The flaying of Julian Assange
JVL Introduction
So, against our deepest hopes – but to no-one’s great surprise – Priti Patel has approved Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States.
And Peter Oborne suspects that any other recent British Home Secretary, Labour or Tory, would have done the same in the end, so valued is Britain’s security relationship with the US.
It is, he argues, a catastrophic blow to media freedom – and being implemented with the shameful silence and connivance of much of the mainstream press.
British newspapers and broadcasters, he says, “have failed to grasp that the Assange hearing leading up to the Patel decision is the most important case involving free speech this century.”
For a good background account see Scott Ludlam’s powerful August 2021 essay, The End Game.
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Fri 17 Jun 2022. Read the original here.
Britain has approved Assange’s extradition – war criminals and murderers, rejoice
Priti Patel’s decision to hand over the WikiLeaks co-founder shows the price of investigative journalism anywhere the US holds sway
Murderers, torturers and war criminals will be toasting the British home secretary, Priti Patel, tonight. Her decision to approve the extradition of Julian Assange turns investigative journalism into a criminal act, and licenses the United States to mercilessly hunt down offenders wherever they can be found, bring them to justice and punish them with maximum severity.
Julian Assange’s supposed crime was to expose atrocities committed by the US and its allies, primarily in Afghanistan and Iraq, during the war on terror. He shone a light on the systematic abuse dealt out to prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. He revealed the fact that more than 150 entirely innocent inmates were held for years without even being charged.
He published a video of helicopter gunmen laughing as they casually massacred unarmed Iraqi civilians in an attack that killed around 15 people, including a Reuters photographer and his assistant.
The US declined to discipline the perpetrators of that atrocity. But they are pursuing Assange to the ends of the earth for revealing it took place.
Once safely in US hands, it’s all but certain that Assange will spend the remainder of his life in jail. That’s because the US is determined to show that terrible reprisals lie in store for any reporter who runs a story based on US government documents.
That’s why Daniel Ellsberg, the former US Marine Corps officer behind the Pentagon Papers revelations that exposed the secret US bombing of Cambodia and Laos, has said that he feels a “great identification” with Assange’s work.
Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lawyer, argued convincingly in court that Assange’s only crime is investigative journalism. For example, the US charge states that he tried to conceal “the source of the disclosure of classified records”. Every journalist worth her or his salt would do the same, but the US insists that Assange is guilty of espionage – and the British home secretary shamefully agrees.
While it is true that Patel is an unusually authoritarian home secretary, I suspect that every recent holder of the office, Labour or Conservative, would have made an identical decision. Britain values beyond measure its security relationship with the US.
That helps explain Patel’s judgment but doesn’t make it any more forgivable. Boris Johnson and his ministers love to claim that they support press freedom. When it mattered most they dealt it a catastrophic blow.
A blow carried out – it should be noted – with the silent assent of much of the mainstream press. Too many British newspapers and broadcasters have treated the Assange case as a dirty family secret. They have failed to grasp that the Assange hearing leading up to the Patel decision is the most important case involving free speech this century.
Assange’s legal team are to appeal, and let’s pray that they succeed. If they do not, newsgathering in Britain – and everywhere else where the American government has influence – will become a criminal activity ultimately punishable by incarceration for life in a US jail.
- Peter Oborne is a journalist and the author of Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam
Is American military might too big to morally fail? Are we all to live in a world where atrocities must pass without mention when carried out by America and/or its allies? Julian Assange should not be being punished for having acted as a journalist, for having put human life above American state interests.
This is calamitous for freedom of speech and democracy. What the US ,the UK government and our judiciary are telling the citizens of our country and the rest of the world is y our rights are what the US government tells us they are. In fact, it is clear there is no true democracy ,no real freedom of speech or human rights. The world is at a crossroads. The prospect of an extreme Right Wing populist government here and in the US has never been closer. The British PM is in Ukraine enthusiastically forecasting the present conflict is here for the long run. He is ensuring that happens. The result will be huge hardship for millions of innocent people in Africa, the Middle East, some European countries and others. Many will starve others will be hungry. Death on a grand scale will result. . Those who are urging an end to the fighting are ridiculed by the media who are just as enthusiastic for a long war. I was born in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. The fascists were at the gates then . They are presently within the citadel . The ordinary citizens need to wake up before it is too late.
All i have to say is, the biggest terrorist nation of the world, wins again, what a sad endorsement of the british people this is.
CPS intervention while Keir Starmer was DPP (as reported by Labour Heartlands in this exerpt, July 26 2021 )
The emails between the Swedish Prosecuting Authority (SPA) and the CPS show that the latter was closely involved in the Assange case at every stage.
In one such email, dated 25 January 2011, a CPS lawyer advised the SPA not to send someone to the UK: “My earlier advice remains, that in my view it would not be prudent for the Swedish authorities to try to interview the defendant [Assange] in the UK.“
In August 2012, in response to an article saying Sweden could withdraw the warrant against Assange, a CPS staffer (name redacted) warned [pdf, p1] Sweden’s Director of Public Prosecutions Marianne Ny: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!“
If this is true, as it seems to be, Starmer’s liberal credentials are nil.
Response to Steve Mitchell: I fully agree with you and Peter Oborne about Priti Patel’s outrageous decision to extradite Julian Assange. But I disagree with your views about Ukraine. It is up to the Ukrainian government to decide how to pursue this war and any idea that they are being manipulated by Western Imperialism is to diminish their heroic resistance to the Russian invasion. I have no doubt in fact that they are coming under pressure from several NATO countries to reach a peace agreement: the world-wide energy price and grain crisis is not something that these powers want to live with for much longer. But it is clear from Zelenskiy’s statements that attack NATO governments for their slowness in delivering arms and other support that currently the Ukraine regime wants to fight on.
I don’t think it is up to Biden to negotiate with Russia on Ukraine’s future over their heads. That is what calles for “peace now” amount to.
It is only necessary to ask what a “peace agreement” under current circumstances would look like to see why Ukraine takes the stand it has. It would mean official recognition of at least some of Russia’s territorial gains – i.e. a reward for their aggression – plus an interregnum during which they could use the ending of sanctions to re-arm and prepare for further incursions into Ukraine and possibly other countries as well.
Yes, there are worrying fascist movements in the West, but of the major powers it is in Russia that curtailment of freedoms akin to fascism are most advanced.
It is enlightening to consider the servile attitude of the UK government in the light of the US refusal to allow the extradition of Anne Sacoolas, the killer of Harry Dunn. Clearly, when the US says “jump” the UK government asks “How high”, even whilst airborne.
It is bitterly ironic that the home secretary made her decision when press freedom day is commemorated. The Special Relationship rears its ugly head as the US and the UK seek to revenge Assange’s disclosure of US war crimes..
I recall many of my fellow Labour Party members- who considered themselves very progressive- repeatedly throwing Assange under the bus during the Corbyn tenure both in conversation and on social media. Frankly they were and are part of the problem, and are just as culpable in this matter as media pundits and journalists are. They have debased themselves.
A dark day indeed with justice and human rights being crushed. The United States has been waging wars of terror against any nation that does not connive in doing its bidding in the US national interest. How ironic that the Statue of Liberty is an iconic symbol towering over the might of US military and economic power exercised without justice for those it crushes.
Campaigning for Julian Assanges freedom today, at Piccadilly Circus, I experienced a typical reaction , fostered by all mainstream media , that he is a ‘rapist’, even a ‘child molester’! That he is patently neither of those, but that a sizeable amount of people are happy to think he is, condemns those news streams , their editors and in most cases, their billionaire owners for their perfidy on behalf of US imperialism.
“British newspapers have failed to grasp that the Assange hearing, leading up the Patel decision, is the most important case involving free speech in this century”. I’m afraid that Peter Obourne is wrong about this, they do realise the consequences of their actions but the limited ownership & control of Western MSM ensures that the 4th Estate cannot ask difficult questions. We do not live in a healthy democracy because, like USA, we live in a one party state where all parties have similar domestic & foreign policies. Diversity of opinion is not to be encouraged & the role of MSM is to ensure collective consensus in a neo-liberal mono culture. Question more…………?
When the UK wanted to extradite Anne Sacoolas from the USA for killing Harry Dunn, the application was rejected. Then some years ago 3 businessmen were extradited to the US. It would appear that there is only one-way traffic. We agree to the US demands but they do not agree to ours.
Yes, Diamond, but there was ONE case:
‘Gary McKinnon will not be extradited to US, Theresa May announces’
The home secretary, Theresa May, defied the American authorities on Tuesday by halting the extradition of British computer hacker Gary McKinnon, a decision criticised by the US state department but welcomed with delight by campaigners and politicians across parties in the UK.
In a dramatic House of Commons statement, May told MPs she had taken the quasi-judicial decision on human rights grounds because of medical reports warning that McKinnon, 46, who has Asperger’s syndrome and suffers from depressive illness, could kill himself if sent to stand trial in the US.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/16/gary-mckinnon-not-extradited-may
Funny, isn’t it, how the initial Swedish prosecutor said there was no case to answer re the sexual assault allegations, and then another prosecutor decides that there IS. and one judge rules that Julian should not be extradited to the US as he is at risk of suicide, then another judge rules that he isn’t!
I was just looking through a BBC timeline of events and came across the following, which I’ve never come across before:
15 August 2012
Ecuador’s foreign minister claims the UK has issued a “threat” to enter the Ecuadorean embassy in London to arrest Mr Assange. The Foreign Office says it reminded Ecuador that it has the power to revoke the diplomatic immunity of an embassy on UK soil and says Britain has a legal obligation to extradite him.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11949341
Hmm, so why did they leave him in there for seven years before doing so – ie entering the embassy and arresting him???