because he was receiving a “high dose of medication.” On the second day he was apparently not present in the prison’s video conference room.

If Assange is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material, it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting, allowing the government to use the Espionage Act to charge any reporter who possesses classified documents, and any whistleblower who leaks classified information, under the Espionage Act.

Assange is being extradited because his organization WikiLeaks released the Iraq War Logs in October 2010, which documented numerous US war crimes — including video images of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians in the Collateral murdervideo, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the covering up of thousands of civilian deaths and the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to US checkpoints. He is also being targeted by US authorities for other leaks, especially those that exposed  the hacking tools used by the CIA known as Vault 7, which enables the spy agency to compromise cars, smart TVs, web browsers and the operating systems of most smart phones, as well as operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux.  

If Assange is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material, it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting, allowing the government to use the Espionage Act to charge any reporter who possesses classified documents, and any whistleblower who leaks classified information.

If the appeal by the United States is accepted Assange will be retried in London. The ruling on the appeal is not expected until at least January.

Assange’s September 2020 trial painfully exposed how vulnerable he has become after 12 years of detention, including seven in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He has in the past attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. He suffers from hallucinations and depression, takes antidepressant medication and the antipsychotic quetiapine. After he was observed pacing his cell until he collapsed, punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall he was transferred for several months to the medical wing of the Belmarsh prison. Prison authorities found “half of a razor blade” hidden under his socks. He has repeatedly called the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans because he thought about killing himself “hundreds of times a day.”

James Lewis, the lawyer for the United States, attempted to discredit the detailed and disturbing medical and psychological reports on Assange presented to the court in September 2020, painting him instead as a liar and malingerer. He excoriated the decision of Judge Baraitser to bar extradition, questioned her competence, and breezily dismissed the mountains of evidence that high-security prisoners in the United Sates, like Assange, subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), and held in virtual isolation in supermax prisons, suffer psychological distress. He charged Dr. Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, who examined Assange and testified for the defense, with deception for “concealing” that Assange fathered two children with his fiancée Stella Morris while in refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He said that, should the Australian government request Assange, he could serve his prison time in Australia, his home country, after his appeals had been exhausted, but stopped short of promising that Assange would not be held in isolation or subject to SAMs.

The authority repeatedly cited by Lewis to describe the conditions under which Assange will be held and tried in the United States was Gordon Kromberg, the Assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Kromberg is the government’s grand inquisitor in cases of terrorism and national security. He has expressed open contempt for Muslims and Islam and decried what he calls “the Islamization of the American justice system.” He oversaw the 9-year persecution of the Palestinian activist and academic Dr. Sami Al-Arian and at one point refused his request to postpone a court date during the religious holiday of Ramadan. “They can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. All they can’t do is eat before sunset,” Kromberg said in a 2006 conversation, according to an affidavit filed by one of Arian’s attorneys, Jack Fernandez. 

Kromberg criticized Daniel Hale, the former Air Force analyst who recently was sentenced to 45 months in a supermax prison for leaking information about the indiscriminate killings of civilians by drones, saying Hale had not contributed to public debate, but had “endanger[ed] the people doing the fight.” He ordered Chelsea Manning jailed after she refused to testify in front of a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. Manning attempted to commit suicide in March 2020 while being held in the Virginia jail.

Having covered the case of Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was arrested in London in 2006, I have a good idea of what waits Assange if he is extradited. Hashmi also was held in Belmarsh and extradited in 2007 to the United States where he spent three years in solitary confinement under SAMs. His “crime” was that an acquaintance who stayed in his apartment with him while he was a graduate student in London had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks in luggage at the apartment. The acquaintance planned to deliver the items to al-Qaida. But I doubt the government was concerned with waterproof socks being shipped to Pakistan. The reason, I suspect, Hashmi was targeted was because, like the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Al-Arian, and like Assange, he was fearless and zealous in his defense of those being bombed, shot, terrorized and killed throughout the Muslim world while he was a student at Brooklyn College. 

Hashmi was deeply religious, and some of his views, including his praise of the Afghan resistance, were controversial, but he had a right to express these sentiments. More important, he had a right to expect freedom from persecution and imprisonment because of his opinions, just as Assange should have the freedom, like any publisher, to inform the public about the inner workings of power. Facing the possibility of a 70-year sentence in prison and having already spent four years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement, Hashmi accepted a plea bargain on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism. Judge Loretta Preska, who sentenced the hacker Jeremy Hammond and human rights attorney Steven Donziger, gave him the maximum 15-year sentence. Hashmi was held for nine years in Guantanamo-like conditions in the supermax ADX [Administrative Maximum] facility in Florence, Colorado, where Assange, if found guilty in an American court, will almost certainly be imprisoned. Hashmi was released in 2019.

If the government will go to this length to persecute someone who was alleged to have been involved in sending waterproof socks to al-Qaida, what can we expect the government to do to Assange?

The pre-trial detention conditions Hashmi endured were designed to break him. He was electronically monitored 24-hours a day. He could only receive or send mail with his immediate family. He was prohibited from speaking with other prisoners through the walls. He was forbidden from taking part in group prayer. He was permitted one hour of exercise a day, in a solitary cage without fresh air. He has unable to see most of the evidence used to indict him which was classified under the Classified Information Procedures Act, enacted to prevent US intelligence officers under prosecution from threatening to reveal state secrets to manipulate the legal proceedings. The harsh conditions eroded his physical and psychological health. When he appeared in the final court proceeding to accept a guilty plea he was in a near catatonic state, clearly unable to follow the proceedings around him.

If the government will go to this length to persecute someone who was alleged to have been involved in sending waterproof socks to al-Qaida, what can we expect the government to do to Assange?

A society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice. The battle for Assange’s liberty has always been much more than the persecution of a publisher. It is the most important battle for press freedom of our era. And if we lose this battle, it will be devastating, not only for Assange and his family, but for us.

There is no legal basis to hold Assange in prison. There is no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the US Espionage Act. 

Tyrannies invert the rule of law. They turn the law into an instrument of injustice. They cloak their crimes in a faux legality. They use the decorum of the courts and trials, to mask their criminality. Those, such as Assange, who expose that criminality to the public are dangerous, for without the pretext of legitimacy the tyranny loses credibility and has nothing left in its arsenal but fear, coercion and violence. The long campaign against Assange and WikiLeaks is a window into the collapse of the rule of law, the rise of what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of inverted totalitarianism, a form of totalitarianism that maintains the fictions of the old capitalist democracy, including its institutions, iconography, patriotic symbols and rhetoric, but internally has surrendered total control to the dictates of global corporations and the security and surveillance state.

There is no legal basis to hold Assange in prison. There is no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the US Espionage Act. The CIA spied on Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide embassy security. This spying included recording the privileged conversations between Assange and his lawyers as they discussed his defense. This fact alone invalidated the trial. Assange is being held in a high security prison so the state can, as Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, has testified, continue the degrading abuse and torture it hopes will lead to his psychological if not physical disintegration.The architects of imperialism, the masters of war, the corporate-controlled legislative, judicial and executive branches of government and their obsequious courtiers in the media, are guilty of egregious crimes. Say this simple truth and you are banished, as many of us have been, to the margins of the media landscape. Prove this truth, as Assange, Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond and Edward Snowden have by allowing us to peer into the inner workings of power, and you are hunted down and persecuted.

Assange’s “crime” is that he exposed the more than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians. He exposed the torture and abuse of some 800 men and boys, aged between 14 and 89, at Guantánamo. He exposed that Hillary Clinton in 2009 ordered US diplomats to spy on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and other U.N. representatives from China, France, Russia, and the UK, spying that included obtaining DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and personal passwords, part of the long pattern of illegal surveillance that included the eavesdropping on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He exposed that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CIA orchestrated the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya, replacing it with a murderous and corrupt military regime. He exposed that George W. Bush, Barack Obama and General David Petraeus prosecuted a war in Iraq that under post-Nuremberg laws is defined as a criminal war of aggression, a war crime, which authorized hundreds of targeted assassinations, including those of US citizens in Yemen. He exposed that the United States secretly launched missile, bomb, and drone attacks on Yemen, killing scores of civilians. He exposed that Goldman Sachs paid Hillary Clinton $657,000 to give talks, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe, and that she privately assured corporate leaders she would do their bidding while promising the public financial regulation and reform. He exposed the internal campaign to discredit and destroy British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by members of his own party. He exposed how the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency permits the wholesale government surveillance of our televisions, computers, smartphones and anti-virus software, allowing the government to record and store our conversations, images and private text messages, even from encrypted apps. 

He exposed the truth. He exposed it over and over and over until there was no question of the endemic illegality, corruption and mendacity that defines the global ruling elite. And for these truths alone he is guilty.

Read Original Article in
ScheerPost
Salon

More articles by Chris Hedges :
Twitter
His books
Scheer Post
Salon
RT News

Tulsi Gabbard: Another Nail in the Coffin of Democracy

On the 28th October Tulsi Gabbard former US congresswoman and Presidential candidate post on Twitter

As re-reported in RT News

Tulsi Gabbard has called out the “Biden-Garland administration” for its “vindictive retaliatory crusade against Julian Assange,” warning it was a slippery slope to the demise of American democracy.

“If they succeed in [extraditing Assange], this will be yet another nail in the coffin of democracy here in our country and around the world,” Gabbard warned in a video posted to social media on Thursday. 

…

In its continued persecution of Assange, Gabbard declared, the Biden administration was “doubling down on its crusade against our constitutionally protected rights,” specifically those protected by the First Amendment: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press. 

Marise Payne has not raised CIA plot to kidnap and assassinate Julian Assange with US counterparts

On 28th of October Australian Greens senator Janet Rice questions Australian Foreign Minister & Minister for Women. Senator for NSW Marise Payne regarding diplomatic followup of the kidnap and assassination reports circulating in the media