Julian Assange Lawyer: What’s at Stake in Extradition Case Is Freedom of the Press

by | Mar 2, 2020 | Assange | 0 comments

British Judge Vanessa Baraitser has suspended the extradition hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange until mid-May. This comes after four days of intense deliberations last week between Assange’s legal team and attorneys representing the United States government. Assange faces 18 charges of attempted hacking and breaches of the Espionage Act for his role in publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison. Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh prison since last April, when he was removed from the embassy by British police. We speak with Jennifer Robinson, a human rights attorney who has been advising Julian Assange and WikiLeaks since 2010.

López Obrador pide la liberación de Assange para que “no se le siga torturando”

by | Ene 3, 2020 | Assange | 0 comments

El presidente de México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, pidió este viernes la liberación de Julian Assange, fundador de WikiLeaks, al considerar que los cables que dio a conocer la organización revelaron la “naturaleza autoritaria” del sistema político mundial.

Al ser cuestionado sobre la situación de Assange durante su habitual conferencia de prensa matutina, López Obrador manifestó su solidaridad con el activista y pidió “que se le perdone y se le deje en libertad”.

“No sé si él ha reconocido que actuó en contra de normas y de un sistema político, pero en su momento estos cables mostraron cómo funciona el sistema mundial en su naturaleza autoritaria“, dijo el mandatario mexicano, quien agregó su deseo de que a Assange “no se le siga torturando”.

“Estoy muriendo lentamente aquí”: Assange logra hablar con un amigo desde la prisión Belmarsh

Al sostener un libro donde se publicaron las filtraciones divulgadas por WikiLeaks, López Obrador señaló: “aquí hay cables que se dieron a conocer cuando nosotros estábamos en la oposición y hablaban de nuestra lucha, y puedo probar que son ciertos, es decir, que lo que aquí se expresa obedece a la realidad de ese entonces, de relaciones ilegales, de actuaciones ilegítimas, violatorias de la soberanía, contrarias a la democracia, lo que aquí se expresa”.

En días recientes, el relator especial sobre tortura de Naciones Unidas, Nils Melzer, denunció que Assange está siendo sometido a torturas psicológicas, que representan un peligro para su vida.

Por ello, López Obrador consideró que la liberación del activista  “va a ser una causa muy justa en favor de los derechos humanos “. “No puede darle uno la espalda a los dolores de la humanidad. No puede uno aplicar la política avestruz, de meter la cabeza en la arena. Tiene uno que expresarse”, agregó.

“No puedo opinar” sobre crisis en Irak

La respuesta dio pie a que los periodistas le consultaran al mandatario mexicano sobre el bombardeo de EE.UU. en Irak, que provocó la muerte del máximo general de Irán, Qassem Soleimani, en un hecho que ha encendido señales de alerta en el mundo ante la posibilidad de una nueva guerra en Medio Oriente. Sin embargo, López Obrador se negó a hacer un comentario.

“No me meto en eso, eso tiene que ver con política exterior, no puedo opinar sobre eso”, dijo López Obrador, quien justificó su postura en función de lo establecido en la Constitución mexicana.

The 7 years of lies about Assange won’t stop now

by | Abr 21, 2019 | Assange | 0 comments

11 April 2019

For seven years, from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations.

For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and “experts” telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law. Barely a “mainstream” voice was raised in his defence in all that time.

From the moment he sought asylum, Assange was cast as an outlaw. His work as the founder of Wikileaks – a digital platform that for the first time in history gave ordinary people a glimpse into the darkest recesses of the most secure vaults in the deepest of Deep States – was erased from the record.

Assange was reduced from one of the few towering figures of our time – a man who will have a central place in history books, if we as a species live long enough to write those books – to nothing more than a sex pest, and a scruffy bail-skipper.

The political and media class crafted a narrative of half-truths about the sex charges Assange was under investigation for in Sweden. They overlooked the fact that Assange had been allowed to leave Sweden by the original investigator, who dropped the inquiry, only for it to be revived by another investigator with a well-documented political agenda.

They failed to mention that Assange was always willing to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London, as had occurred in dozens of other cases involving extradition proceedings to Sweden. It was almost as if Swedish officials did not want to test the evidence they claimed to have in their possession.

The media and political courtiers endlessly emphasised Assange’s bail violation in the UK, ignoring the fact that asylum seekers fleeing legal and political persecution don’t usually honour bail conditions imposed by the very state authorites from which they are seeking asylum.

The political and media establishment ignored the mounting evidence of a secret grand jury in Virginia formulating charges against Assange, and ridiculed Wikileaks’ concerns that the Swedish case might be cover for a more sinister attempt by the US to extradite Assange and lock him away in a high-security prison, as had happened to whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

They belittled the 2016 verdict of a panel of United Nations legal scholars that the UK was “arbitrarily detaining” Assange. The media were more interested in the welfare of his cat.

They ignored the fact that after Ecuador changed presidents – with the new one keen to win favour with Washington – Assange was placed under more and more severe forms of solitary confinement. He was denied access to visitors and basic means of communications, violating both his asylum status and his human rights, and threatening his mental and physical wellbeing.

Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador, as well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy, using his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No “mainstream” journalist or politician thought this significant either.

They turned a blind eye to the news that, after refusing to question Assange in the UK, Swedish prosecutors had decided to quietly drop the case against him in 2015. Sweden had kept the decision under wraps for more than two years.

It was a freedom of information request by an ally of Assange, not a media outlet, that unearthed documents showing that Swedish investigators had, in fact, wanted to drop the case against Assange back in 2013. The UK, however, insisted that they carry on with the charade so that Assange could remain locked up. A British official emailed the Swedes: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

Most of the other documents relating to these conversations were unavailable. They had been destroyed by the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service in violation of protocol. But no one in the political and media establishment cared, of course.

Similarly, they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in the embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a case to answer in Sweden. They told us – apparently in all seriousness – that he had to be arrested for his bail infraction, something that would normally be dealt with by a fine.

And possibly most egregiously of all, most of the media refused to acknowledge that Assange was a journalist and publisher, even though by failing to do so they exposed themselves to the future use of the same draconian sanctions should they or their publications ever need to be silenced. They signed off on the right of the US authorities to seize any foreign journalist, anywhere in the world, and lock him or her out of sight. They opened the door to a new, special form of rendition for journalists.

This was never about Sweden or bail violations, or even about the discredited Russiagate narrative, as anyone who was paying the vaguest attention should have been able to work out. It was about the US Deep State doing everything in its power to crush Wikileaks and make an example of its founder.

It was about making sure there would never again be a leak like that of Collateral Murder, the military video released by Wikileaks in 2007 that showed US soldiers celebrating as they murdered Iraqi civilians. It was about making sure there would never again be a dump of US diplomatic cables, like those released in 2010 that revealed the secret machinations of the US empire to dominate the planet whatever the cost in human rights violations.

Now the pretence is over. The British police invaded the diplomatic territory of Ecuador – invited in by Ecuador after it tore up Assange’s asylum status – to smuggle him off to jail. Two vassal states cooperating to do the bidding of the US empire. The arrest was not to help two women in Sweden or to enforce a minor bail infraction.

No, the British authorities were acting on an extradition warrant from the US. And the charges the US authorities have concocted relate to Wikileaks’ earliest work exposing the US military’s war crimes in Iraq – the stuff that we all once agreed was in the public interest, that British and US media clamoured to publish themselves.

Still the media and political class is turning a blind eye. Where is the outrage at the lies we have been served up for these past seven years? Where is the contrition at having been gulled for so long? Where is the fury at the most basic press freedom – the right to publish – being trashed to silence Assange? Where is the willingness finally to speak up in Assange’s defence?

It’s not there. There will be no indignation at the BBC, or the Guardian, or CNN. Just curious, impassive – even gently mocking – reporting of Assange’s fate.

And that is because these journalists, politicians and experts never really believed anything they said. They knew all along that the US wanted to silence Assange and to crush Wikileaks. They knew that all along and they didn’t care. In fact, they happily conspired in paving the way for today’s kidnapping of Assange.

They did so because they are not there to represent the truth, or to stand up for ordinary people, or to protect a free press, or even to enforce the rule of law. They don’t care about any of that. They are there to protect their careers, and the system that rewards them with money and influence. They don’t want an upstart like Assange kicking over their applecart.

Now they will spin us a whole new set of deceptions and distractions about Assange to keep us anaesthetised, to keep us from being incensed as our rights are whittled away, and to prevent us from realising that Assange’s rights and our own are indivisible. We stand or fall together.

No one pays me to write these blog posts. If you appreciated it, or any of the others, please consider hitting the donate button in the right-hand margin (computer) or below (phone).Julian Assange, media criticism

The assassination of Julian Assange

by | Abr 21, 2019 | Assange | 0 comments

“We Steal Secrets”: A masterclass in propaganda

The film’s contention is that Assange is a natural-born egotist and, however noble his initial project, Wikileaks ended up not only feeding his vanity but also accentuating in him the very qualities — secretiveness, manipulativeness, dishonesty and a hunger for power — he so despises in the global forces he has taken on.

This could have made for an intriguing, and possibly plausible, thesis had Gibney approached the subject-matter more honestly and fairly. But two major flaws discredit the whole enterprise.

The first is that he grievously misrepresents the facts in the Swedish case against Assange of rape and sexual molestation to the point that his motives in making the film are brought into question.

To shore up his central argument about Assange’s moral failings, he needs to make a persuasive case that these defects are not only discernible in Assange’s public work but in his private life too.

We thus get an extremely partial account of what occurred in Sweden, mostly through the eyes of A, one of his two accusers. She is interviewed in heavy disguise.

Gibney avoids referring to significant aspects of the case that would have cast doubt in the audience’s mind about A and her testimony. He does not, for example, mention that A refused on Assange’s behalf offers made by her friends at a dinner party to put up the Wikileaks leader in their home — a short time after she says the sexual assault took place.

The film also ignores the prior close relationship between A and the police interviewer and its possible bearing on the fact that the other complainant, S, refused to sign her police statement, suggesting that she did not believe it represented her view of what had happened.

But the most damning evidence against Gibney is his focus on a torn condom submitted by A to the police, unquestioningly accepting its significance as proof of the assault. The film repeatedly shows a black and white image of the damaged prophylactic.

Gibney even allows a theory establishing a central personality flaw in Assange to be built around the condom. According to this view, Assange tore it because, imprisoned in his digital world, he wanted to spawn flesh-and-blood babies to give his life more concrete and permanent meaning.

The problem is that investigators have admitted that no DNA from Assange was found on the condom. In fact, A’s DNA was not found on it either. The condom, far from making A a more credible witness, suggests that she may have planted evidence to bolster a case so weak that the original prosecutors dropped it.

There is no way Gibney could not have known these well-publicised concerns about the condom. So the question is why would he choose to mislead the audience?

Without A, the film’s case against Assange relates solely to his struggle through Wikileaks to release secrets from the inner sanctums of the US security state. And this is where the film’s second major flaw reveals itself.

Gibney is careful to bring up most of the major issues concerning Assange and Wikileaks, making it harder to accuse him of distorting the record. Outside the rape allegations, however, his dishonesty relates not to an avoidance of facts and evidence but to his choice of emphasis.

The job of a good documentarist is to weigh the available material and then present as honest a record of what it reveals as is possible. Anything less is at best polemic, if it sides with those who are silenced and weak, and at worst propaganda, if it sides with those who wield power.

Gibney’s film treats Assange as if he and the US corporate-military behemoth were engaged in a simple game of cat and mouse, two players trying to outsmart each other. He offers little sense of the vast forces ranged against Assange and Wikileaks.

The Swedish allegations are viewed only in so far as they question Assange’s moral character. No serious effort is made to highlight the enormous resources the US security state has been marshalling to shape public opinion, most notably through the media. The hate campaign against Assange, and the Swedish affair’s role in stoking it, are ignored.

None of this is too surprising. Were Gibney to have highlighted Washington’s efforts to demonise Assange it might have hinted to us, his audience, Gibney’s own place in supporting this matrix of misinformation.

This is a shame because there is probably a good case to make that anyone who takes on the might of the modern surveillance and security empire the US has become must to some degree mirror its moral failings.

How is it possible to remain transparent, open, honest — even sane — when every electronic device you possess is probably bugged, when your every move is recorded, when your loved ones are under threat, when the best legal minds are plotting your downfall, when your words are distorted and spun by the media to turn you into an official enemy?

Assange is not alone in this plight. Bradley Manning, the source of Wikileaks’ most important disclosures, necessarily lied to his superiors in the military and used subterfuge to get hold of the secret documents that revealed to us the horrors being unleashed in Iraq and Afghanistan in our names.

Since he was caught, he has faced torture in jail and is currently in the midst of a show trial.

Another of the great whistleblowers of the age, Edward Snowden, was no more honest with his employers, contractors for the US surveillance state, as he accumulated more and more incriminating evidence of the illegal spying operations undertaken by the National Security Agency and others.

Now he is holed up in a Russian airport trying to find an escape from permanent incarceration or death. Should he succeed, as he did earlier in fleeing Hong Kong, it will probably be because of secrecy and deceit.

This documentary could have been a fascinating study of the moral quandaries faced by whistleblowers in the age of the surveillance super-state. Instead Gibney chose the easy course and made a film that sides with the problem rather than the solution.film review, media criticism

Siete años de mentiras sobre Assange no van a parar ahora

by | Abr 21, 2019 | Assange | 0 comments

Durante siete años, desde el momento en que Julian Assange buscó refugio por primera vez en la embajada ecuatoriana en Londres, se nos ha venido diciendo que estábamos equivocados y que éramos los teóricos de una conspiración paranoide. Se nos ha venido diciendo que no había ninguna amenaza real de extradición de Assange a Estados Unidos y que todo estaba en nuestra febril imaginación.

Durante siete años, hemos tenido que escuchar a un coro de periodistas, políticos y “expertos” diciéndonos que Assange no era más que un fugitivo de la justicia, y que podía confiarse en que los sistemas legales británico y sueco abordarían su caso en pleno cumplimiento de la ley. En todo ese tiempo, apenas alguna voz de los medios “convencionales” se levantó en su defensa.

Desde el momento en que buscó asilo, Assange fue considerado un proscrito. Su trabajo como fundador de WikiLeaks -una plataforma digital que, por primera vez en la historia, permitió que la gente común y corriente vislumbrara los rincones más oscuros de las criptas más seguras en lo más hondo del Estado profundo- desapareció de los registros.

Assange quedó reducido de una de las pocas figuras imponentes de nuestro tiempo -un hombre que ocupará un lugar central en los libros de historia si nosotros, como especie, vivimos lo suficiente como para escribir esos libros- a nada más que una alimaña sexual y un desaliñado fugitivo de la justicia.

La clase política y mediática elaboró ​​una narrativa de verdades a medias sobre los cargos sexuales por los que Assange estaba bajo investigación en Suecia. Pasaron por alto el hecho de que el investigador original le había permitido a Assange salir de Suecia y que decidió abandonar la investigación solo para que otro investigador la recuperara con una agenda política bien documentada.

No mencionaron que Assange estuvo siempre dispuesto a que los fiscales suecos le interrogaran en Londres, como había ocurrido en docenas de casos relacionados con procedimientos de extradición a Suecia. Era casi como si los funcionarios suecos no quisieran confirmar las pruebas que afirmaban tener en su poder.

Los medios de comunicación y los cortesanos políticos hicieron incansablemente hincapié en la violación de la fianza de Assange en el Reino Unido, ignorando el hecho de que los solicitantes de asilo que huyen de la persecución legal y política no respetan por lo general las condiciones de la fianza impuestas por las mismas autoridades estatales de las que están solicitando asilo.

El establishment político y el de los medios de comunicación ignoraron la creciente evidencia de que un gran jurado secreto en Virginia había formulado cargos contra Assange, y ridiculizaron las preocupaciones de WikiLeaks de que el caso sueco podría encubrir un intento más siniestro por parte de EE. UU. para extraditar a Assange y encerrarlo en una prisión de alta seguridad, como le había ocurrido a la denunciante Chelsea Manning.

Menospreciaron asimismo el veredicto de 2016 de un panel de expertos en derecho de las Naciones Unidas de que el Reino Unido estaba “deteniendo arbitrariamente” a Assange. Los medios de comunicación se mostraron más interesados por el bienestar de su gato.

Ignoraron el hecho de que después de que Ecuador cambiara de presidente –con el nuevo bien dispuesto a ganarse el favor de Washington-, Assange fue sometido a formas cada vez más severas de confinamiento solitario. Se le negó el acceso a los visitantes y a medios básicos de comunicación, violando su estatus de asilo, sus derechos humanos y amenazando su bienestar mental y físico.

Igualmente, ignoraron el hecho de que Ecuador le había otorgado a Assange estatus diplomático, así como la ciudadanía ecuatoriana. Gran Bretaña estaba obligada a permitirle salir de la embajada, haciendo uso de su inmunidad diplomática, para viajar sin obstáculos a Ecuador. Ningún político de un partido o periodista “mayoritarios” tampoco pensó que eso fuera significativo.

Hicieron la vista gorda ante la noticia de que, después de negarse a interrogar a Assange en el Reino Unido, los fiscales suecos habían decidido abandonar calladamente el caso en su contra en 2015. En Suecia, la decisión se mantuvo en secreto durante más de dos años.

Fue una solicitud de libertad de información por parte de un aliado de Assange, no de un medio de comunicación, lo que desenterró documentos que mostraban que los investigadores suecos habían querido, de hecho, abandonar el caso contra Assange en 2013. Sin embargo, el Reino Unido insistió en que continuaran con la farsa para que Assange pudiera permanecer encerrado. Un funcionario británico les envió un correo electrónico a los suecos en estos términos: “¡¡¡No se atrevan a echarse atrás!!!”

No se dispone de la mayor parte de los documentos relacionados con estas conversaciones. Fueron destruidos por el Servicio de la Fiscalía de la Corona del Reino Unido en violación del protocolo. Pero, por supuesto, a nadie en el establishment político y mediático pareció importarle.

Del mismo modo, ignoraron el hecho de que Assange se vio obligado a refugiarse durante años en la embajada bajo la forma más intensa de arresto domiciliario, a pesar de que ya no tenía que responder a ningún caso en Suecia. Nos dijeron -aparentemente con toda seriedad- que había que arrestarle por haber infringido la fianza, algo que normalmente se solucionaría con una multa.

Y posiblemente, lo más grave de todo sea que la mayoría de los medios se negaron a reconocer que Assange era periodista y editor, aunque al no hacerlo se exponían ellos mismos al futuro uso de las mismas sanciones draconianas en caso de que ellos o sus publicaciones tuvieran que ser silenciados. Por tanto, reconocieron que las autoridades estadounidenses tenían derecho a capturar a cualquier periodista extranjero en cualquier parte del mundo y encerrarlo fuera de la vista de todos. Abrieron la puerta a una nueva forma especial de entrega extraordinaria para periodistas.

Esto nunca tuvo que ver con Suecia o con violaciones de fianza, ni siquiera sobre la desacreditada narrativa del Russiagate, ya que cualquiera que prestara la más mínima atención habría podido resolverlo. Se trataba de que el Estado profundo estadounidense hiciera todo lo posible para aplastar a WikiLeaks y dar un escarmiento a su fundador.

Se trataba de asegurar que nunca más volvería a haber una filtración como la del asesinato colateral, el video del ejército publicado por WikiLeaks en 2007 que mostraba a soldados estadounidenses jaleando y celebrando mientras asesinaban a civiles iraquíes. Se trataba de asegurar que nunca volvería a haber un volcado de cables diplomáticos estadounidenses, como los publicados en 2010 que revelaron las maquinaciones secretas del imperio estadounidense para dominar el planeta a cualquier coste en violaciones de derechos humanos.

Ahora los pretextos se acabaron. La policía británica invadió el territorio diplomático de Ecuador -a invitación de este país tras romper el estatus de asilo de Assange- para trasladarlo ilegalmente a la cárcel. Dos Estados vasallos cooperan para cumplir con las órdenes del imperio estadounidense. El arresto no tuvo nada que ver con ayudar a dos mujeres en Suecia ni con aplicar una infracción a una violación de fianza menor.

No, las autoridades británicas estaban actuando en virtud de una orden de extradición de Estados Unidos. Y los cargos que las autoridades estadounidenses se han inventado están relacionados con el primer trabajo de WikiLeaks divulgando los crímenes de guerra del ejército estadounidense en Iraq, aquello en lo que todos estuvimos de acuerdo una vez que era de interés público y que los medios de comunicación británicos y estadounidenses clamaban por publicar ellos mismos.

Sin embargo, los medios de comunicación y la clase política están haciendo la vista gorda. ¿Dónde está la indignación por las mentiras que han intentado hacernos tragar durante los últimos siete años? ¿Dónde está el remordimiento por haber vivido dopados durante tanto tiempo? ¿Dónde está la furia porque la libertad de prensa más básica -el derecho a publicar- esté siendo arrasada para silenciar a Assange? ¿Dónde está la voluntad de hablar finalmente en defensa de Assange?

Están desaparecidos. No veremos indignación en la BBC, ni en The Guardian, ni en la CNN. Simplemente una información curiosa, impasible -incluso suavemente burlona- sobre el destino de Assange.

Y esto se debe a que esos periodistas, políticos y expertos nunca creyeron realmente en lo que decían. Supieron todo el tiempo que Estados Unidos quería silenciar a Assange y aplastar a WikiLeaks. Lo supieron siempre y no les importó. En realidad, conspiraron alegremente para allanar el camino para el secuestro de Assange de hoy.

Lo hicieron porque no están ahí para representar la verdad, ni para defender a la gente común, ni para proteger una prensa libre, ni siquiera para hacer cumplir el imperio de la ley. No les importa nada de eso. Están ahí para proteger sus carreras y el sistema que los recompensa con dinero e influencias. No quieren que un advenedizo como Assange les dé una patada en sus planes.

Ahora nos ofrecerán un nuevo conjunto de engaños y confusiones sobre Assange para mantenernos anestesiados, para evitar que nos indignemos cuando nuestros derechos se vean afectados y para evitar que nos demos cuenta de que los derechos de Assange y los nuestros son indivisibles. O nos mantenemos en pie o caemos juntos.

Jonathan Cook es un periodista británico que reside en Nazaret desde 2001. Es autor de tres libros sobre el conflicto israelí-palestino. Ha sido galardonado con el Premio Especial de Periodismo Martha Gellhorn. Su sitio web y su blog se encuentran en: www.jonathan-cook.net

Fuente: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2019-04-11/julian-assange-lies-arrest/