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(22.10.2019)
As president, Bernie Sanders would end the practice of using the controversial Espionage Act to prosecute government whistleblowers, the Vermont senator told The Intercept in an interview on Saturday ahead of a major rally in New York.
The century-old law had largely gone out of fashion until it was deployed heavily by the Obama administration, which prosecuted eight people accused of leaking to the media under the Espionage Act, more than all previous presidents combined.
We are now just one week away from the end of Julian Assange’s uniquely lengthy imprisonment for bail violation. He will receive parole from the rest of that sentence, but will continue to be imprisoned on remand awaiting his hearing on extradition to the USA – a process which could last several years.
At that point, all the excuses for Assange’s imprisonment which so-called leftists and liberals in the UK have hidden behind will evaporate. There are no charges and no active investigation in Sweden, where the “evidence” disintegrated at the first whiff of critical scrutiny. He is no longer imprisoned for “jumping bail”. The sole reason for his incarceration will be the publishing of the Afghan and Iraq war logs leaked by Chelsea Manning, with their evidence of wrongdoing and multiple war crimes.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, says that UK authorities are holding Julian Assange in worse conditions than accused terrorists and ‘making it impossible’ for him to fight US extradition.
(07.08.2019)
Having worked as a diplomat at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for six out of the seven years that Julian Assange lived there as a political refugee, unlike others, I am privy to what actually happened there. I am alarmed by CNN’s June 15th 2019 story, alleging Assange turned the Ecuadorian embassy in London into a command post for election meddling.
The story contains several substantive shortcomings and too many factual errors. I warned CNN about them when I was approached during their „investigation,“ but none of my points were included in the article.
Panorama decided to take one day in the long and complicated saga of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and to dissect it. It’s April 11, 2019, the day when he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested by the UK police. What happened that day? How did the UK government respond? Why don’t we know there were other people connected to Wikileaks who found themselves in trouble with the law that day? And what does April 11, 2019 tell us about the Assange saga?
„Es ist an der Zeit, Wikileaks als das zu benennen, was es wirklich ist: Ein nicht-staatlicher, feindlicher Geheimdienst“, sagte der heutige US-Außenminister Mike Pompeo über die Enthüllungs-Plattform bei einer Rede als CIA-Direktor 2017. Entsprechend behandeln die USA Assange nun nach seiner Festnahme in London. Sie werfen ihm vor, geheime Informationen erhalten und verbreitet zu haben. Und sie klagen ihn deshalb nach dem Spionage-Gesetz („Espionage Act“) an, das Strafen bis hin zur Todesstrafe vorsieht.
Assange is serving a 50-week prison sentence after being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in April and jailed for a bail violation.
And an investigation has been reopened into an allegation of rape in Sweden, which Assange has always denied.
Mr Javid told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I am very pleased that the police were finally able to apprehend him and now he’s rightly behind bars because he broke UK law.
Er wolle „stets Gerechtigkeit“, und es liege ein „legitimes Auslieferungsgesuch“ vor, sagte der zuständige Innenminister Sajid Javid im BBC-Radio. Die Entscheidung liege jetzt bei Gericht, das sich am Freitag wieder mit dem Fall beschäftigen werde.
Grundsätzlich gilt in solchen Fällen, dass der Innenminister ein gültiges Auslieferungsgesuch unterzeichnen muss, wenn die entsprechenden Kriterien erfüllt sind.
It is easy, and for some convenient, to forget how much in journalism was changed by the arrival of WikiLeaks.
It’s perhaps one reason that he is rejected by so many journalists.
Weiwei, who was detained without charge in China for 81 days in 2011 during a crackdown on political activists, is believed to have previously visited Assange in 2015 when he was holed up inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The 47-year-old’s father John Shipton arrived at the prison today with Ai Weiwei this afternoon.
Die USA haben in Großbritannien ein formelles Auslieferungsgesuch für Julian Assange beantragt. Dem Gründer der Enthüllungsplattform WikiLeaks würden von Washington unter anderem Verstöße gegen Spionagegesetze vorgeworfen, teilte das Londoner Innenministerium am Dienstag mit. Noch diese Woche wollen die USA Beweise gegen ihn vorlegen.
When Jeremy Hunt decided to attack the United Nations on twitter yesterday, he didn’t expect them to respond. He got owned.
So you say Julian is to blame for Hillary’s defeat? Well, then I’ve got news for you: When the truth was exposed about Hillary, most voters did not like what they saw. Did Julian disclose the evidence? Sure, that’s what investigative journalists do. But should he be persecuted and jailed for that? No, that’s what repressive dictatorships do. While Julian may have influenced the election, he certainly has not interfered with it. Hillary lost the election herself, simply because the Electoral College resulted in a majority for Trump. And if you believe the culprits were Russian hackers, well then sort it out with the Kremlin, but keep your hands off our freedom of the press!
31. Mai 2019
The UN Rapporteur on Torture has issued an unprecedented statement on the persecution of the journalist and publisher Julian Assange.
Full UN statement: https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1039581
In official letters sent earlier this week, Melzer urged the four involved governments to refrain from further disseminating, instigating or tolerating statements or other activities prejudicial to Assange’s human rights and dignity and to take measures to provide him with appropriate redress and rehabilitation for past harm. He further appealed to the British Government not to extradite Assange to the United States or to any other State failing to provide reliable guarantees against his onward transfer to the United States. He also reminded the United Kingdom of its obligation to ensure Assange’s unimpeded access to legal counsel, documentation and adequate preparation commensurate with the complexity of the pending proceedings.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said. “The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”
Julian Assange has been moved to the hospital wing of HMP Belmarsh after a “dramatic” loss of weight and deteriorating health, WikiLeaks has said.
The website said it had “grave concerns” about its founder’s well-being and claimed his condition had declined so much that he can hardly hold a conversation.
The Justice Department filed 17 charges against WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange on Thursday, deploying the controversial Espionage Act as a cudgel against First Amendment protections and press freedom. It’s the first time the U.S. government has used the Espionage Act to prosecute a publisher, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, along with Sen. Ron Wyden, who all have been outspoken on civil liberties issues, slammed the indictment.
As the Justice Department charges WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, we speak to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. In 1971, he was charged with violating the Espionage Act for leaking a top-secret report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other publications. At the time, Ellsberg faced over 100 years in prison. He tells Democracy Now!, “There hasn’t actually been such a significant attack on the freedom of the press … since my case in 1971.”
Assange’s comments were made in a letter addressed to independent British journalist Gordon Dimmack, who decided to make it public following last Thursday’s announcement by the US Justice Department of additional charges against Assange under the Espionage Act. The WSWS is republishing the letter, with Dimmack’s permission, in full below.
The Espionage Act, originally intended for use against spies, has been wielded against as sources of journalists and whistleblowers in recent decades, but never a publisher.
The case has nothing to do with Russia’s election interference in 2016, when Mr. Assange’s organization published Democratic emails stolen by Russia as part of its covert efforts to help elect President Trump. Instead, it focuses on Mr. Assange’s role in the leak of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and military files by the former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
Justice Department officials did not explain why they decided to charge Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act — a step also debated within the Obama administration but ultimately not taken.