On the morning of May 20, 2024, I was relieved to hear the news from Stella Assange ‘Victory At The Royal Courts of Justice: Julian Wins Right to Full Appeal.’ Her Substack article begins with “Today, we celebrate a significant milestone in our fight for justice and freedom for Julian Assange.” The high court has ruled that the US government assurances that Assange will not receive the death penalty are insufficient. Therefore the previous court ruling to extradite Assange can now be appealed. The reality is that Julian’s life and health are still in danger as he continues to rot in Belmarsh Prison in London.
The persecution of Julian Assange has ripped the democratic facade off the face of the US government, exposing it as an authoritarian state hell bent on covering up its war crimes. He has already endured a long and unjust sentence without due process simply for publishing leaked documents and exposing the truth. How can he be tried in the US for violating the Espionage Act when he is not an American citizen or a spy? Julian Assange is a foreign publisher who has never lived or worked in America.
If Assange is convicted by the United States of espionage, it will establish a dangerous international precedent for press freedom. Major media organizations, like the New York Times and Washington Post, who have reported on leaked information will be at risk of prosecution for espionage. Foreign governments could potentially seek to arrest and prosecute American journalists for reporting on their state secrets.
The Biden Administration follows in the footsteps of the Trump Administration by continuing a ruthless five year legal battle to extradite Assange so he can stand trial for 17 counts of espionage and one for hacking, which carries a 175 year sentence. The charges are based entirely on the 2010 classified documents leaked by Private Bradley Manning (who is now Chelsea Manning) that became known as the Iraq War Logs and Afghan War Diary on wikileaks.org.
The US extradition case of Assange has been a long, drawn out show trial. While British law doesn’t allow extradition for politically motivated persecution, it has ignored most of the relevant evidence pertaining to the US motives. On January 4, 2021, District Judge Vanessa Baraister ruled against extradition stating that he would likely commit suicide in a US prison. The US immediately filed an appeal. The appeal hearing was held in October 2021. The British High Court ruled on December 10, 2021 that Assange can be extradited, after Washington gave reassurances that he would be protected from suicide. Assange’s lawyers filed their appeal request on December 23, 2021 claiming the US assurances are invalid.
Amnesty International explained The US made it very easy for us to oppose the extradition, because they gave with one hand and took away with the other.” The written assurance, by the US, clearly states that Assange will not be put in solitary confinement or SAMs (Special Administrative Measures), but the US reserves the right to do so if Assange misbehaves or it deems those measures necessary. The US has a long history of telling lies, so it should never be trusted. The extradition of David Medoza Herrate from Spain to the US in 2009, for drug trafficking, involved an explicit signed contract. The contract stated that Medoza would be allowed to return to Spain to serve his sentence and would not be given a life sentence. After he was extradited, the contract has never been honored by the US government.
The evidence that Assange committed hacking crimes fell apart in June 2021. The star witness of the US prosecutors, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, admitted to fabricating key accusations in an interview with Stundin (an Icelandic newspaper). Thordarson is a convicted pedophile and financial fraudster. Thordarson was promised immunity from prosecution for working with the FBI and DOJ. Thordarson’s confession was ignored by the British High Court.
From 2022 to today, there has been a long, repetitive series of appeals and motions made to the US government and Assange’s lawyers. During this back and forth, the British courts appeared to be ready to grant the US its extradition request. In June 2022, the UK government ordered the extradition of Assange to the US. Assange’s lawyers appealed the decision. In May 2023, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Assange should be released and “nothing is served” by his ongoing incarceration. In June 2023, a High Court judge ruled that Assange cannot appeal his extradition. On February 20, 2024, Assange’s lawyers filed a final legal action to stop his extradition at the High Court. On March 26, 2024: two High Court judges in London gave US authorities three more weeks to submit further assurances, including a guarantee that Assange won’t get the death penalty, before deciding whether they would grant him a new appeal against his extradition. Finally, on May 20, 2024, the High Court granted Assange the right to a full appeal of his extradition.
What we are witnessing with the persecution of Assange is blatant torture (proven by Nils Melner, UN special rapporteur on torture) and a slow motion execution of a journalist by the United States and its faithful lapdog, the United Kingdom. This persecution of Assange has gone on for 12 years, since he was first granted asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, but the past five years in Belmarsh prison have been far worse. His persecution is intentionally meant to send an intimidating message to any journalist that publishes classified government documents.
Since the arrest of Assange, there has been a growing movement of activists, journalists, press freedom and human rights organizations that have demanded the release of Assange. Reporters Without Borders, FAIR Media Watch, Amnesty International, CodePink and the American Civil Liberties Union are among the many to speak out in defense of Assange. A growing number of press freedom and human rights organizations are demanding the release of Assange. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden appeared via video link. He stated ”Julian Assange is not a whistleblower. He is not the source. He’s the publisher. That means he should be less at risk than the whistleblowers and yet somehow he has ended up more at risk. How is that possible? …What has changed is the nature of the State and its relationship to the press.”
While Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken claim to support press freedom and the protection of journalists, the persecution of Assange turns that claim on its head and exposes blatant fraud and hypocrisy. The effort to silence Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes, State Department corruption, and CIA spying programs is bipartisan and demonstrates the tyrannical nature of the duopoly. There was a deafening silence about Julian Assange in the US Congress for many years. Congressman Rho Khanna and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard were the rare exceptions to defend Assange. The DNC and Podesta Emails (released by Wikileaks in 2016) exposed the DNC collusion with liberal mass media to cheat Bernie Sanders and anoint Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders should have thanked Wikileaks and Assange, but has demonstrated his utter cowardice by remaining silent about the emails and condemning Russia for interfering in the 2016 election. Our Oregon senators and representatives have refused to address the persecution of Assange and the dangerous precedent it sets.
Finally members of Congress are waking up. House Resolution 934 – Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States ought to drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange was introduced by Rep. Gosar, Paul A. [R-AZ-9] on Dec. 13, 2023. The bill now has 11 co-sponsors:
Rep. James P. McGovern [D-MA-2] 12/13/2023, Rep. Thomas Massie [R-KY-4] 12/13/2023, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene [R-GA-14] 12/13/2023, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna [R-FL-13] 12/13/2023, Rep. Eric Burlison [R-MO-7] 12/13/2023, Rep. Jeff Duncan [R-SC-3] 12/13/2023, Rep. Ilhan Omar [D-MN-5] 12/13/2023, Rep. Clay Higgins [R-LA-3] 12/14/2023, Rep. Rashida Tlaib [D-MI-12] 03/08/2024, Rep. Cori Bush [D-MO-1] 03/26/2024, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García [D-IL-4] 05/14/2024.
It is of upmost important to call your representative and ask them to support the resolution.
What Assange Exposed: From Collateral Murder to Vault 7
On April 5, 2010, Wikileaks released the Collateral Murder videos that received worldwide recognition. The video exposed a blatant massacre of dozens of innocent civilians in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists, by a US Apache helicopter pilot. Everything seen through the scope of the shooter was recorded, along with his voice and the voice of a command center operator. The US military should have prosecuted the soldier for committing a war crime, but instead covered it up.
Then, WikiLeaks released numerous large batches of leaked documents such as the Iraq War Logs, Gitmo Files, Detainee Policies, the Afghan War Diary and Global Intelligence Files exposing the war crimes and torture that the US government wanted to keep a deep secret.
It is not always easy to do a search on Wikileaks.org but there is a wealth of information. Interested journalists have to sift through thousands of documents to find the relevant ones. Liberal Democrats loved Wikileaks until 2016 when the DNC Emails and the Podesta Emails were released. The Democratic Party blamed WikiLeaks for Clinton losing to Trump because of the emails. Then, Russia was accused of being the source (a debunked claim). Anyone that supported Bernie Sanders or simply believes in a fair transparent primary process should be thankful that the corruption of the DNC was exposed by the emails. The DNC has been unable to reform itself in spite of the public release of these emails.
Long before the release of the DNC emails in 2015, it was obvious that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was working to install Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential candidate. The emails simply removed any reasonable doubt and exposed the relationship of the DNC, the Clinton Campaign and Liberal media. It was not the job of Wikileaks or any media outlet to shield a politician from damaging political baggage. It is their job to report it. The damage the DNC Emails and Podesta Emails may have caused has been more important to Democrats than protecting press freedoms.
On March 7, 2017, Wikileaks released Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed. This series of leaks exposed CIA spying programs via wifi devices, such as cellphones, computers and smart TVs. While the capability of the CIA to spy on anyone is eye-opening, what is most shocking is that the cat got let out of the bag. The press release for Vault 7 reveals “Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.”
The Vault 7 series had 23 releases over a six month period in 2017. Each series revealed a different spy program or tool. Weeping Angel is an implant designed for Samsung F Series Smart Televisions. Marble Framework “is used to hamper forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the CIA.” With this program, an email sent by the CIA could be disguised as if it was sent from foreign country, by pasting a foreign malware on it.
12 years in Captivity Is Torture – Life in the Embassy to Belmarsh Prison
Assange has been the target of the past three US Administrations beginning under Obama. He was accused of rape in August 2010, not by either of the two women he had sex with, but by the Swedish Police. What has later been revealed by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, in a Republik interview is a long, complex story. The first woman (AA) that he had consensual sex with, found a broken condom afterwards. The second woman (SW) had consensual sex without a condom. The two women had met at an event that Assange attended, and later shared their stories. They went to the police, because SW was worried she could have contracted AIDS. She wanted to see if she could force Assange to take an AIDS test. Before SW finished telling her story, the policewoman informed her that Assange would be arrested on suspicion of rape. SW refused to finish the interview and immediately left.
The Assange rape allegation was immediately leaked to the Swedish tabloid press. Assange did go to the police to be interviewed and made every attempt to cooperate with the authorities, but was not arrested or charged. It was only after he left the country to go to a conference in Berlin that his arrest warrant was issued. He later learned that the US was secretly planning to extradite him and charge him for espionage, so he did not return to Sweden. His laptops were also stolen from his checked bags on his flight to Berlin. No trace of Assange’s or AA’s DNA was found on the broken condom. Melzer learned that after Wikileaks released the Afghan War Diary that the US government demanded its allies inundate Assange with criminal cases for 25 years.
Assange flew to London from Berlin. He was willing to return to Sweden for questioning if the Swedish authorities would give him guarantees he wouldn’t be extradited to the US. The authorities would never give him such guarantees. He offered to be questioned by Swedish authorities in London or by video link but those offers were also denied. British authorities were going to arrest Assange and extradite him to Sweden. When he knew that his arrest was certain, Assange went to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on June 19, 2012 and asked for protective asylum, which was granted temporarily.
The Leftist president of Ecuador, Raphael Correa, granted him permanent protective asylum in August 2012 and then Ecuadorian citizenship. Assange spent almost seven years in the embassy, unable to step outside, because the area was crawling with police waiting to arrest him. His health deteriorated and doctors were able to visit him but they were unable to bring in the large medical equipment needed to diagnose his medical condition. His eye-sight was going bad from lack of sunlight. Getting good exercise was difficult. Sweden was ready to drop the case, but the British authorities told them not to get cold feet. The case was never about rape.
While Donald Trump loved Wikileaks for the DNC and Podesta emails, his first CIA director and second Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, despised Assange and Wikileaks for the release of the Vault 7 series. Mike Pompeo called Wikileaks as “a hostile non-state intelligence service” and it was soon re-designated as such. Since Wikileaks was no longer considered merely a publisher or media outlet, the organization could be treated as a national security threat
Life in the embassy changed dramatically for Assange during the Trump Administration. The newly elected Ecuadorian president, Lenin Moreno, became more friendly with the US to secure an IMF (International Monetary Fund) loan. Assange was spied on in the Ecuadorian Embassy by its security firm, UC Global, who was secretly working for the CIA. Trump Billionaire supporter, Sheldon Aldeson convinced the owner of UC Global to work for the CIA. Julian Assange and all his visitors were under 24/7 surveillance by Washington after the Ecuadorian Embassy was bugged.
Next the CIA considered plots to kidnap or assassinate Assange, as revealed in a bombshell report in Yahoo News, based on interviews of 30 intelligence officials. Finally, President Lenin Moreno ended Assange’s protective asylum at the Embassy in London. What the public has witnessed, beginning with the removal and arrest of Assange by British police in April 2019, is the kidnapping of a journalist.
In 2012, British authorities claimed Assange was wanted on a bail violation for refusing to turn himself in over the alleged rape charges by Sweden. The bail violation carries a maximum 52 week sentence but is normally settled with a fine. Assange had served that time by April 2020. The bail violation should have been dropped because Swedish authorities dropped their rape case in 2018. Both the rape charge and the bail violation were simply an excuse to imprison Assange to await US extradition.
The five years that Assange has spent in Belmarsh have contributed to the further deterioration of his health. On October 27th, 2021, Assange suffered a minor stroke at the start of the US extradition appeal. Over 300 doctors and medical professionals have appealed for his immediate release from prison due to his seriously deteriorating health. What the United States and British governments are doing to Assange can only be described as tyrannical and sinister.
It is up to everyone of us to be a part of the fight to Free Assange. Julian Assange’s free speech is your free speech. Please contact your congressional representative and urge them to support H Res. 934.
You can donate to his defense team at: assangedefense.org or
freeassange.org
or to Stella Assange via bank transfer:
Account Name: Stella Assange Store
Account Number: 63189104
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