Julian Assange's legal team says Britain's international reputation is at risk if the country ignores the findings of a United Nations panel which is expected to rule that the Australian WikiLeaks founder has been "arbitrarily detained".

• Mr Assange's lawyer says UN ruling should prompt immediate action
• Swedish prosecutors say the UN decision has no formal impact on their rape investigation
• Ms Bishop says until Australia hears from Assange it cannot do anything

Mr Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since seeking asylum in June 2012, after an arrest warrant was issued over sexual assault allegations in Sweden.

British police have been stationed outside the embassy for the last three and a half years and said they would arrest the Australian if he tried to leave.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-05/julian-assange-ignoring-ruling-'could-risk-britain's-reputation'/7142292

Assange has demanded help from Australia a few times to no avail. Now it's more than the time for Australia to show some balls and tell the Brits to let Assange go...

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arbitrarily detained by the UK and Sweden since he was arrested in London in December 2010, according to a United Nations report.

As anticipated, the finding by the Geneva-based UN working group on arbitrary detention criticises legal action against Assange by both European governments and blames them for preventing him from leaving the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge.

The panel called on the Swedish and British authorities to end Assange’s “deprivation of liberty”, respect his physical integrity and freedom of movement and offer him compensation.

The report says: “The working group considered that Mr Assange has been subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth prison, which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorian embassy.

“Having concluded that there was a continuous deprivation of liberty, the working group also found that the detention was arbitrary because he was held in isolation during the first stage of detention and because of the lack of diligence by the Swedish prosecutor in its investigations, which resulted in the lengthy detention of Mr Assange.”

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/05/julian-assange-un-panel-uk-...

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist. She currently writes three columns a week for the paper: one general comment, one on sport and one on celebrity.
Don't Follow Marina Hyde on Twitter

Marina Hyde's article on Julian Assange misses the point by miles. Julian Assange is being pursued by the FBI, the CIA and any other spitlickled spy agencies in the US. They are using a "trumped up" charge in Sweden to get him out of his fox-hole. These charges are not even charges — they are only demand of interview about his side of an event in Sweden in which he was probably set up. The UK is obliging in the unnecessary FORCEFUL ILLEGAL extradition of Assange to Sweden. In Sweden, Assange would face extradition to the US to face "treason" charges. Sweden will oblige. Is this not simple enough?

What would you do? I know, dear Marina, you'd write a funny article about the military...  Seriously, The Guardian and other newspapers around the world were quite enthusiastic at using Assange's information on the way the US treated "accidents" of war with contempt. 

And this morning we get more of the same problems being exposed:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/05/us-military-bush-era-detainee-abuse-photos-released-pentagon-iraq-afghanistan-guantanamo-bay

Marina, stick to writing about showbiz and sportz... Your article on Assange is a disgrace. It shows you have no idea about anything. F-OFF. It's so called loopy young naive and possibly ridiculously right wing "journalist" like you who have led to the desperation of serious journos to create the OFF-GUARDIAN website.

It must be appalling to find yourself subjected to arbitrary detention. You would have no power to challenge said detention. You would have no idea when, if ever, you would be set free. And that concept is reflected in the first of five definitions offered by the UN working group on arbitrary detention: “when it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty”.

But that was not the reason they gave for their opinion that Julian Assange has been arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy. His detention fell foul of their third definition; when “non-observance ... of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial ... is of such gravity as to give the detention an arbitrary character”.

That opinion was backed by three of the five members of the working group. A fourth felt she could not take part because she, like Assange, is an Australian. So it fell to the fifth member of the group, Vladimir Tochilovsky, to point out the flaw in the majority’s reasoning.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/05/un-julian-assange-wikileaks

-----------------

There is no flaws in the majority reasoning. The fact that the UK police is outside waiting to imprison Julia Assange IS EQUIVALENT to detention. Vladimir Tochilovsky has holes in his understanding. 

And by the way, Vladimir Tochilovsky is a Ukrainian, not a Russian. He would most likely be on the side of the US in this affair of "arbitrary detention"... Do the sums. 

HOW COME JOSHUA ROZENBERG CAN GET IT SO WRONG?... Ah I see, he "understands' the law... and the word equivalent to detention does not appear in the text... F-OFF Joshua...

Joshua Rozenberg trained as a lawyer before becoming a legal journalist and was the BBC's legal correspondent for 15 years. He is now a freelance writer, commentator and broadcaster and presents the BBC Radio 4 series Law in Action.

JULIAN ASSANGE IS a deeply polarizing figure. Many admire him and many despise him (into which category one falls in any given year typically depends on one’s feelings about the subject of his most recent publication of leaked documents).

But one’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article, which is not about Assange. This article, instead, is about a report published this week by The Guardian that recklessly attributed to Assange comments that he did not make. This article is about how those false claims — fabrications, really — were spread all over the internet by journalists, causing hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to consume false news. The purpose of this article is to underscore, yet again, that those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combating it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it.

One’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article because, presumably, everyone agrees that publication of false claims by a media outlet is very bad, even when it’s designed to malign someone you hate. Journalistic recklessness does not become noble or tolerable if it serves the right agenda or cause. The only way one’s views of Assange are relevant to this article is if one finds journalistic falsehoods and Fake News objectionable only when deployed against figures one likes.

THE SHODDY AND misleading Guardian article, written by Ben Jacobs, was published on December 24. It made two primary claims — both of which are demonstrably false. The first false claim was hyped in the article’s headline: “Julian Assange gives guarded praise of Trump and blasts Clinton in interview.” This claim was repeated in the first paragraph of the article: “Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has offered guarded praise of Donald Trump. …”

The second claim was an even worse assault on basic journalism. Jacobs set up this claim by asserting that Assange “long had a close relationship with the Putin regime.” The only “evidence” offered for this extraordinary claim was that Assange, in 2012, conducted eight interviews that were broadcast on RT. With the claimed Assange-Putin alliance implanted, Jacobs then wrote: “In his interview with la Repubblica, [Assange] said there was no need for WikiLeaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in Russia because of the open and competitive debate he claimed exists there.”

The reason these two claims are so significant, so certain to attract massive numbers of clicks and shares, is obvious. They play directly into the biases of Clinton supporters and flatter their central narrative about the election: that Clinton lost because the Kremlin used its agents, such as Assange, to boost Trump and sink Clinton. By design, the article makes it seem as though Assange is heralding Russia as such a free, vibrant, and transparent political culture that — in contrast to the repressive West — no whistleblowing is needed, all while praising Trump.

But none of that actually happened. Those claims are made up.

read more:

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of-julian-assa...

Sweden's top prosecutor says she is dropping an investigation into a rape claim against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, bringing to an end a seven-year legal stand-off.

The announcement means the WikiLeaks leader no longer faces sex crime allegations in Sweden, although British police say he is still wanted in Britain for jumping bail in 2012.

"Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny has today decided to discontinue the preliminary investigation regarding suspected rape concerning Julian Assange," a statement read.

Assange, 45, has lived in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, after taking refuge there to avoid extradition to Sweden over the allegation of sexual assault, which he denied.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-19/swedish-prosecutors-end-investigat...

Between you and me -- and a lamppost -- congratulations mate, but watch your back, still. There are nasty dudes out there -- government and otherwise -- who will do anything to get rid of you and Wikileaks...

I hope that jumping bail is not an offence once the charges are dropped... The Brits can keep the cash ...

And don't travel to the the US... They now have new charges against you that the Poms might use to "extradite" you... Take care. All the best. Keep up the good work... Stay calm as you always have done, considering...

Lawyers for Julian Assange will now shift their efforts to finding out whether an extradition agreement for the WikiLeaks founder exists between the US and British governments.

“The big question is the US warrant. The UK refused to give any indication if such a warrant exists,” Christophe Marchand, a Belgium-based member of Assange's legal team, told RT. “We want to know whether there is a US warrant, what is in there, whether we can fight against it then we’ll assess what the next step is for Julian Assange.”

Representatives for Assange’s legal team in Australia, Greg Barns and Julian Burnside, shared Marchand’s frustration. “From the point of view of his adviser, the issue now remains the UK arrest warrant and the fact that the UK won’t confirm or deny whether it has a request for extradition by the United States,” Barns said.

Assange will still be arrested if he leaves the embassy - British police statementhttps://t.co/d87BIB4pqwpic.twitter.com/fvIqVaQISR

Barns called on the Australian government to help Assange to leave the UK, saying he will be contacting Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the coming days to canvass for Assange’s safe passage if he decides to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy.

“Now that the Swedish issue is dealt with, as an Australian citizen, he deserves the protection of the Australian government,” he said.

Though Sweden has dropped the charges, the Metropolitan Police have said that the WikiLeaks founder will still be arrested if he leaves the embassy, although he “remains wanted for a much less serious offence,” having failed to surrender to the British courts in 2012.

Assange‘s team are still wary of Swedish prosecutors, however. “As a criminal lawyer I’ve never seen such a gross abuse of justice by a prosecutor so I don’t trust her in her statement,” Marchand said.“We don't trust the Swedish system to be strong enough to resist [the] demand [for] extradition to the United States.”

read more"

https://www.rt.com/news/389002-assange-extradition-threat-wikileaks/

It has to be said that Wikileaks has shaken the comfy zone that our duplicitous lying leaders had concocted for us, far more than any other philosophical and journalistic discourses. There is still a lot of work to be done, though. We know that "socialism" is enemy numero uno for the US machine. The US has been known to prefer "terrorism" to socialism. This is shown in its hatred of Assad who runs a pseudo-socialist despotic government and was doing well until the US poke its nose in Syria's affairs  -- on behalf of the Saudis who have been visited by the by cheese himself, Donald Rump. This follow the first ever direct flight between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Not a surprise here since we know who is pulling the strings...

“I welcome the Swedish prosecutor's decision to end its investigation of Julian Assange,” John Kiriakou, a former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and whistleblower told RT. “We should not celebrate yet, however.”

“The governments of the United Kingdom and the United States have plotted against Mr. Assange for the past seven years, trying to silence him for his exposure of their crimes.”

Kiriakou, who was the first to acknowledge the CIA’s use of torture, spoke up because he believed the use of torture was “immoral, unethical and illegal.” He served 30 months for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by confirming the name of an officer involved in the CIA’s secret rendition program, and was released in 2015.

“The Swedish government has taken itself out of the equation,” he continued. “But I believe that if Mr. Assange were to leave the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, he would still be arrested on trumped up national security charges and extradited to the United States, where he would find it utterly impossible to receive a fair hearing.”

The Courage Foundation, an international organization supporting  whistleblowers and truth tellers, has turned its focus to WikiLeaks and its staff, following the release of whistleblower Chelsea Manning on Wednesday.

Manning provided WikiLeaks with some of its most explosive revelations, including the ‘Collateral Murder’ video, the War Logs, State Department emails and decades of US embassy cables. 

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/389019-assange-wikileaks-pilger-kiriakou/

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange slammed the CIA, saying the deadly terrorist attack in New York might not have happened if the agency investigated terrorists instead of training and arming them.

“If the CIA spent more time investigating terrorists and less time training and arming them we might not have had today’s truck attack in New York,” the whistleblower tweeted following the attack in lower Manhattan that left eight people dead and a dozen injured on Tuesday.

If the CIA spent more time investigating terrorists and less time training and arming them we might not have had today's truck attack in New York.

— Julian Assange