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a travesty of justice...

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UN rapporteur on Assange: 'The US is trying to criminalize investigative journalism'


A London court will decide on January 4 on the US extradition request for Julian Assange. For Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture, it's a political process and a travesty of justice.


DW: After four weeks of hearing evidence in the extradition trial against Julian Assange, Judge Vanessa Baraitser is going to deliver her verdict on January 4. You have followed the case of Julian Assange closely. What's your take on the proceedings?


Nils Melzer: The legal proceeding in itself is not respecting the basic standards of human rights, of due process and the rule of law. Already, the motivation behind the extradition request is not in compliance with basic legal standards, with the protections of freedom of the press and so on. Julian Assange is being prosecuted by the United States for espionage, just because he practiced investigative journalism.

He has published secret information of a government that he has not been employed by, that he has no obligations towards. And he has not stolen the information himself. It was leaked to him by someone who had access to the information. And he published it because it was in the public interest to publish it.

 

Why were the Wikileaks releases important for the public?

Because they contained clear evidence for corruption and war crimes and other criminal conduct.

In essence, the United States is trying to criminalize investigative journalism. That's the purpose of the extradition request, nothing else.

And the British system, unfortunately, is in collusion with the United States. What we see is that the British are systematically depriving Julian Assange of his fundamental rights to prepare his defense, to have access to his lawyers, have access to legal documents. They put him in solitary confinement, where he has no access to his family and to visitors and where he psychologically erodes to a very regressive state — as anyone would in prolonged isolation — and without any legal basis to do that.

 

You visited Julian Assange in May 2019, about a month after his arrest, after living in his asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy for seven years. What was the state of his health at the time?


He wasn't in good health. I took two specialized doctors with me, people who had worked with torture victims for 30 years, a psychiatrist and a forensic expert. Both of them came independently to the conclusion that Assange showed all the signs typical for victims of psychological torture: intense anxiety, chronic stress syndromes that had already deteriorated his cognitive capacity and neurological functions, and that was already measurable at that time.

And he had suffered severely because of the constant threat of being extradited to the United States trying — and knowing what kind of political trial and inhumane sanction would expect him in the United States.

 

National security defendants in the US don't receive a fair trial. They're being tried behind closed doors based on secret evidence, that the defense has no access to and by a jury that is inherently biased, because they're selected from a population the majority of which is government friendly around Washington, DC. It is well known that, at the espionage court in Alexandria, Virginia, no national security defendant has ever been acquitted.

Then these people are being detained under this special detention regime, which is called special administrative measures, which essentially means total isolation for years: You can't speak to anybody. Even if you're let out for 45 minutes a day to have a walk, you're being let out from one concrete box to another concrete box where you're alone walking in circles. This type of detention regime clearly amounts to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. That is not just my opinion; it's the opinion of Amnesty International, of my predecessors, of any serious human rights organization in the world.

So this is the threat scenario, that Julian Assange has been confronted with for the last 10 years. And that has had a very deep effect on his psychological stability. He wasn't in solitary confinement at the time. He was in an individual cell. But he was able to speak to other detainees once or twice a day. Just about one week later, he was moved to the health department where he was soon put under complete isolation. This regime was only relaxed for the beginning of the trial in February, but was immediately tightened again with the outbreak of COVID. In effect, he has been in solitary confinement for all intents and purposes for more than a year now.

 

You have taken his conditions in prison and taken it to the British authorities. How did they react to your criticism?


I confronted the British authorities with my assessment of the illegality of his detention in the first place and urged them in no case to extradite him to the United States.

I also confronted the government with the information I got about the procedural violations in the British courts. (...) Assange's lawyers could not visit him for six months because of Covid, but had to work with short phone calls. And on the other side, you have the United States with unlimited resources and armies of lawyers preparing the case against him. This is clearly a violation of due process.

The British reacted with indignation, that I dared to criticize what they were doing. But they refused to prove me wrong, or to otherwise enter in a constructive dialogue with me. Instead, they simply don't respond to my interventions anymore. I also intervened just a few days ago, calling for Julian Assange to be at least moved to house arrest for the rest of the extradition proceeding. But there has been no response.

 

House arrest would be absolutely possible. They did it with Augusto Pinochet. The former dictator of Chile was in extradition detention in London for 18 months. But he was not put in a high-security prison, but accommodated in a villa under house arrest. He was even visited by the former prime minister [Margaret] Thatcher, who brought him whisky. He had a very privileged existence.

It is important to understand that, in extradition detention, you are not to be treated as a criminal. You are just detained so you cannot escape in case you will end up being extradited. That Julian Assange is being put in a high security prison with extremely severe restrictions on his private and professional life and procedural rights is completely disproportionate.

It's unnecessary, there is no legal basis to do that. The intent is clearly to intimidate other journalists, to silence him so he cannot do his journalistic work, which he clearly is entitled to exercise freely. 

 

Nils Melzer is the human rights chair of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. He also teaches international law at the University of Glasgow, UK. He has served as UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment since November 2016.

This interview has been condensed for clarity.

 

Read more:

 

https://www.dw.com/en/un-rapporteur-on-assange-the-us-is-trying-to-criminalize-investigative-journalism/a-56076248

 

under lock and key for speaking the truth...

By Charlie Nash, journalist, author, and commentator from the United Kingdom. He has written for The Spectator, CounterPunch, Mediaite, The American Conservative, and Front Porch Republic, among other publications. Follow him on Twitter @CharlieNash


The UK is railing against China's persecution of journalist Zhang Zhan. But back at home, Julian Assange is under lock and key at Belmarsh prison for speaking the truth.

The British embassy in Beijing published a scathing statement against China for sentencing a citizen journalist to four years in prison on Monday, raising concerns about “media freedom” in the country.

What it failed to mention, however, is that back at home the British government is currently persecuting its own journalist – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“The case of Zhang Zhan – who was arrested for her reporting on Covid-19 in Wuhan earlier this year and today sentenced to four years – raises serious concerns about media freedom in China,” declared the embassy, adding that Zhang is “one of at least 47 journalists currently in detention in China.”

“We urge China to release all those detained for their reporting,” the embassy concluded, tagging its statement with the Twitter hashtag “#DefendMediaFreedom” for one final level of irony.

The statement was shared by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Deborah Haynes, the foreign affairs editor for Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, but ultimately demonstrated the hypocritical and supremacist worldview that countries like the United Kingdom and the United States have always held: that persecution and the violation of human rights is only okay if we’re the ones doing it.

Assange, who sparked a number of high-profile government scandals with his exposés since WikiLeaks’ conception in 2006, is currently sitting in a cell in the UK’s notorious Belmarsh Prison – home to some of the worst scum and villainy in British history – awaiting extradition to the United States, a country he has never even lived in.

With prison mates like neo-Nazi terrorist David Copeland, Lee Rigby murderers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, and a plethora of pedophiles and serial rapists, one would naturally assume that Assange’s crimes must have been beyond the pale. But his perceived transgressions were the same as almost every journalist who has ever been persecuted by a government in the course of their duty – holding power to account.

To put it simply, Assange made both the UK and the US look like a pair of tits – the same thing that Zhang arguably did to China with her citizen journalism from Wuhan during the country’s struggle with Covid-19.

After exposing the criminality of both the UK and the US governments time and time again – one notable example being the 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter firing on two Reuters journalists in Iraq –  they decided that something had to be done, and the result was Assange’s current, unfortunate situation –  locking the messenger away and throwing away the key so that no one would be able to listen to him again.

Zhang has been sentenced to four years in prison for her transgressions. Assange has been shut away for over eight, and he hasn’t even been extradited yet.

For the crime of holding power accountable, Assange spent nearly seven years under house arrest in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition –  where he was under secret surveillance – until authorities stormed the embassy in 2019 and whisked him off to Belmarsh.

His health has suffered, with the WikiLeaks founder alleging “inhumane” treatment in prison, and he has been separated from his fiancé and kids.

And even then, his brutal treatment was and remains a bit of a compromise. After all, it was alleged that former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had proposed droning Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, and that the US government wanted to “kill Julian Assange and make it look like an accident.”

Negotiations had to take place to even ensure that the US government wouldn’t sentence Assange to death upon his arrival on US soil, though he could very well still end up dying if his health continues to spiral in captivity.

The cases of Julian Assange and Zhang Zhan are both similar, and yet wildly different. The most obvious difference is that only a tag-team of bullies like the UK or the US would have the gall to condemn another country for doing something they see no problem with doing themselves, so long as it maintains their hold on world domination.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/511025-uk-china-assange-zhang/

 

 

 

truth is a menace to despots...

Persecution is not typically doled out to those who recite mainstream pieties, or refrain from posing meaningful threats to those who wield institutional power, or obediently stay within the lines of permissible speech and activism imposed by the ruling class. 

Those who render themselves acquiescent and harmless that way will — in every society, including the most repressive — usually be free of reprisals. They will not be censored or jailed. They will be permitted to live their lives largely unmolested by authorities, while many will be well-rewarded for this servitude. Such individuals will see themselves as free because, in a sense, they are: they are free to submit, conform and acquiesce. And if they do so, they will not even realize, or at least not care, and may even regard as justifiable, that those who refuse this Orwellian bargain they have embraced (“freedom” in exchange for submission) are crushed with unlimited force.

Those who do not seek to meaningfully dissent or subvert power will usually deny — because they do not perceive — that such dissent and subversion are, in fact, rigorously prohibited. They will continue to believe blissfully that the society in which they live guarantees core civic freedoms — of speech, of press, of assembly, of due process — because they have rendered their own speech and activism, if it exists at all, so innocuous that nobody with the capacity to do so would bother to try to curtail it. The observation apocryphally attributed to socialist activist Rosa Luxemburg, imprisoned for her opposition to German involvement in World War I and then summarily executed by the state, expresses it best: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

The metric to determine whether a society is free is not how its orthodoxy-spouting, well-behaved, deferential-to-authority citizens are treated. Such people are treated well, or at least usually left alone, by every sovereign and every power center in every era, all over the world. 

You will not feel the sting of Silicon Valley or other institutional censorship as long as you affirm the latest COVID pronouncements of the World Health Organization and Dr. Anthony Fauci (even as those decrees contradict the ones they issued only a few months earlier), but you will if you question, refute or deviate from them. You will not have your Facebook page deleted if you defend Israeli occupation of Palestine but will be banished from that platform if you live in the West Bank and Gaza and urge resistance to Israeli occupying troops. If you call Trump an orange fascist clown, you can stay on YouTube for eternity, but not if you defend his most controversial policies and claims. You can vocally insist that the 2000, 2004 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections were all stolen without the slightest concern of being banned, but the same claims about the 2020 election will result in the summary denial of your ability to use online tech monopolies to be heard. 

Censorship, like most repression, is reserved for those who dissent from majoritarian orthodoxies, not for those who express views comfortably within the mainstream. Establishment Democrats and Republicans — adherents to the prevailing neoliberal order — have no need for free speech protections since nobody with power would care enough to silence them. It is only the disaffected, those who reside on the fringes and the margins, who need those rights. And those are precisely the people who, by definition, are most often denied them. 

Similarly: powerful officials in Washington can illegally leak the most sensitive government secrets and will suffer no punishment, or will get the lightest tap on the wrist, provided their aim is to advance mainstream narratives. But low-level leakers whose aim is to expose wrongdoing by the powerful or reveal their systemic lying will have the full weight of the criminal justice system and the intelligence community come crashing down on them, to destroy them with vengeance and also to put their heads on a pike to terrorize future dissidents out of similarly stepping forward.

Journalists like Bob Woodward, who spend decades spilling the most sensitive secrets at the behest of the ruling class D.C. elites, will be lavished with awards and immense wealth. But those like Julian Assange who publish similar secrets but against the will of those elites, with the goal and outcome of exposing (rather than obscuring) ruling class lies and impeding (rather than advancing) their agenda, will suffer the opposite fate as Woodward: they will endure every imaginable punishment, including indefinite imprisonment in maximum-security cells. That is because Woodward is a servant of power while Assange is a dissident against it.

All of this illustrates a vital truth. The real measure of how free is a society — from China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to France, Britain and the U.S. — is not how its mainstream, well-behaved ruling class servants are treated. Royal court vassals always end up fine: rewarded for their subservience and thus, convinced that freedoms abound, they redouble their fealty to prevailing status quo power structures. 

Whether a society is truly free is determined by how it treats its dissidents, those who live and speak and think outside of permissible lines, those who effectively subvert ruling class aims. If you want to know whether free speech is genuine or illusory, look not to the treatment of those who loyally serve establishment factions and vocally affirm their most sacred pieties, but to the fate of those who reside outside of those factions and work in opposition to them. If you want to know whether a free press is authentically guaranteed, look at the plight of those who publish secrets designed not to propagandize the population to venerate elites but, instead, those whose publications result in generating mass discontent against them.

That is what makes the ongoing imprisonment of Julian Assange not only a grotesque injustice but also a vital, crystal-clear prism for seeing the fundamental fraud of U.S. narratives about who is free and who is not, about where tyranny reigns and where it does not.

 

Read more:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-kafkaesque-imprisonment-of-julian

 

 

Read from top...

 

See also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMLWXsV0E-M

 

FREE ASSANGE, thank you vanessa...

One possibility that must be considered in the Julian Assange extradition case on Monday is a split decision in which Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser may decide to extradite Assange on one indictment but not on the other. For instance, she could rule, for argument’s sake, against extradition on the Espionage Act charges, but in favour of extradition on the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge (which carries a maximum five year sentence as opposed to 170 on espionage.)

 

By Alexander Mercouris


What would likely happen in that case is that the British authorities would accept Baraitser’s decision and would try to reach an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice whereby, in return for Assange’s extradition, the U.S. would commit itself to try Assange only on the computer intrusion charges, and not on the Espionage Act charges.


The British over the course of the negotiations would tell the U.S. that if the U.S. were not willing to give that commitment then the British would not be able to extradite Assange to the U.S.

Of course the British (if Assange were extradited to the U.S. on such a basis) would be in no position to compel the U.S. to abide by such a commitment if the U.S were to go back on it once Assange was on U.S. soil.

Since that has to be a very likely possibility, one would think it would be a point which Assange’s lawyers would make in the appeal they would be bound to make to the High Court against Baraitser’s decision.

In fact in such a scenario it’s not impossible that both sides would appeal to the High Court:

(1) the U.S. against Baraitser’s decision to refuse to extradite on the basis of the Espionage Act;

(2) Assange’s lawyers against Baraitser’s decision to extradite on the computer intrusion charges.

It would be a fascinating battle and it would be fascinating to see how it would play out.

Logically, the balance ought to tip in Assange’s favour since Baraitser would presumably have rejected extradition on the Espionage Act charges because they were not properly made out and because they were overtly political.

In light of that, would the High Court be prepared to allow Assange’s extradition on computer intrusion charges to a country which had tried unsuccessfully to bring overtly political charges against him which the lower Court had rejected?

Nothing is predictable in this case.

 

Read more:

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/01/02/what-would-happen-if-there-is-a-split-decision-in-the-assange-case/

 

Not really fascinating, Alexander, but odious, despicable and inhumane...  What is predictable is that whatever charge is used to send Assange to the US, he will suffer some more, stay in prison either in the US (were he could disappear) or in the UK should the case be appealed. His health could deteriorate beyond repair. The torture so far imposed by Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser on Julian is not British. Will she let him go? She should, otherwise she will gain a reputation as a barbaric arsehole, for all the technical legalese she could use, which isn't nice for a woman. 

 

The case should be dropped and Assange should be free. One should expect this from Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser.

vanessa baraitser may let him go...

For the past 10 years, Australian Julian Assange has been pursued by US authorities as an enemy of the state. He exposed their dark secrets. On January 4, London judge Vanessa Baraitser will announce her decision on whether the investigative journalist will be extradited to the US.

Assange is being held at the London maximum security prison Belmarsh — the UN special rapporteur on torture, Nilz Melzer, described it to DW as solitary confinement. Assange spent seven years claiming asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, now he faces the threat of spending the rest of his life behind American prison walls — under conditions Melzer describes as torture.

For German Green party member of parliament Margit Stumpp, the court case is an "acid test for the western community of values." Together with lawmakers from the Social Democrats, the conservative Christian Democrats, the socialist Left party, and the Free Democrats, Stumpp established the cross-party working group "Freedom for Julian Assange."Stumpp told DW that she sees "the rule of law being violated" in the extradition procedures. That started with the fact that she was unable to receive access to the court process as an observer. "I've often been to Turkey, and there I had no problems getting into the courtroom," Stumpp said, an unflattering comparison for the UK.


Good news for dictators?

In early November, BBC correspondent Orla Guerin confronted Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev with critical questions about press freedom in his country. Aliyev answered that in view of its treatment of Assange, the UK had no right to lecture other countries on matters of human rights and press freedom.

Nils Melzer is not only the UN special rapporteur on torture. He also teaches international law at the University of Glasgow and knows his way around British law. His verdict on how Julian Assange has been dealt with is damning. "The legal proceeding in itself is not respecting the basic standards of human rights, of due process and the rule of law." The motivation is obvious in the face of revelations of American "corruption and war crimes and other criminal conduct," said Melzer: "The United States is trying to criminalize investigative journalism ... And the British system, unfortunately, is in collusion with the United States." On December 21, Melzer appealed to US President Donald Trump to pardon Assange in his final days at the White House.

Human rights activists shocked

Reporters without Borders (RSF) has followed the proceedings closely — under "shocking circumstances," Christian Mihr told DW. The director of the Germany branch of the organization attended many days of the court proceedings in London and alleged that British authorities "attempted to systematically shut out international observers." Even video access, which was initially guaranteed, was withdrawn at short notice. The few observers who were granted access were not allowed in the courtroom itself; they had to monitor a glitchy video transmission from a separate room under extremely uncomfortable conditions, in cold temperatures. In the end, Reporters Without Borders was the only NGO present in court every day of the trial.

Regarding the testimony of the witnesses — most of whom were called up by the defense — RSF head Mihr said it was made clear not only that "this is a question of freedom of the press." It has also become clear that it is "a question of life or death for Julian Assange." Psychologists, psychotherapists, and even a psychiatrist for the prosecution spoke of a very problematic state of health for Assange. "There is an acute risk of suicide under the conditions of solitary confinement," said Mihr.

As for the verdict to be announced on January 4, Mihr holds little hope. "I've always said that this is a political process. That means there is political pressure. And that means — as sad, as tragic as that is — I won't be surprised if the court approves extradition."

Whatever the verdict, both parties have the option to appeal. After two possible higher courts in the UK, the extradition proceedings could end up before the European Court of Human Rights. The question of whether Julian Assange will be extradited to the US could therefore drag on for years.

This article was translated from German.

 

Read more:

https://www.dw.com/en/julian-assange-verdict-a-test-case-for-press-freedom/a-56099587

 

Note: the fate of Julian Assange should not be left to a single judge who has shown bias beforehand... One never knows: she might let Assange go free — as she should.

 

 

Read from top.

on the way to freedom, hopefully...

Assange has been awaiting a decision on the US extradition request at the UK's Belmarsh prison for over year and a half. Washington is seeking to prosecute the whistleblower on charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to WikiLeaks' release of Pentagon war logs and State Department cables.

UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser has ruled to reject the US request to extradite WikiLeaks founder and whistleblower Julian Assange. Baraitser indicated that extradition would have a harmful effect on Assange's mental health and said she ruled against the US request due to fears that the whistleblower has a high risk of committing suicide as a result.

"I rule it would be unjust to extradite Mr Assange. Faced with conditions of near total isolation […] I am satisfied that the procedures [outlined by US authorities] will not prevent Mr Assange from finding a way to commit suicide", the judge stated.

In the course of extradition hearings, several witnesses indicated that Assange's prison conditions put him at high risk for depression and suicide, and that these issues would likely worsen should the whistleblower be extradited to the US. Psychiatrist Michael Kopelman, who also testified in court, claimed that a razor blade was found hidden in Assange's cell, adding that his patient engaged in thinking about ways of ending his own life.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/science/202012241081560226-heres-what-the-vessel-dubbed-russias-ugliest-ship-by-us-media-can-do/

 

Thank you Vanessa...

the next steps...

Mexico’s president has offered asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, hours after a British judge refused to extradite Assange to the US to face espionage charges.

“Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance, I am in favor of pardoning him,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Monday, saying “we'll give him protection.”

“Our tradition is protection,” Obrador added.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/511512-mexico-offers-assange-asylum/

 

With Julia Assange being possibly released on bail sooner than later, one has to consider his protection from:

 

— himself, to satisfy the final reason why he is not extradited

 

— rogue elements and nutters such as those the like of whom have assassinated John Lennon and others

 

— he needs to be protected from any attempts from agents (CIA, MI6, Mossad, ASIO) to kidnap him or eliminate him in the style of the Skripals

 

— Assange needs care and medical attention

 

— Assange needs to be looked after by his loved ones - and have the opportunity to look after himself.

 

And please note that Mexico, despite the generous words of the new President has seen "more murders of journalists than of gangsters".

 

And the UK laws USED BY JUDGE BARAITSER need to be repealed as soon as possible and her judgement revised to offer protection to whistleblowers and journalists who reveal the misdeeds of governments.

 

 

supporting assange...

free assange today, mr biden...

a travesty of justice...
one wonders how they sleep at night while treating justice with such contempt...
an angel in hell on earth...
out of respect for spanish justice, not english mustard, nor US crap shoot...
‘blatant irrational behaviour’: beijing accuses australia of ‘harassing’ chinese journalists...
pilger on journalism and defending julian assange...
I’m going to take a very good look at it...
the US deep state is behind the steering wheel at google, facebook, youtube and most western media...
the baraitser circus, in which the only act is a caged lion named julian...
the thing we need to know but they don't want you to know: the truth...
in bad company...
simplified opinions, stupid politics, complex history, fooled journalists and the free media...
fading away before the skeleton arguments?...
the fluidity of disinterested "justice" in the magna carta country...
it's time for boris to stop listening to the rotten americans...
one never knows the end of stories...
the statue of liberty... and justice US/UK style...
the sins of western democracy...
the british justice is based on stinking arseholes in the UK and the US...
The conscience of the press...
as the singing budgie invites you to come and visit aussieland...
definitely unacceptable...
the brits are killing him…
interesting...
FREE ASSANGE...

 

These posts only from the past two years. More to read and remember on this site about Julian Assange coming next...