British justice has been done, but it is hard to fathom. Assange’s crime is different from the usual. He embarrassed the US by revealing activities recorded by Americans themselves, and the lawlessness of the US military that continues every day, all round the world.
Having been told by a senior judge that he was a narcissist and nobody is above the law, he is now free to be both, or either, if he wishes. Having been in solitary lock-up for 23 hours a day in Belmarsh prison without exercise or showers since November, and with the worst criminals, some of whom have COVID19, he will not be extradited to the US because conditions in Super Max, Florence, Colorado, are reportedly similar. Having been found more than a year ago by a UN Special Rapporteur and numerous medical specialists to be suffering mental torture, this is suddenly grounds for his release.
After Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s surprising decision, the US Department of Justice claimed its points of law at the extradition hearing had prevailed, and will pursue an appeal. Australian QC Geoffrey Robertson says that’s unlikely to succeed. The Americans’ lawyers complained to Baraitser last October that Assange’s defence team described the US as being ‘guilty of torture, war crimes, murder, breaches of diplomatic and international law and…is “a lawless state”’.
That’s a statement with which few international observers would disagree. That is just what WikiLeaks showed, using all-American evidence that was not hacked or stolen, but given to Assange by an American private soldier, Chelsea Manning, in 2010. The other main accusation of the prosecution’s lawyers was that by publishing the names of people working for the US, WikiLeaks put their lives in danger. Evidence put forward by Assange’s defence showed he had redacted thousands of names, and also cited an American Brigadier-General’s denial that anyone had been harmed as a result of WikiLeaks’ disclosures.
Assange’s crime is different. He embarrassed the US by revealing activities recorded by Americans themselves, and the lawlessness of the US military that continues every day, all round the world. Multiple documents and videos confirmed US torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, war crimes and murder against unarmed civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and spying on UN diplomats. And these were classified only up to ‘confidential’, the defence team pointed out, leaving to the court’s imagination what’s top secret.
That is why the US wanted – and may still want – him extradited, tried and imprisoned for 175 years. The framers of the successive US indictments appeared not to care about First Amendment rights to free speech, which they claimed didn’t apply to Assange as an Australian, nor the effect on all other journalists everywhere. He has been repeatedly accused of treason in the past – including by Hillary Clinton, and of being a ‘high-tech terrorist’ by then senator Joe Biden. Espionage in this case, for which Manning was imprisoned for seven years and acquitted by Obama, inexplicably now applies solely to Assange. What his US accusers really want is to make him an example to anyone wanting to do the same.
But now British justice has taken its course, to the surprise and relief of Assange and his supporters. As occurred in two other recent UK cases, extradition was refused on the grounds that he would not have been tried in the UK if the alleged crime occurred there.
On hearing a US appeal to a higher UK court, judges may pay more attention to evidence other than Assange’s mental and physical health. They could consider evidence that the CIA received intercepted conversations and videos from Assange’s room at the Ecuadorian Embassy for at least two years, in breach of the Vienna Convention and US and UK law. This is his most powerful defence, and it’s comparable to what got Daniel Ellsberg off after leaking the Pentagon Papers. They might be interested, too, in whether prolonged imprisonment in maximum security and isolation was appropriate for a bail breach for which Assange had already served the time. Baraitser appears to have found the medical evidence more conveniently compelling than these factors, perhaps because it leaves the UK belatedly looking just and humane.
When the appeal is over, where will Assange go? Mexico has offered him a home, but its Covid-19 infection rates are similar to Britain’s. In Australia he has many happy supporters, but his guilt was prejudged by several political leaders, and his credentials as a journalist/publisher disparaged by some colleagues. While such people went to great lengths to get Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert released from Iran, a country with the death penalty where she was accused of espionage, they did nothing to prevent Assange’s extradition to the US, also country with the death penalty where he is accused of espionage.
Yet Morrison claims Assange has received the same consular assistance as every other Australian. At the very least, that should now include an offer of return to Australia with his family. An apology and compensation might be helpful. Some of Australia’s wrongly accused citizens, including Hicks, Hanif, and Habib got one or the other: Assange has broken no Australian or British law and deserves both.
Dr Alison Broinowski AM is a former Australian diplomat. She stood as a candidate for the WikiLeaks Party in 2013.
Dr Alison Broinowski AM is a former Australian diplomat and a member of Australians fr War Powers Reform
Comments
14 responses to “Right outcome, wrong reasons on Julian Assange”
Btw, this from a respected SMH journalist, Elizabeth Farrelly:
To do with “moral cowardice”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-personal-conveniently-distracts-from-the-political-in-the-assange-story-20210107-p56siu.html
Thanks Alison. Ignore Skilts who is unable to see the forest for the trees.
Well spoken, Ali.
Excellent and succinct, Alison – I have reposted elsewhere!
Some of what I wrote has been overtaken by events. The absurdity of putting Assange back in the very prison that has reduced him to this state is palpable. The best Biden can do is drop the extradition request.
So, Assange is not to be extradited to the U.S. because his mental heath precludes that, a state of mental health largely caused by his years’ long isolation in various prisons and embassies.
Good. No extradition.
And then bail is refused, so he is returned to Belmarsh prison to await appeals from the U.S. How does that make any sort of sense at all?
Charge Baraitser with contributing to the torture! Send her to the US as a guinea pig in Julian’s place? No, but certainly she has to be publicly reviled as the puppet of UK/US-CIA/OZ determination to make an example of one the incorruptibles of journalism!
I dont get this attack on Baraitser. Her judgement saved Assange from a death sentence in the US gulag. How does that make her a stooge of the CIA? Further more given Assange’s record of doing a runner from Sweden on the day that an arrest warrant was issued on a charge of sexual molestation and his holing up in a foreign embassy for years avoiding a British court does anyone seriously believe that a judge in any jurisdiction would grant bail to an individual with that record of avoiding the courts. The conspiracy theories regarding Baraister are getting ridiculous with respect. Assange is going to face an appellate court which will have even less humanity than Baraister.
Might I suggest that your understanding of the case is quite faulty – you have fallen for mainstream media coverage of assertion as fact. There is little point in trying to yet again explain – just go back and do some footwork of your own, please.
Obviously you have not read the reports of her rulings during this trial. Who is this woman? It’s a question I have posed on several sites and no one can tell me nor can the internet help. The sooner this case is out of her court and into the hands of others, the better. This trial has been a farce from day one. Julian was not being tried in her court on any particular charge. It was an extradition hearing . He should not have been in the dock like a person charged with a heinous crime. He should have been out on bail, with his passport withdrawn. We condemned the Russian show trials and here we have one of the most infamous one of modern history.
She found he would be a suicide risk in a US jail. Not that he was a suicide risk in Belmarsh. She made a critical distinction between the treatment he receives in a British jail and the US gulag. A logical conclusion. And a reasonable one given the record of US torture in in its prisons. You might not like the decision but it was reasoned. And it saved his life. She may have been influenced by the U.S. dismissing United Nations concerns about torture in 2006, and the judgement of British High Court Justice Collins who stated that ‘America’s idea of what is torture … does not appear to coincide with that of most civilized nations‘. The British judiciary has since the Guantanamo torture of British citizens taken a critical position in regard to the US stance on torture. It might just save Assanges life.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/feb/17/politics.world
I have absolutely no doubt that Morrison is lying again about the level of support allegedly provided by Australia to Julien Assange.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2020/12/19/scott-morrison-political-liars/
Spot on, Alison. Admirable (not) restraint re Australian official support for Assange. It’s unlikely that he will get even ex gratia recompense from the Australian government cf Habib and Hicks. Only UK-US comity explains why extradition was not ruled out on principles of asylum from word go as it should have been. Altogether a shameful and disgraceful performance by the home of freedom, the land of the free and all of us newly “one and free”.
Excellent final sentence linking the irony of free and freedom. Especially after events of the past 24-hours as I write here from the chaos of the US parliamentary Congress halls of freedom and “democracy” – exposed as being as shallow and ignorantly fascist in essence as any land the US wags its own self-righteous fingers and sends its drones and bombs against! And the UK/OZ want to send our true gold standard journalist into the maws of that??? Shame Morrison and Payne, especially!