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On the 26 July 2021, Paul Knaggs interviews Ken Loach ( acclaimed Film director, human rights campaigner, long history with UK Labour Party and long term supporter of Julian Assange) in the blog Labour Heartlands

Everyone knows the real story everybody can see it, we can’t believe anybody is hoodwinked. it’s not espionage this is journalism!

Ken Loach spoke out after a screening of a new film highlighting Julian Assange’s political incarceration titled ‘ The War on Journalism: The Case of Julian Assange.‘ After denouncing the mainstream media for sucking every story out of Julian Assange and the Wikileaks organisation, then leaving him to dry in the clutches of the vengeful establishment. Ken went on to call out the self-serving media. Ken Loach always one for expressing the truth asked the questions of the mainstream media most journalists and political commentators now shy away from. He went on to say:

“Everyone knows the real story everybody can see it, we can’t believe anybody is hoodwinked. it’s not espionage this is journalism! When you get a right-wing politician like David Davis saying Julian Assange is a political prisoner, everyone knows it, the Guardian knows it who took his stories then disowned him, the BBC knows it, Channel 4 news, every serious editor current affairs programme, of a national newspaper ‘knows this is the truth’ and yet they are silent the journalist are silent, the lawyers are silent.”

Ken Loach: Starmer should be challenged, what does he know?

Stating this should be a test for him! Starmer speaks of openness in his dealings, well let him be open about this, and let’s hear what he says about the torture and the illegal oppression of Julian Assange.

What do we know about Sir Keir Starmer as head of the Prosecution service.

As DPP, Sir Keir Starmer tempered his supposed love of liberty by fast-tracking the extradition of Julian Assange (a process now making its way through the courts). He flouted legal precedents by advising Swedish lawyers not to question Assange in Britain: a decision that prolonged the latter’s legal purgatory denied closure to his accusers in Sweden and sealed his fate before a US show trial. Leaked emails from August 2012 show that, when the Swedish legal team expressed hesitancy about keeping Assange’s case open, Sir Keir’s office replied: ‘Don’t you dare get cold feet’.

Documents released under Freedom of Information requests to Italian magazine La Repubblica confirm the very close relationship between the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Sweden in the Julian Assange case. The files contain hundreds of mostly redacted emails sent over a five-year period.

But according to one authoritative source, the number of CPS documents relating to the case may be much greater than has so far been disclosed.

In May 2017, the Swedish authorities announced they had ceased all remaining investigations into alleged sexual assault by WikiLeaks founder Assange. But the Metropolitan Police arrest warrant for skipping bail would remain in force. Subsequently, Assange’s legal team sought a ruling that the Met warrant should be rescinded, but the court ruled otherwise.

Chief Magistrate hearing the Assange case: Baroness Emma Arbuthot, married to Baron Arbuthot, former British Conservative Party MP & Chairman of the Defence Select Committee. Yes of course the judiciary is completely independent in the UK. https://t.co/zSxpnoildL

GASPS IN PUBLIC GALLERY AS JUDGE SAYS ASSANGE CAN ‘LEAVE THE (ECUADORIAN EMBASSY) WHENEVER HE LIKES, HAVE UNLIMITED VISITORS UNSUPERVISED, CAN CHOOSE WHEN HE EATS, SLEEPS AND EXERCISES’. SHE’S KNOCKING DOWN MOST OF ASSANGE CASE TO HAVE ARREST WARRANT DROPPED #ASSANGE #WIKILEAKS— Lisa Millar (@LisaMillar) February 13, 2018

CPS intervention

The emails between the Swedish Prosecuting Authority (SPA) and the CPS show that the latter was closely involved in the Assange case at every stage.

In one such email, dated 25 January 2011, a CPS lawyer advised the SPA not to send someone to the UK: “My earlier advice remains, that in my view it would not be prudent for the Swedish authorities to try to interview the defendant [Assange] in the UK.“

In August 2012, in response to an article saying Sweden could withdraw the warrant against Assange, a CPS staffer (name redacted) warned [pdf, p1] Sweden’s Director of Public Prosecutions Marianne Ny: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!“

But a year later, in October 2013, NY wrote [pdf, p332]: we have found us to be obliged to consider to lift the detention order… and to withdraw the European arrest warrant. If so this should be done in a couple of weeks. This would affect not only us but you too in a significant way.

However, it took three and a half more years for that to happen.

Edward Fitzgerald QC said in court that Assange is ‘anti-war and anti-imperialist’ and this is why the US is out to get him.

This case is one of the great political cases of the century, as John McDonnell recently said. It’s a defining case for the left, and Sir Keir Starmer has taken the most conservative position imaginable.

This is what Labour Party members can expect from a Starmer leadership: unquestioning loyalty to the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic.

It beggars belief that Julian Assange who is ‘subjected to every kind of torment’ in Belmarsh prison sits and awaits extradition, yet the likes of Tony Blair walks free. To rub salt into this travesty of justice, when the Scottish SNP proposed a motion to investigate Tony Blair for allegedly misleading parliament over the Iraq war, Sir Keir Starmer voted against it.

Meanwhile, the most high profile political prisoner is treated like a war criminal for exposing war crimes.

Read original articles in Labour Heartlands

On the 3rd June 2019, RT News published this oped by Lee Camp

WikiLeaks revealed US war crimes, government corruption, and corporate media’s servile flattery to the power elite. If you’re a member of our ruling class, you would view those as textbook examples of treachery…

In an evolved and fully realized society, the oligarchy would see Assange as a dangerous criminal (which they do), and the average working men and women would view him as justice personified (which they don’t). We would celebrate him even as the mass media told us to hope for his downfall—like a Batman or a Robin Hood or an Ozzy Osbourne (the early years, not the cleaning-dog-turds-off-his-carpet years).

But we are not evolved and this is not Gotham City and average Americans don’t root for the truth. Many Americans cheer for Assange’s imprisonment. They believe the corporate plutocratic talking points and yearn for the days when we no longer have to hear about our country’s crimes against humanity or our bankers’ crimes against the economy. Subconsciously they must believe that a life in which we’re tirelessly exploited by rich villains and know all about it thanks to the exhaustive efforts of an eccentric Australian is worse than one in which we’re tirelessly exploited by rich villains yet know nothing about it.

“Ignorance is bliss” is the meditative mantra of the United States of America.

Julian Assange has been arrested and is now locked away in British custody. The U.S. government wants to extradite him, regardless of the official version, for the crime of revealing our government’s crimes. Nearly every government on our third rock from the sun despises the man for bringing transparency to the process of ruling the unwashed masses. (The level of wash has, however, increased thanks to aggressive marketing campaigns from a variety of shampoo brands.)

It is politically inconvenient at this time for the screaming corporate news to remind our entire citizenry what exactly WikiLeaks has done for us. So you won’t see the following list of WikiLeaks’ accomplishments anywhere on your corporate airwaves—in the same way the mainstream media did not begin every report about Chelsea Manning’s trial with a rundown of the war crimes she helped reveal.

And Chelsea Manning’s most famous leak is arguably also WikiLeaks’ most famous leak, so it’ll top this list:

1) That would be the notorious Collateral Murder video, showing U.S. air crew gunning down unarmed Iraqi civilians with an enthusiasm that couldn’t be matched by an eight-year-old winning a five-foot-tall stuffed animal at the county fair. They murdered between 12 and 18 innocent people, two of them Reuters journalists.

Zero people have been arrested for the collateral murders. Yet Julian Assange has been arrested for revealing them.

2) WikiLeaks brought us the Guantanamo Bay “Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures”—showing that many of the prisoners held on the U.S. military detention facility were completely innocent, and that some were hidden from Red Cross officials. (Because when you’re torturing innocent people, you kinda want to do that in peace and quiet, away from prying eyes. It’s very easy to get distracted, and then you lose your place and have to start all over again.) 

None of the soldiers torturing innocent people at Gitmo have been arrested for it. Yet Julian Assange has been arrested for revealing it.

3) Not content with revealing only war crimes, WikiLeaks in 2008 came out with the secret bibles of Scientology, which showed that aliens, um, run the world or… aliens are inside all of us or… aliens give us indigestion. I can’t really remember.

But no one has ever been arrested for perpetrating that nutbag cult. Yet Julian Assange has for revealing it.

Many people believe WikiLeaks has unveiled only crimes of the American government, but that’s completely false. The U.S. corporate media doesn’t want average Americans to understand that WikiLeaks has upped the level of transparency around the world.

4–9) WikiLeaks posted videos of Tibetan dissidents in China fighting back, videos which were not allowed to be viewed in China. They revealed the Peru oil scandal, and that Russia was spying on its citizens’ cell phones, and the Minton Report on toxic dumping in Africa, and the Syria Files—showing the inner workings of the Syrian government. And WikiLeaks displayed to the global audience a secret Australian supreme court gag order that stopped the Australian press from reporting on a huge bribery scandal that involved the central bank and international leaders.

Assange is hated by governments around the world. As much as they may like transparency, when it comes to other countries (specifically the United States), they don’t want their own particular pile of s**t on full display. It’s kinda like when most people laugh heartily after an up-skirt photo of a celebrity is published in the tabloids, but at the same time, none of us want up-skirt photos of us all over the web. (I know I don’t because I haven’t shaved up there since Carter was in office.)

As far as I know, none of the political figures involved in these scandals have gone to prison for participating in them. Yet Julian Assange has for revealing them.

10) Let’s not forget the Iraq War logs—hundreds of thousands of documents relating to America’s illegal invasion of Iraq, which we called a “war,” but I think a war needs to have two sides. Iraq’s elite Republican Guard turned out to be three guys and a donkey… and the donkey didn’t even have good aim.

So far as I can tell, no one committing the war crimes evidenced in the Iraq War logs has been locked up for them. Yet Julian Assange has for revealing them.

11) WikiLeaks showed us the highly secretive Bilderberg Group meeting reports. The Bilderberg Group is made up of incredibly powerful men and women who get together and decide how to rule over all of us street people, all the while sitting on thrones made from the bones of the babies of nonbelievers. They’re often accused of being lizard people, but really they’re just regular ol’ sociopaths with lizard skin they purchased from a plastic surgeon in Malibu for half a million dollars. I don’t think anyone from the Bilderberg Group is being tortured in solitary confinement right now. Yet Julian Assange is for revealing who they are.

12) The Barclays Bank tax avoidance scheme netted Barclays one billion pounds a year.

While it was ordered to pay 500 million pounds in lost taxes, no one was arrested for that theft from citizens. Yet Julian Assange was for revealing it.

13) The Afghan War Diaries consisted of 92,000 documents related to our destruction of Afghanistan. They detailed friendly fire incidents and civilian casualties. According to WikiLeaks, the diaries showed that “When reporting their own activities U.S. Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves.”

It’s tough to read this without being floored at the comedy routine that our military actions have become. I picture this scenario happening every day in Afghanistan:

U.S. Soldier #1: This guy we just killed was an insurgent.
U.S. Soldier #2: How do you know?
U.S. Soldier #1: Because we killed him.
U.S. Soldier #2: Why’d we kill him?
U.S. Soldier #1: Because he’s an insurgent.
U.S. Soldier #2: How do you know?
U.S. Soldier #1: Because we killed him.
(Repeat until lightheaded.)

I am unaware of anyone locked away for these war crimes. Yet Julian Assange is locked away—for revealing them.

14) WikiLeaks also unveiled hundreds of thousands of U.S. State Department cables that showed more clearly than ever how our secretive government rules its empire with little to no input from the American people. Among many other things, the cables revealed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered diplomats to spy on French, British, Russian and Chinese delegations at the U.N. Security Council. It also showed that Arab nations urged the U.S. to strike Iran, and much more.

Our ruling elite of course view this as a massive breach of national security. That’s understandable. But that world view comes into play only if you think the elites are the only ones who should know how our nation is run. To answer this question for yourself, do the following experiment. Pull up a photo of Donald Trump—a really close-up image of his blister-colored, bulbous face. Now, look at it intensely for five minutes… After you’ve done that, tell me you want the ruling elite to be the only ones who know what the f**k is going on. Go ahead and try it—I’ll wait.

Ostensibly, the concept of our government was that the ruling class would be accountable to us, the average Americans. To you and me. To the workers and the number crunchers. To the single moms and the cashiers and the street sweepers and the fluffers on the porn sets. We’re supposed to vote based on our knowledge of how our government is functioning. But if the entirety of our representatives’ criminal behavior is labeled top secret for national security purposes, then we aren’t really an informed populace, are we?

So for all that was unveiled in the State Department cables, no one has been locked up. But Julian Assange has been for revealing them.

15) The Stratfor emails—this was millions of emails that showed how a private intelligence agency was used by its U.S. corporate and government clients to target activists and protesters.

No one at Stratfor is currently locked away. But Julian Assange is for revealing the truth.

16) Then there’s the trade deals. TPP, TISA and TTIP—all three amount to one of the largest attempts at corporate takeover ever conceived. All three were more secretive than Donald Trump’s taxes. Government officials and corporate lawyers and lobbyists wrote every word in private. Not even Congress saw the Trans-Pacific Partnership until very late in the process. The only organization to show the American citizens (and European citizens) some of those documents before they were made into law? WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks made us aware of the corporate restraints that were about to be placed on us, and that’s what allowed activists to pressure Trump to pull out of the TPP.

None of those secretive corporate titans are imprisoned for their attempted power grab, but Julian Assange is for revealing it.

17) The DNC emails. I’ll explain for those of you who have been living in a cave that is itself inside a yellow-and-blue-makes-green sealed Tupperware container. The Democratic National Committee’s emails gave us proof concerning just how rigged the Democratic primaries really are. They proved the media was in bed with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. They even showed that Obama’s entire first-term cabinet was selected by Citibank. Yes, Citibank. (I would find it less offensive if his cabinet had been decided by a rabid raccoon, or the pus oozing out of Darth Vader’s face or Vince McMahon’s concussed frontal lobe.)

Whatever election integrity movement exists right now, it owes a lot to these revelations by WikiLeaks. After being sued over this matter, the DNC’s lawyers admitted in court that the DNC has no obligation to have a fair primary election. It’s their right to rig it.

But don’t try to get angry about this, because if you do, the CIA has a myriad ways to f**k up your life.

18) In 2017 WikiLeaks posted a trove of CIA documents called “Vault 7.” It detailed their capabilities, including remotely taking over cars, smart TVs, web browsers and smartphones.

After I found out about that, for a solid two weeks I thought, “Screw it. I’m going full Amish. One hundred percent. Let’s see the CIA hack my butter churn. Are they going to use backdoor software to get inside my rustic wooden bow-saw? Even if they could, what are they going to listen to—my conversation about how mee bobblin fraa redd up for rutschin’ ’round. Say no more! Schmunzla wunderbar!”

So is anybody at the CIA chained up for violating our privacy in every way possible? No, but Julian Assange is for revealing it.

By thrusting the truth upon the people of earth, WikiLeaks helped create movements worldwide like the Arab Spring and Occupy. And don’t forget, at first WikiLeaks and Assange were celebrated for their amazing work. In 2011 even Amnesty International hailed WikiLeaks as one of the Arab Spring catalysts. The Guardian said: “The year 2010 may well be remembered as a watershed year when activists and journalists used new technology to speak truth to power and, in so doing, pushed for greater respect for human rights… It is also the year when repressive governments faced the real possibility that their days were numbered.”

So why have so many outlets and people turned against Assange and WikiLeaks? Because it turned out he wasn’t revealing only repressive Arab regimes. He also revealed U.S.-backed coups and war crimes around the world. He exposed the criminality and villainy of the American ruling elite.

Nothing published on WikiLeaks has ever been proven untrue. Compare that record to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News or any mainstream outlet. Assange has been nominated for multiple Nobel Peace Prizes, and nearly every respected media outlet has used source material from WikiLeaks in their reporting. Yet after all this and after seven years in captivity, the man who laid bare our criminal leaders and showed each one of us our chains is not receiving parades and accolades. He and those who helped him reveal the truth are the only ones endlessly punished.

We are all Julian Assange. As long as he’s imprisoned, we can never be free.

By Lee Camp

Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and activist. Dubbed by Salon as the “John Oliver of Russia Today”, Camp is the host of RT America’s first comedy news show Redacted Tonight, which tackles the news agenda with a healthy dose of humor and satire. Lee’s writing credits are vast, having written for The Onion, Comedy Central and Huffington Post, as well as the acclaimed essay collections Moment of Clarity and Neither Sophisticated Nor Intelligent. Lee’s stand-up comedy has also been featured on Comedy Central,  ABC’s Good Morning America, Showtime’s The Green Room with Paul Provenza, Al-Jazeera, BBC’s Newsnight, E!, MTV, and Spike TV.

This article was originally published by Truthdig and reproduced in RT News.

This column is based on a monologue Lee Camp wrote and performed on his TV show “Redacted Tonight.”

On the 20th July 2021, Amy Goodman interviews Stella Moris and Agnès Callamard ( Secretary General of Amnesty International) on Democracy Now

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Dr. Callamard back into the conversation, new secretary general of Amnesty International. I last saw you moderating event at Columbia University around the issue of Julian Assange. And I wanted to ask you about the WikiLeaks founder, certainly a person who exposed surveillance. If extradited to the U.S., he could face up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act related to publication of classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes. In a recent interview, his partner, Stella Moris, urge the Biden administration to free the WikiLeaks founder. This is what she said.

STELLA MORIS: Something has got to give. They can’t maintain this prosecution against Julian while saying that they defend global press freedom or defend the First Amendment in the United States. So the only — the only thing they can do, in order to be consistent, is to drop the case entirely. … It’s difficult for me to speak about — about this. I think there’s no doubt that Julian wouldn’t survive an extradition.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Julian Assange’s partner, Stella Moris. She recently visited Assange at the Belmarsh prison in London. They have two children together. Britain is not allowing him to be freed as they weigh this issue of extradition. What are your thoughts, Dr. Callamard?

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: Well, I think Amnesty’s position is very clear, that the detention is arbitrary and that he should be released. And we are campaigning for the release of Julian Assange. The allegations made against him in — by the U.S. authorities raise a large number of problems and red flags in relation to freedom of the press, in particular. But our position is clear. We’re campaigning for his release.

Read original article and view live video at Democracy Now

On the 17th July 2021, Murtaza Hussain reports in The Intercept

Gordon Kromberg has been dogged by allegations of bias and politicized prosecutions. Now he could shape the future of journalism.

THE BATTLE TO extradite WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange from the United Kingdom to the United States is shaping up to be a legal case of paramount importance to the future of national security reporting. The U.S. continues to press the case even after a change of administration, with President Joe Biden keeping up efforts to bring Assange to a U.S. court on Espionage Act charges for his role in publishing classified government documents. One little-noted name in filings from extradition hearings in the U.K. keeps popping up as a key figure in the U.S. government’s case: a federal prosecutor named Gordon Kromberg.

On the central questions of what assistance Assange provided to whistleblower Chelsea Manning and the ostensible harm his actions caused to U.S. national security, a U.K. court filing earlier this year cites Kromberg’s assertions verbatim. “Mr. Kromberg’s evidence on this is clear,” the filing says. “He stated that stealing hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases was a multistep process.” The same document cites Kromberg again, claiming that “well over one hundred people were placed at risk from the disclosures and approximately fifty people sought and received assistance from the US” — references to purported U.S. intelligence assets outed by the documents WikiLeaks published.

Kromberg, an assistant United States attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, may be unknown to foreign and even many American observers. In U.S. legal circles, though, he has been a highly controversial figure for over two decades, dogged by accusations of bias and politicization in his prosecutions. For years, civil rights activists and lawyers tried to draw attention to allegations of Kromberg’s abusive practices. Rather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world.

In all, the January court documents from Assange’s extradition case mention Kromberg over 40 times to help make the legal argument for extraditing Assange. Many of his statements go to the heart of the Espionage Act case against the WikiLeaks publisher.

The case has raised alarms among civil liberties groups in the United States, particularly in light of the Biden administration’s decision to continue pressing for extradition. Assange has become a controversial figure in the U.S. due to his alleged role in manipulating the 2016 presidential election, but the charges he faces relate almost entirely to acts of receiving and publishing secret information — the bread and butter of most national security journalism.

. . .

IN THE YEARS after the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks, Gordon Kromberg became the government’s point man on notorious terrorism cases involving allegations of torture and malicious prosecution. In the past, opposing counsels and civil rights groups accused him of engaging in racist behavior and using unethical tactics in pursuit of convictions.

Legal experts said that the inclusion of a notoriously politicized and aggressive prosecutor on a high-profile extradition case like Assange’s is a sign of how strongly the government is motivated to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher and bring Espionage Act charges at all costs.

“A common factor in Kromberg’s career has been a willingness to take very provocative positions on behalf of the government and stay the course with them,” said Wadie Said, a professor of law at the University of South Carolina and author of “Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions.” “He has also shown great willingness to take on highly political cases and to be a lightning rod himself for attention; he often makes himself part of the story with his own actions and statements.”

Said added, “From my perspective, some of the things that Kromberg has said in the past and the positions that he has taken are quite tendentious and even vindictive in terms of his mindset toward the person that he is targeting.”

In 2008, Kromberg was the subject of a Washington Post profile covering his conduct in the prosecution of Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian academic in the U.S. who faced terrorism charges after 9/11. The government’s relentless pursuit of Al-Arian came to be viewed by many legal observers as an example of malicious prosecution, with Kromberg’s role coming in for particular scrutiny.

Years of intense pursuit by the Justice Department over Al-Arian’s alleged terrorist ties failed to produce any jury convictions on 17 charges related to terrorism. In 2006, the former University of South Florida professor accepted a plea deal on a single count of conspiracy to provide money to a designated terror group. Almost a decade later, he would be deported to Turkey to “conclude his case and bring an end to his family’s suffering,” as he previously told The Intercept.

The 2008 profile of Kromberg’s role cited one legal expert who referred to Kromberg as a “loose cannon.” Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at New York University Law School, told the Washington Post, “If I were the Justice Department, I wouldn’t want him on the front lines of these highly visible, highly contentious prosecutions.” (Kromberg declined to comment to the Washington Post at the time.)

Despite the plea deal and planned deportation, Al-Arian’s ordeal went on for nine more years, continuing all the way until 2015, as Kromberg tried to drag him into providing more testimony in other cases and had him imprisoned again, for contempt, until he was finally deported.

Kromberg has been accused by civil rights groups of being motivated by anti-Muslim animus in many of his prosecutions, including one case in which he was accused of mocking the family of a terrorism suspect who had experienced torture in Saudi custody; he allegedly told them that their son is “no good for us here, he has no fingernails left.” (Kromberg declined to comment on the allegation at the time.)

According to affidavits filed by opposing counsel about his conduct, Kromberg allegedly criticized “the Islamization of the American justice system,” and denied appeals to accommodate Muslim defendants during Ramadan on the grounds that if “they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before a grand jury.” These sentiments appear to have deep ideological roots. In personal diaries published by Kromberg online in the past, he espoused extreme views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, referring to the Israeli-occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria.”

Despite his checkered track record, Kromberg has continued to hold a high position in the Justice Department. In addition to his current role in the Assange extradition, he has also continued to prosecute high-profile terrorism cases.

In 2017, Kromberg prosecuted the case of a D.C. police officer accused of buying gift cards in support of terrorism, charges that arose from a controversial sting operation. In court, Kromberg leveled eyebrow-raising allegations that the suspect was both a supporter of the jihadist group Islamic State as well as the World War II-era German Nazi Party on the grounds that he owned historical paraphernalia. Referring to an anonymous online commenter who had called the defendant “Muslim-Nazi scum,” Kromberg argued in court, “Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know the answer to that. But the point is that the Nazi stuff in this case is very much related to the, to the ISIS stuff.”

Assange’s case has been largely ignored in the U.S. press, considering the potential implications of his prosecution under the Espionage Act. Kromberg’s key role, however, suggests that the Justice Department is not taking the implications of the case on its end lightly. Legal observers say that the incredible extent that the government is going to level these charges, spending years pursuing Assange in various forms, and placing one of its most aggressive prosecutors on the case all sends a dire message to those who would publish classified information in the future.

“This case is incredibly problematic, and we do believe it is politicized,” said Rebecca Vincent, the director of international campaigns at Reporters Without Borders. “What we’ve seen so far are very powerful interests throwing everything they’ve got at one person. Regardless of what happens next, that in and of itself will have a significant impact on national security reporting. Very few people are going to be willing to go through what he has gone through for over a decade.”

Vincent, who has been an observer on the case for Reporters Without Borders, said that the psychological and physical pressure of years of incarceration has taken a toll on Assange. His deteriorating condition and the likely further harm that he would suffer in U.S. prisons have been a key stumbling block in the effort so far to extradite him. A disclosure from the appeals case last week reported by the New York Times indicated that the U.S. government had consented to Assange being held in Australian custody, but only if the Australian government consented to the transfer and after all appeals in Assange’s case had been exhausted.

In a dark irony, Kromberg happened to be the one making the case in U.K. courts this past January that Assange might not have it so bad if he were held in U.S. custody. Prior court documents from Assange’s extradition hearing cited Kromberg to state expectations that Assange would be held in a highly restrictive supermax prison once sent to the U.S. were “purely speculative,” quoting him further to say that “the philosophy of the [Bureau of Prisons] is to house all inmates in the least restrictive environment appropriate for the inmate.”

Assange has become a polarizing figure in the U.S., with detractors and supporters divided over the nature of his work and motivations, particularly since the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, where he was believed to have acted in support of Donald Trump’s candidacy. Press freedom experts say that irrespective of people’s personal opinions on Assange, if he is successfully extradited and convicted on Espionage Act charges for publishing classified information, the consequences for the future of national security journalism in the U.S. would be grave.

“Lots of people hate Julian Assange, his opinions, and his tactics, but if you look at the Espionage Act charges that he faces, they wholly relate to speaking to sources, asking for more information, receiving or holding classified information, and then publishing a subset of that information,” said the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Timm. “Whatever anyone thinks of Assange, or whether they think he’s a journalist or not, those actions are what journalists do all the time.”

Timm added, “If the U.S. government is successful in prosecuting Assange for those actions, there would be nothing stopping it from prosecuting New York Times or Washington Post reporters on the same grounds in the future.”

Read original article in The Intercept and related article “The Unprecedented And Illegal Campaign To Eliminate Julian Assange“ by Charles Glass

On the 12th July 2021, Zeit Online reports (Google Translation)

Berlin (dpa) – Around 120 politicians, artists and journalists have appealed to Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) to campaign for the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange during her visit by US President Joe Biden this week .

“We sincerely ask you to help build bridges in the Julian Assange case,” said a joint letter to Merkel at the German Press Agency in Berlin . The Chancellor wants to meet Biden this Thursday on her last visit to the USA before leaving office after the general election in Washington.

The signatories of the letter to Merkel initiated by the investigative journalist and writer Günter Wallraff include cross-party MPs from CDU , SPD, FDP, Left and Greens, several ex-ministers such as Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), Gerhart Baum (FDP), Oskar Lafontaine (Left ), the writer Elfriede Jelinek and the editor of the women’s magazine “Emma”, Alice Schwarzer. Assange recently celebrated his 50th birthday in the HMP Belmarsh maximum security prison in London.

The US judiciary accuses Assange, together with whistleblower Chelsea Manning, of stealing secret material from US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a huge number of diplomatic cables and publishing them on the Internet platform Wikileaks. [They claim] This put the lives of American informants in danger in many countries. The US investigators [claim] Assange is a spy and are demanding his extradition. His supporters, however, see him as an investigative journalist.

Merkel should defend freedom of the press

In the letter, the signatories ask Merkel to make it clear in her conversations with Biden , “how important it is in the interests of defending freedom of the press to drop the lawsuit against the Wikileaks founder so that he can recover healthily in the company of his family. The Chancellor is also asked to find “a humanitarian solution for Assange and a face-saving solution for the US President”, it said. “It would be a strong, lasting humanitarian gesture at the end of your term of office and for President Joe Biden, finally, an opportunity to leave the Donald Trump era completely behind, also in the interests of protecting freedom of the press and freedom of expression.”

Dealing with Assange is “incompatible with the rule of law, the dire prison conditions are a humanitarian scandal,” said the letter to the Chancellor. In view of the threatening health condition of Assange, there is an urgent need for action. It is in the hands of Biden to end the legal proceedings initiated by his predecessor against Assange and to drop the lawsuit.

Extradition request currently rejected [by UK judicary]

Assange fled to Ecuador’s embassy in London in 2012 before being extradited . There he got asylum – until the wind turned in the South American country. In 2019, the whole world could watch Assange being dragged out of the embassy despite fierce resistance.

A court in London rejected the US extradition request in January because of Assange’s poor mental health and the expected prison conditions in the United States. Assange was still not released because the US appealed. Now he has to wait for the outcome of these proceedings. According to his fiancée Stella Morris, the Australian is still threatened with extradition to the US and sentenced to 175 years in prison. Morris is betting that the new US administration under Biden will drop the charges against her partner.

Read Original Article in Zeit Online (in German)

On the 9th July 2020, Bára Huld Beck reports on the Icelandic web site Kjarninn ( The Core). Google translated

A group of Icelandic MPs from five parties have gathered and submitted a statement to the US Embassy in Iceland urging the US government to drop the charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

A cross-party group of ten Icelandic MPs has sent a statement to the US Embassy in Iceland calling on the US government to drop charges against investigative journalist and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. According to the parliamentary group, he could, if convicted, be sentenced to 175 years in prison for his work, but he has now been held in a security prison in the UK for over two years.

Helga Vala Helgadóttir and Guðmundur Andri Thorsson, MPs from Samfylkingarinn, Ari Trausti Guðmundsson, MP from VG, Halldóra Mogensen, Þórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir, Björn Leví Gunnarsson and Andrés Ingi Jónsson, MPs from Pírata, Hanna Katrín Friðriksson and Jón Steindór Valdimarsson, MPs from Viðreisn and Inga Sæland, chairman of the People’s Party.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor of Wikileaks, challenged Icelandic MPs a week ago to make their voices heard regarding Assange’s case, but MPs from around the world have taken up the issue and protested his imprisonment. Since then, the Supreme Court of London has granted the United States government permission to appeal in part to the verdict handed down on January 4 that Assange should not be extradited to the United States for health reasons.

Statement by the Icelandic MPs:

We, the undersigned, MPs in Iceland from the entire political spectrum, urge the US Government to drop the charges against Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, and withdraw the extradition request against him in the UK.

The allegations of “espionage” against Assange are an attempt to criminalize investigative journalism, setting a dangerous precedent for media freedom around the world.

UN special envoy for torture, Nils Melzer, has said Assange was “dehumanized by isolation, ridicule and shame” and stripped of his fundamental human rights. It is the punishment for exposing war crimes and torture committed by US forces during the Iraq war.

Recent revelations, in which key witnesses in the case admit to having fabricated allegations against Assange, should mark the end of attacks on a multi-award winning journalist. We urge leaders, governments and parliamentarians around the world to raise their voices and support media freedom, the rule of law and the public’s right to knowledge.

Helga Vala Helgadóttir, Samfylkingin
Guðmundur Andri Thorsson, Samfylkingin
Ari Trausti Guðmundsson, Left Green
Halldóra Mogensen, Pirates
Þórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir, Pirates
Björn Leví Gunnarsson, Pirates
Andrés Ingi Jónsson, Pirates
Hanna Katrín Friðriksson, Viðreisn
Jón Steindór Valdimarsson, Viðreisn
Inga Sæland, People’s Party

Read origin article in Kjarninn

On the 5th July 2021, Nil Melzer writes in Newsweek

Today the United States mark “Independence Day”, a historical turning point in the becoming of a great nation. On this day, the world celebrates great truths enshrined in the 1776 Declaration, which epitomize the very concept of modern democracy: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”. In short, Independence Day celebrates the right and duty to free and just dissent.

Indeed, throughout history, dissidents have brought about lasting political change, liberation from oppression, and the empowerment of the people. By ‘dissident’, I do not mean the opposition in parliament, I mean political activists challenging established power from the outside. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela were dissidents whose names are now cherished worldwide. Yet, all of them radically challenged the political, social and economic order of their time, which got two of them murdered and the third incarcerated for 27 years.

What is it, then, that makes dissidents such a threat? Contrary to common criminals they serve a higher cause. Contrary to terrorists, they inform, empower and mobilize the people. And contrary to parliamentary oppositions, they have no stakes in corrupt institutions and practices that often feed both sides of the political aisle. Governments fear dissidents, because they cannot be owned and controlled. Some imprison, torture and execute them routinely, based on classified evidence and summary trials. Others conceal their oppression behind a veil of due process, crushing them through judicial harassment and defamation.

Whether we like it or not, Julian Assange is a dissident. He despises secrecy and cannot be tamed, bought or otherwise controlled. He has flooded the world with compromising disclosures, including evidence for war crimes, aggression and abuse, without ever resorting to violence or fake news. He has initiated a paradigm shift in public awareness and dried up safe havens of governmental impunity. And like everyone who endangers the perks of the powerful, he has been made to pay the price.

But how do you break a political dissident, a promoter of truth and transparency? Well, first you attack his reputation and credibility, and destroy his human dignity. You maintain a constant trickle of poisonous rumors, first half-truths and then increasingly bold lies. You keep him suspected of rape without trial, of hacking and spying, and of smearing feces on Embassy walls. You portray him as an ungrateful narcissist with a cat and a skateboard, whose only aim is self-glorifying exceptionalism.

By making him unlikeable in the eyes of the world, you ensure no one will feel any empathy, so once his voice is muzzled and his isolation complete, he can be burned at the stake with impunity. Most importantly, having degraded him to a clown for the entertainment of all, you will have diverted attention from his spotlight on your own crimes. Next, you make sure that any attempt of his to expose your lies comes at the cost of extradition to a hanging judge in a land bent to see his head on a stick, where torturers enjoy impunity. You then pressure his country of refuge into submission – military and economic leverage never fail – and you turn his protectors into enemies, and his daily existence into attritive hell.

The method is deliberate, concerted, and sustained, and employs isolation, hostility, and shame. Whether you call it “bullying,” “mobbing,” or “persecution” – in essence it is all the same. It purposefully inflicts severe mental suffering and aims to coerce, punish, and intimidate. It is thus, under international law, nothing else than full-fledged psychological torture. Mind you, psychological torture is neither ‘soft’ nor ‘light’. It aims straight at the destruction of your innermost self, albeit without leaving a physical trace. It targets your emotions, your mind and your dignity, and instills chronic shame and anxiety. Through relentless over-stimulation, confusion and stress, it eventually causes total exhaustion, cardiovascular failure and nervous collapse.

Let us not be fooled, extraditing Assange was never about hacking, rape, espionage or narcissism. It is about drowning his radical challenge to government secrecy, which holds the power to change world affairs forever, inspired by the truths and principles proclaimed in the 1776 Declaration. That is why the powerful persecute Assange with ferocity, while proven war criminals are allowed to walk free. And as you watch him pay for the audacity of exposing corruption and crime, please ponder what this means for you, your country, and your family. Ponder deep and ponder hard, and then use your democratic rights to hold your Government to account.

For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, then your own rights may well be next in line. A precedent of censorship and tyranny will have been set, through the backdoor of our own complacency, which can and will be applied just as well to the New York Times, BBC World and ABC News. So on this day, let us remember this truth, declared 243 years ago: “A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.”

Read original article in Newsweek
and other reports on Julian Assange
“I’ve known Julian Assange for 10 Years. His Confinement and Arrest are a Scandal” by Stefania Maurizi
“Julian Assange Health: ‘Grave Concerns’ for WikiLeaks Founder Moved to Medical Wing of Prison” by Callum Paton

On the 5th July 2021, Damian Wilson reports:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s future hangs in the balance as the US appeals a UK decision not to extradite the Aussie to face espionage charges. Meanwhile, bipartisan support in Oz piles the pressure on President Biden.

The Aussies take their petitions seriously. When the government threatened a hike in the price of beer back at the turn of the 21st Century, 800,000 angry Australians put their names to paper – never mind e-petitions – in a show of people power that gave the politicians one choice: abandon their futile quest.

The message was clear, don’t mess with their beer and equally strident is the almost pathological Australian defence of the underdog. Nothing gets an Aussie’s budgie smugglers in a twist more than a bully.

And when the victim is a fellow Aussie, well, you’ve got a real ding-dong in the offing. Even when that compatriot is controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, currently residing in the UK’s grim Belmarsh prison, having been considered too much of a flight risk to be granted bail while the British courts decide whether to send him to the US to face espionage charges.

Nearly 12,000 miles away, Assange’s treatment has seen an unlikely cross-party alliance form to argue for the underdog. Among those leading the call for the US administration to drop its bid to extradite Assange is Aussie MP Julian Hill, a vocal member of a cross-party group of federal politicians who discussed exclusively with RT.com last week’s release of a video demanding that US President Joe Biden rethink his administration’s pursuit of their compatriot.

To Hill, the issue is one of principle. “I don’t agree with everything he’s done and I don’t know whether I like the guy but it’s not my job to be his friend. I don’t have any personal connection with him,” said the 48-year-old Victorian. “It’s a matter of principle. People have their own reactions and a lot of people, in that great Australian way, really don’t give a hoot but still support that principle, although they may not really have any particular personal care for the guy beyond his welfare and well-being.”

So strong is that innate sense of fair play, even when the underdog is a stranger, that it has seen more than 600,000 Aussies sign a change.org petition calling for the release of Assange and to stop the legal precedent of the USA extraditing a non-US citizen for exposing their (the USA’s) wrongdoing. When presented to the International Criminal Court in The Hague earlier this year, it became the largest petition ever to land at the door of that institution.

But so far, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to back the campaigners, and Hill is scathing.

“The prime minister’s failure to defend Julian Assange, who is an Australian citizen, is incredibly disappointing as is his refusal to engage in the matters of principle at stake,” said the MP. “He’s hiding behind talking points about ‘due process,’ ‘having his day in court’ and ‘facing the music’ and similar sort of nonsense, which is intellectually and morally bankrupt but that’s not deterring us.

“There is growing support from other members of parliament and indeed with the return of Barnaby Joyce [who won a leadership battle in minority coalition partner National Party last month] to the role of Deputy Prime Minister, Assange now has at least one clear supporter in the cabinet.”

Now Hill and his colleagues are looking to build on that influence to convince the Americans to drop their pursuit of Assange. The Labor Party MP and two colleagues met in March with Washington’s top diplomat Down Under, Mike Goldman, to put the case for Assange’s release.

Hill said, “We got a fair hearing and a commitment that I think was honest to relay in direct terms the points we made back to the administration. One of the points which I made I got the feeling perhaps hadn’t been thought-of quite before, which was that, in many respects, the US has got everything it wanted out of this case in terms of legal precedent and principle.

“I made the point that the US administration could gracefully drop the charges and walk away while still claiming victory on their point of principle; that they could do the right thing on a humanitarian basis without conceding that point.”

As the back channelling continues and the number of Assange supporters in high places keeps rising, Hill and his colleagues show a doggedness mixed with political acumen that might just win the day.

“We’ll keep up the advocacy,” Hill said. “There are reports of growing interest in America in helping Assange, including some interest in Congress and also from the liberal media and the ecosystem around the Democratic administration which is also important. We need to keep supporting those efforts because they’re the people’s voices that are heard.” 

After the false dawn of a rumoured pardon from outgoing President Donald Trump earlier this year, maybe Biden will bow to demands and growing clamour. After nearly 10 years in confinement, spent in Ecuador’s London embassy and most recently, prison, all without facing trial, Assange’s treatment was deemed by a UN rapporteur as “psychological torture.”

“There needs to be agreement across the Australian government, the US government and the British government that enough is enough,” said Hill. “This has been going on for way too long and the matter just needs to be resolved.” 

Read original article in RT News or
follow their in-depth coverage of the Assange Saga

On the 30th June 2021, 11 Australian Members of Parliament from various parties released video calling upon President Biden to release Julian Assange

The Australian politicians warn that Assange’s prosecution threatens journalists worldwide.

Andrew Wilkie MP, Independent, said: “We are Parliamentarians and we are calling the Government of the United states to drop the unprecedented charges under the Espionage Act”

Julian Hill MP, ALP, who has spoken in parliament about Assange, appeals to the UK: “We are imploring the British government to release him from prison, and send him home.”

Senator Janet Rice, Australian Greens, said: “Like politicians in the UK and the US we are elected to defend our citizens’ rights”

Dr. Helen Haines MP, Independent said: “Voters expect us to hold accountable those who commit wrong-doing, not to punish those who expose it, such as Julian Assange.”

Susan Templeman, MP, ALP, said: “Citizens expect us to protect journalists and publishers, not to imprison them for their work.”

Maria Vamvakinou MP, ALP said: “Julian Assange is right now arbitarilly detained for publishing activities”

Josh Wilson MP, ALP, said: “His treatment violates the Convention Against Torture and his perfection threatens journalists world-wide”

Senator Carol Brown, ALP, added: “The world’s leading human rights and press freedom groups are unequivocally denouncing the charges against [Julian Assange]. And we join them.”

Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, Australian Greens, told Biden: “Australian citizens want Julian Assange to be free.”

Peter Khalil MP, ALP, noted: “Indeed, one of the largest petitions in Australia’s history, with over 600,000 signatures, has been tabled in the Australian Parliament, calling on the US to free Assange.”

George Christensen MP, Liberal National Party, said: “The ruling by UK District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser on the 4th January this year to deny extradition provides the opportunity for urgent reconsideration”

Read more
Consortium News
Sydney Morning Herald

On the 28th June 2021,  Brian McGleenon reported in The Express that UK Labour MP, Richard Burgon, was handing a letter enquiring on the ‘apparent difficulties’ in meeting with Julian Assange to the UK authorities.

Richard Burgon MP, who coordinated the letter from 20 parliamentarians from 4 parties said: “Julian Assange’s case has huge implications for press freedoms in the UK and for the US-UK Extradition Treaty

“It’s in the public interest that British Parliamentarians are able to discuss these issues with Julian Assange.

“That the authorities have repeatedly stopped an online meeting going ahead speaks volumes.

“The Justice Secretary and Prison Governor must now put a stop to their intransigence and allow it to go ahead without further delay”

The full letter reads

Dear Governor,

We are deeply concerned by the ongoing refusal of you and the Justice Secretary to allow an online video meeting between Julian Assange and a cross-party group of British parliamentarians. 

As you know Julian Assange is currently on remand in HMP Belmarsh, not for the violation of any UK law, but over extradition to the USA for his journalistic work carried out in the UK at the invitation of The Guardian and published in numerous leading newspapers worldwide. 

In the US, Julian Assange faces a prison sentence of up to 175 years, meaning he could spend the rest of his life in jail.

This case has important implications for press and publishing freedoms in the UK and for the US-UK Extradition Treaty including its ban on extradition for political offences. 

We, therefore, believe it is vital that parliamentarians be allowed to discuss these important issues with interested parties. We are not making this request as private citizens but as British Parliamentarians deeply concerned by the potential consequences of this high-profile case. 

This could be permitted under the rules for Official Visits which state that there can be visits from “public officials whom the Governor permits to visit”. 

A cross-party group of parliamentarians first requested an online meeting in December 2020. It is simply unacceptable that six months on this simple request continues to be met with such intransigence. 

You have the authority to grant such a meeting and we call on you to facilitate an online meeting without further delay.

The signatories of the letter are
Richard Burgon MP,
Diane Abbott MP, 
Baroness Christine Blower, 
Ian Byrne MP, 
Jeremy Corbyn MP, 
Lord Bryn Davies, 
Neale Hanvey MP, 
Lord John Hendy, 
Ian Lavery MP, 
Caroline Lucas MP, 
Kenny MacAskill MP, 
John McDonnell MP, 
Ian Mearns MP, 
Grahame Morris MP, 
Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, 
Tommy Sheppard MP, 
Lord Prem Sikka, 
Zarah Sultana MP, 
Claudia Webbe MP, 
Mick Whitley MP

Read original article in the Express