US authorities have told British judges that if they agree to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges, the WikiLeaks founder could serve any US prison sentence he receives in his native Australia.

In January, a lower British court refused a US request to extradite Assange over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret US military documents a decade ago.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that Assange, who has spent years in hiding and in British prisons as he fights extradition, was likely to take his own life if held under harsh US prison conditions.

 

Appealing against that decision at the High Court in London, a lawyer for the US government on Wednesday (local time) denied that Assange’s mental health was too fragile to withstand the US judicial system.

Lawyer James Lewis said Assange “has no history of serious and enduring mental illness” and did not meet the threshold of being so ill that he could not resist harming himself.

US prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison, although Mr Lewis said “the longest sentence ever imposed for this offence is 63 months”.

 

Read more: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2021/10/28/julian-assange-prison-australia/

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!! F**K THE PROSECUTORS....!!!!!

 

Lawyers for Julian Assange have argued promises by the US over its treatment of the WikiLeaks founder are not enough amid a bid to overturn the ban on his extradition.

Crowds of supporters gathered at the High Court in London on Thursday as the US continued its fight to extradite the Australian, wanted in America on allegations of a conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

 

Police stood guard at the main gates outside the court after they were closed off ahead of the hearing as dozens of supporters holding placards and chanting “free Julian Assange” out on the street. Later in the day, police confirmed one person had been arrested for obstruction of the highway after dozens of demonstrators blocked off the Strand.

 

Assange, 50, did not appear via video-link from Belmarsh Prison as proceedings continued at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Speaking outside the court, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Assange should be “hailed” as a truthteller and released from prison.

 

“He’s committed no crime, and he’s in a maximum security prison,” he said. “In a different country he would be hailed as a whistleblower who told the truth about the dangers we are all facing, the dangers the whole world is facing.”

 

In January, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled the Australian should not be sent to the US, citing a real risk of suicide. The judge concluded there was a real risk he would be subjected to “special administrative measures” (SAMs) and detained at the ADX Florence Supermax jail - a maximum security prison near Colorado - if extradited.

The US has since provided assurances, including that it would not impose SAMs on Assange or hold him at ADX Florence, and that it would consent to him being transferred to Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given.

 

Read more:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wikileaks-julian-assange-extradition-b1946934.html

 

This is US gross vengeance at work: Use the UK and the bad will of the present Australian government to destroy Assange with arguments that have nothing to do with the case, which is non-existent in a court of real justice... 

In regard to the safety of US prison system, we should mention the Epstein "suicide" which saved many RICH and POWERFUL people a lot of headaches...

ASSANGE did nothing that resemble this saga. Assange published the truth about the US hypocrisy and every President, including Joe Bullshit Biden, who keeps pursuing Assange — even with the grand hypocrisy of visiting the Pope, while committing a crime against Assange — is a double hypocrite of no moral fibre. 

Joe Bullshit Biden is worse than Trump, because Joe Bullshit Biden has surrounded himself with "morality" while Trump had none.

 

The UK justice system, if it has some real spine, has to apply the Magna Carta spirit: The king (US empire) has to be stopped from doing what it is doing to Assange in the name of justice and truth. Anything else would be a travesty of bullshit lawyering...

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.

STOP THIS CIRCUS OF US VENGEANCE.

LET THE TRUTH BE !

Note to the USA: Clean your spirit from your ugly desire to destroy ASSANGE and let your own heart be free...

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

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

The Democratic representative slammed what she referred to as the “increasingly authoritarian Biden-Garland administration,” dodging any mention of Vice President Kamala Harris in favor of Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The increasingly authoritarian Biden/Garland administration is doubling down on its crusade against our constitutionally protected rights of freedom of speech, assembly, etc. by continuing its vindictive… pic.twitter.com/yjIBqcjdnO

— Tulsi Gabbard @TulsiGabbard) October 28, 2021

Gabbard’s dislike of the VP is well known and her debate-stage takedown of Harris’ controversial record as attorney general of California is pointed to by some as the moment the senator's own presidential campaign went up in flames.

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

The clip came just a day after prosecutors issued a series of “binding” assurances aimed at defusing concerns over the WikiLeaks publisher’s mental health were he to end up in a US prison. Assange’s attorneys have said they fear he might commit suicide if extradited to the US, where he faces a sentence of up to 175 years in jail on charges related to obtaining and publishing classified government and military documents. 

A group of civil-liberties campaigners co-signed a letter earlier this month urging Garland to drop the charges against Assange as the US’ efforts to extradite him continue. While UK judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled in January that the publisher could not be extradited due to concerns regarding his mental health, Washington on Wednesday put forth a number of conditions apparently aimed at assuaging such concerns. 

 

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/538759-tulsi-gabbard-assange-extradition/

By Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz

 

The first day of the US appeal in the Julian Assange extradition case saw grown adults arguing in court that the US government could guarantee that it wouldn’t treat the WikiLeaks founder as cruelly as it treats other prisoners.

I wish I was kidding.

In their write-up on Wednesday’s proceedings, The Dissenter’s Kevin Gosztola and Mohamed Elmaazi report that the prosecution argued that “the High Court should accept the appeal on the basis that the U.S. government offered ‘assurances’ that Assange won’t be subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) or incarcerated in ADX Florence, a super-maximum prison in Colorado.”

What this means is that in order to overturn the January extradition ruling which judge Vanessa Baraitser denied on the basis that the notoriously draconian US prison system is too cruel to guarantee Assange’s health and safety, the prosecution has established as one of their grounds for appeal the claim that they can offer “assurances” that they would not inflict some of their most brutal measures upon him. These would include the aforementioned Special Administrative Measures, wherein prisoners are so isolated that they effectively disappear off the face of the earth, or sending him to ADX Florence, where all prisoners are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day.

Prosecution bashes judge for blocking Julian Assange’s extraditionMy latest w/ @kgosztola via The Dissenterhttps://t.co/aQHZ4dVTyO

— Mohamed Elmaazi (@MElmaazi) October 27, 2021

 

What’s ridiculous about these “assurances,” apart from the obvious, is that within its own legal argument the US government reserves the right to reverse those assurances at any time and impose SAMs or maximum security imprisonment upon Assange if it deems them necessary. As Amnesty International explains:

 

They say: we guarantee that he won’t be held in a maximum security facility and he will not be subjected to Special Administrative Measures and he will get healthcare. But if he does something that we don’t like, we reserve the right to not guarantee him, we reserve the right to put him in a maximum security facility, we reserve the right to offer him Special Administrative Measures. Those are not assurances at all. It is not that difficult to look at those assurances and say: these are inherently unreliable, it promises to do something and then reserves the right to break the promise.

 

So the prosecution’s legal argument here is essentially “We promise we won’t treat Assange as cruelly as we treat our other prisoners, unless we decide we really want to.”

This is not just a reflection on the weakness of the extradition appeal, it’s a reflection on the savagery of all the so-called free democracies that have involved themselves in this case.

This argument made minutes after Assange had to excuse himself from his own hearing due to ill health. https://t.co/V4Z9z19n9b

— Caitlin Johnstone  (@caitoz) October 27, 2021

 

This same prosecution argued that Assange should not be denied US extradition from the UK on humanitarian grounds as in the case of activist Lauri Love, because Love suffered from both physical and psychological ailments while Assange’s ailments are only psychological. They stood before the court and made this argument even as Assange was visibly pained and unwell in his video appearance from Belmarsh Prison, which he was only able to attend intermittently due to his frail condition.

“For my newspaper, I have worked as media partner of WikiLeaks since 2009,” tweeted journalist Stefania Maurizi who attended the hearing via video link. “I have seen Julian Assange in all sorts of situations, but I have never ever seen him so unwell and so dangerously thin.”

So they’re just openly brutalizing a journalist for exposing US war crimes, while arguing that they can be trusted to treat him humanely and give him a fair trial if granted extradition. This after it has already been confirmed that the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate him during the Trump administration, after we learned that the prosecution relied on false testimony from a convicted child molester and diagnosed sociopath, after it was revealed that the CIA spied on Assange and his lawyers in the Ecuadorian embassy, and after intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein famously died under highly suspicious circumstances in a US prison cell.

The worst atrocities in history have all been legal. All the worst examples of genocide, slavery, tyranny and bloodshed have been allowed or actively facilitated by the state. The persecution of Assange is geared toward entering the imprisonment of journalists into this category.

#Assange Lawyer in Fiery Rebuttal at Day’s Conclusion https://t.co/YnDrm8JQsm

— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) October 27, 2021

 

The goal is to set a legal precedent which allows journalists who expose the crimes of the powerful to be persecuted not covertly as is normally done in ‘free democracies,’ but right out in the open. To tell journalists “We’ll just throw you in prison if you cross us.”

What makes this precedent uniquely dangerous is that it is not just threatening to imprison American journalists who expose US crimes, but any journalist anywhere in the world. This is an Australian journalist in the process of being extradited from the UK for publishing facts about US war crimes in the nations it has invaded. The aim is to set up a system where anyone in the US-aligned world can be funneled into its prison system for publishing inconvenient facts.

This is the savagery of the Western world at its most transparent. It’s not the greatest evil the US-centralized empire has perpetrated; that distinction would certainly be reserved for its acts of mass military slaughter that it has been inflicting upon our species with impunity for generations. But it’s the most brazen. The most overt. It’s the most powerful part of the most depraved power structure on earth looking us all right in the eyes and telling us exactly what it is.

And if we can really look at this beast and what it is doing right now, really see it with eyes wide open, it reveals far more about those who rule over us than anything any journalist has ever exposed.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/538713-us-appeal-of-the-julian-assange/

 

 

FREE ASSANGE TODAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

Julian Assange will soon find out whether he will be granted a final appeal in the UK in his fight against extradition to the US. He may soon be on a plane to the US where he will face the full wrath of US vengeance and cruelty. The all-rights-reserved-to-revoke ‘assurances’ provided by the US fail to mitigate a new risk factor in Assange’s health, as the charade of the Rule of Law his own government has genuflected to throughout, nears its conclusion.

On the Acceptance of the US Assurances and their reliability

In Julian Assange’s extradition case, Judge Venessa Baraitser determined he would not survive imprisonment in a US Supermax facility – that he is very likely to commit suicide.

One of the final witnesses in the 4 week extradition trial was an American lawyer whose client Abu Hamsa was held in ADX Colorado where Julian is likely to be sent. Abu Hamsa has no hands. He was extradited from the UK following assurances by the US that the prison system was able to deal with the special requirements of such a prisoner. His lawyer testified that despite assurances he would not be placed in total isolation, that is indeed where he was kept, under Special Administrative Measures, and the US had also failed to delivered on other undertakings to protect his human rights – he did not have a toilet in his cell he could operate – he was stripped of all dignity, contrary to guarantees.

In the case of David Mendoza Herrera, the Spanish government successfully pursued the return of their citizen who was extradited to the US following assurances the US reneged on – a process that took many years while the prisoner attempted first to seek redress in the US but ultimately only succeeded after suing the Spanish government for failing to protect his rights. It was forced to act after the Spanish Supreme Court virtually threatened to suspend the Spain-Us Extradition Treaty.

The assurances provided by the US in their 2021 High Court Appeal of the District Court’s decision in Assange’s case were not tested in Court. They were automatically accepted, a judge expressing complete confidence in the reliability of a guarantee from the United States Government, and differentiating between the guarantee of a State and that provided by a Diplomat. (Whilst a Diplomat’s assurance may involve a different signature at the bottom of the page, surely it appears there only after the boss’s approval, but evidently this makes a difference).

Significantly however, the assurances were also conditional – they could be revoked at any time, so not worth the paper they were written on, no matter who signed them.

Since that decision was handed down though, the UK Supreme Court has delivered a landmark ruling in a case where the UK government had accepted assurances provided by a foreign government (Rwanda). It determined that such assurances cannot be automatically accepted – that there is a requirement for ‘meaningful, independent, evidence- based judicial review focusing on the protection of human rights on the ground in that country’. In Julian’s case, it is the human rights of national security prisoners in the US, their treatment and the conditions in which they are kept.

The UN considers solitary confinement beyond 2 weeks as torture – Special Rapporteurs have been arguing this for decades. In condemning the treatment of Chelsea Manning in a US prison, then Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez said

‘Prolonged solitary confinement raises special concerns, because the risk of grave and irreparable harm to the detained person increases with the length of isolation and the uncertainty regarding its duration. I have defined prolonged solitary confinement as any period in excess of 15 days. This definition reflects the fact that most of the scientific literature shows that, after 15 days, certain changes in brain functions occur and the harmful psychological effects of isolation can become irreversible.’

Abu Hamsa has been in solitary confinement for 9 years. His lawyer testified walking was too painful for him because his toe nails were so long, and his pleas for them to be cut were ignored.

Significant recent changes in Assange’s health

The automatic acceptance and reliability of the assurances were not the only problem at that time.

A serious problem that arose during that hearing was its failure to note or take into account the change in Julian’s medical condition. It is a critical failure because the decision delivered was based on assurances the US prison system could mitigate against his known risk factors – the risk he would commit suicide. But he had developed another serious physical risk factor.

After the 4 week Extradition hearing in the lower court where Assange appeared boxed in a glass booth at the back of the court where he was prevented from communicating with his lawyers, he was permitted to appear via videolink from Belmarsh at subsequent substantive hearings.

At the start of the US Appeal there was a brief pre-hearing chat between Assange’s lawyer and the judge to the effect that the defendant has elected not to appear due to an increase in medication.

It was extraordinary and inconceivable he would choose not to observe the hearing via videolink. Indeed I was later informed by his wife Stella he had wanted to appear but had not been permitted to by the prison.

Both his absence and the explanation flagged a problem.

Assange had not missed a single hearing. He had shown great determination in his struggle to engage with the drama unfolding in court despite enormous challenges such as not being able to attract his lawyers’ attention (after being denied the tools and time to prepare for his own defence), and in spite of medication and a dramatic deterioration in his health as was so throughly documented by UN Rapporteur Nils Melzer in his book The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution

Why was he so heavily medicated so as not to be able to sit in the videolink room at Belmarsh ? What had necessitated this increase in medication? This question was directly pertinent to the decision the court had to make, but I heard no question from the judge about it and the hearing proceeded.

Then, remarkably, some time into the hearing, Julian appeared.

We journalists observing via a link could see him in a window on our screens. He would have been able to see and hear the judge, and those in the courtroom would be able to see him on a monitor as we could.

He looked mighty unwell, not only drugged. He had to use his arm to prop up his head but one side of his face was noticeably drooping and one eye was shut.

During these hearings we were given very occasional, brief glimpses of the defendant – time enough to note he is still observing his own legal proceeding, be it in a depersoned way. I asked the video link host on the chat facility to show us more of the defendant – we needed a better and more frequent look at him as he looked unwell. Journalists are warned when we join the videolink that using the chat facility for anything other than communicating about technical issues and only with the host (hearings were frequently hamstrung by audio problems) could result in access being withdrawn. But many of the other 30 or so journalists on the link were sending Me Too messages on the Chat. Remarkably and to my relief the host obliged & we were shown Julian more often and for longer than in any previous hearings.

So after the bizarre news J was not going to attend his own hearing, the second thing I could not understand is that given his condition when he did appear, there were no questions or adjournment. Those deciding his fate were not perturbed by his state, or had failed to notice what was immediately evident to us.

Julian persisted in his attempt to focus, but he was clearly severely hampered. He eventually gave up, stood up & moved away from the monitor camera. It was as if he could no longer abide the humiliation of being scrutinised by people unknown, witnesses to a feeble, failed attempt to command his body and mind, a mind that has been razor sharp and never before let him down.

The public learnt some 9 weeks later, and days after the judgement came down clearing the way for Julian’s extradition, that he in fact had had a TIA – a Transient Ischaemic Attack or minor Stroke – often a precursor to a major, catastrophic one when prompt access to an MRI machine would be vital if his life was to be saved.

I don’t know whether it is known, exactly when Julian had the stroke. The monitoring of prisoners is not exactly tailored to pick up and quickly respond to such silent stealthy symptoms. Did the stroke occur before the hearing? Was that why he was so heavily medicated? Or did it occur at the time of the hearing?

One thing is clear – he has had a stoke, so his condition has changed, and the assurances accepted took no account of this, though the Court’s decision was handed down long after he had the stroke and around the same time it was finally diagnosed and made public.

One of the two Justices presiding over the US Appeal, Ian Duncan Burnett, was the Chief Justice of the High Court at the time. His decision in the case of UK citizen Laurie Love set a precedent where extradition to the US was denied on the basis of a medical condition.

This engendered a little hope that he may not reverse the District Court’s decision in Julian’s case. But as Law Professor Nils Melzer remarked, you don’t need the Chief Justice on a case where he has already set a precedent that can be followed. However you do need him if his precedent is to be overturned.

Throughout the hearing, the Love decision loomed large in our minds and Love was present in Court, but we realised this potential pathway was a dead end when it was finally raised by Julian’s lawyers.

The Chief Justice responded swiftly, dismissively and categorically: ‘Oh but that was an entirely different case. He had eczema.’ (Verbatim to my memory)

So the difference between being extradited or not, was eczema, and there would be no joy for Julian in this court despite the marked deterioration in his physical and psychological health.

Julian sought leave to appeal the decision of the High Court, in the Supreme Court, but that Supreme Court’s determination was that there were no arguable points of law to form a basis for an Appeal.

The upcoming hearing

Over 2 days on February 20-21, a panel of 2 High Court judges will rule on whether Julian can appeal both the Secretary of State’s decision to extradite him and Judge Baraitser’s decision on the basis of the all grounds he argued which she knocked back, such as the political nature of the prosecution and the impossibility of a fair trial for him in the US.

The reliability and adequacy of the US assurances that he will not be held in a super max prison, nor under S.A.M.S., that his suicide can be prevented, that he would be returned to Australia to serve out his sentence at some point, have not been tested in court, and now the medical condition for which they were furnished has changed. And in the meantime there has been a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court in another case, regarding the necessity for judicial review of foreign govt assurances.

A letter very early this year to the UK Home Secretary from a cross party group of our Parliamentarians is an important and timely one, requesting he “undertake an urgent, thorough and independent assessment of the risks to Mr Assange’s health and welfare in the event he is extradited to the United States.”

Assange has made an application to attend this month’s hearing in person so he can communicate with his legal team.

The judges may make an immediate decision at the conclusion of the two-day hearing or reserve their judgement.

If Assange wins this case, a date will be set for a full Appeal hearing.

If he is denied the right to appeal there are no further appeal avenues at the domestic level.

He can then apply to the European Court of Human Rights, which has the power to order a stay on his extradition – a Rule 39 Instruction, which is only given in “exceptional circumstances”. It may however be a race to lodge the Appeal before he is bundled off on a plane to the US.

If Julian Assange is extradited and the US is successful in prosecuting him though he will not receive a fair trial there & unlikely to receive the constitutional protection afforded to its own citizens, the US will have redefined in law, investigative journalism as ‘espionage’.

It will demonstrated US domestic laws but not protections, apply internationally to non US citizens.

It will have cost Assange his freedom & likely his life – an example to anyone who attempts to discredit the state sanctioned narrative. A narrative that has been shattered by independent and citizen journalists in Gaza – explosively, daily, globally, and irrevocably.

https://johnmenadue.com/assanges-very-life-at-stakepic-mary-youtube/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOWWWWWWWWWW....................

 

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