PACE is a key institution within the Council of Europe, the platform for cooperation and dialogue among Europe’s 27 nations. PACE focuses on promoting human rights, democracy and the rule of law across Europe. These are topics of universal interest one might expect United States news media and especially the US government, who spent so much time and money seeking Assange’s extradition, to be keenly interested in. But the story got little coverage in the West and practically none in the US. The last time The New York Times even mentioned PACE was over a year ago, in September 2023, in an with the title: “In occupied areas of Ukraine, Russia is holding local elections that have been widely denounced.”

PACE not only monitors the implementation of Council of Europe conventions and agreements between member states, it also elects judges to the European Court of Human Rights. You would be justified in thinking of it as the “conscience” of Europe. Its role in human rights advocacy empowers it to adopt resolutions and make recommendations to improve human rights protection. In that capacity, following Assange’s testimony, PACE “ deep concern at ‘the disproportionately harsh treatment’ faced by Julian Assange and said this has had a ‘dangerous chilling effect’ which undermines the protection of journalists and whistleblowers around the world.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Disproportionately harsh treatment:

The US administration’s chosen strategy for dealing with anything or anyone that in any way threatens or even criticizes its actions abroad.

Contextual note

Assange’s legal saga began in 2010, four months after the publication of classified documents on the war in Iraq. It lasted until June 26, 2024 when Assange entered into a guilty plea agreement with the US justice system.

In the opening act, the Australian journalist and founder of WikiLeaks was charged with a sexual offense in Sweden. The case was closed in 2017, as the evidence required for a conviction had not been gathered. Simultaneously, the US Justice Department initiated an investigation using the pretext of the 1917 Espionage Act, a tool that the administration of former President Barack Obama became fond of using against whistleblowers. Fearing extradition to the US, the Ecuadorian embassy granted Assange asylum in London, where he remained for seven years. Then on April 11, 2019, he was forcibly handed over to the British authorities after the election of a new Ecuadorian president, whom WikiLeaks had accused of corruption.

The denouement came after Assange had spent five years in a high-security Belmarsh prison in the UK. It is still unclear why Washington agreed to his release. It should however be obvious that the administration of current President Joe Biden — used to benefiting from European indulgence, if not solidarity with even the harshest of US foreign policy positions — was not expecting the conclusions reached by PACE following Assange’s testimony earlier this month. The Parliamentary Assembly pulled no punches as it reached a conclusion with potentially deep implications for the behavior of all self-respecting democracies, especially those that like to lecture other nations about human rights, freedom of expression and the need to respect a rules-based order.

PACE noted explicitly that Assange’s treatment has had a dangerous deterrent effect on journalists and whistleblowers worldwide. “Chilling” is the term it chose. For the sake of the future of democracy, it becomes urgent to ask ourselves on both sides of the Atlantic: After the Assange case, will journalists and whistleblowers be better protected? On the basis of this judgment, we should hope so, but at the same time we must ask ourselves: Are the politicians in the US and in Europe even listening?

PACE specifically called on the US to go beyond its concern for the protection of journalists by actively combating the tradition of impunity for state agents guilty of war crimes. Will this call be heeded? In the context of ongoing conflicts today in which the US has become implicated, and at a moment when a democratic US presidential candidate openly embraces and celebrates the “service” of former Vice President Dick Cheney, there is reason to doubt it.

Historical note

This episode underlines the perception most people have today that we are living through a period of rapid historical transition. The question of the survival of democracy appears to be on everyone’s mind. We easily understand that democracy can never be perfect, but now that it appears threatened from various sides, can we even find the means to preserve it? Should we consider whistleblowers like Assange and Edward Snowden servants of a citizenry focused on the integrity of governance or dangerous enemies of a system that must be protected not just from physical assault but from critical assessment of any kind?

At a time when the fight for information control has been in the headlines with new pressures on Telegram and Twitter, we should see PACE’s resolution as a strong signal of encouragement to journalists and whistleblowers and a warning to governments easily tempted to justify or paper over the most extreme acts of their militaries and allies in times of war. European governments should be the first to take its recommendations on board. Journalism is already threatened in its theoretical independence by the domination of the economic interests that control or influence the media. If the wheels of justice can be manipulated to suppress truth-telling, democracy cannot survive.

PACE looks beyond Europe and its media. It specifically addresses the US, a nation that has persistently and assiduously put Assange through more than a decade of confinement and even torture. That he is now free to circulate and speak publicly is something of a victory, but it is a victory in a battle that should never have taken place in a democratic society. The atrocities revealed by Assange in his WikiLeaks must not be hidden from the public in the name of a nation’s raison d’Etat.

If PACE’s resolution has any real impact, it means that a clarified legal context will make it more difficult for governments to gag the media and allow crimes committed by their agents to go unpunished. In 2010, WikiLeaks published incontrovertible evidence of atrocities committed by American and British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Governments and armies will always attempt to conceal acts they find embarrassing. But the press must be allowed to uncover them and publish the truth, with no fear of legal repercussions for doing so.

In recent times, European institutions have been the object of justified and unjustified criticism. Europe today suffers materially and psychologically from its ambiguous relationship with the most powerful member of the Atlantic Alliance. Defining Europe’s “strategic autonomy” is an ongoing. The Council of Europe is once again proving itself to be a major institution for the protection of human rights. In 2005, this same Council the late Dick Marty to investigate the CIA’s secret prisons in Europe. In 2015 and 2016, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Poland, Lithuania and Romania for housing such detention centers.

The governments called into question by such actions will always react defensively to such initiatives. They are rarely “brought to justice” in the sense of holding individuals and institutions legally and formally responsible for identified crimes and atrocities and subject to punishment under the law. But such resolutions help to set standards that will reduce the amount of abuse meted out to independent voices seeking to keep the public informed.

Assange is a journalist whose career was interrupted at the height of his powers and his potential contribution to society and democracy effectively silenced. In Gaza and Lebanon today we are seeing other cases of “disproportionately harsh treatment” that for some political leaders appears to be their privileged form of governance, if not a way of life. Even “proportional” harsh treatment needs to be used as sparingly as possible. As a society, we need to bring the taste for disproportionality under control. For some, it appears to be an addiction.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Last week ended with its own day of infamy when a British court overturned an earlier judgment banning the extradition to the US of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Following in the footsteps of the Trump administration, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department successfully appealed the ban in its relentless effort to judge Assange for violating the 1917 Espionage Act, itself a relic of the history of the First World War.

Guns and the Wrong Side of Rights

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Back then, President Woodrow Wilson’s government pulled no jingoistic punches when promoting America’s participation in Europe’s war. It actively incited the population to indulge in xenophobia. Public paranoia targeting Germany, the nation’s enemy, reached such a pitch that Beethoven was banned from the concert stage, sauerkraut was officially renamed “liberty cabbage” and hamburger “liberty steak.”

The manifestly paranoid sought to punish anyone who “communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate, deliver or transmit to any foreign government … any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, etc.” The law, specifically for a state of war, was so extreme it was rarely used until Barack Obama unearthed it as the elegant solution for the whistleblowers he had to defend in his first presidential campaign.

Despite overindulging his taste for punishing whistleblowers, Obama refrained from seeking to extradite Assange. He feared it might appear as an assault on freedom of the press and might even incriminate The New York Times, which had published the WikiLeaks documents in 2010. In the meantime, Democrats found a stronger reason to blame Assange. He had leaked the Democratic National Committee’s emails during the 2016 presidential primary campaign. Democrats blamed the Australian for electing Donald Trump.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly WikiLeaks for its willingness to expose the undemocratic practices of the Clinton campaign. But once in power, Trump’s administration vindictively demanded Assange’s extradition from the UK for having revealed war crimes that deserved being hidden for eternity from the prying eyes of journalists and historians. 

Many observers expected Biden to return to the prudent wisdom of Obama and break with Trump’s vindictive initiative. He could have quietly accepted the British judge’s decision pronounced in January. Instead, his Justice Department appealed. Unlike Trump, who sought to undermine everything Obama had achieved, Biden has surprisingly revealed a deep, largely passive respect for his predecessor’s most dangerous innovations — not challenging corporate tax cuts, the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and Trump’s aggressive support for Israel’s most oppressive policies with regard to Palestinians.

Biden’s eagerness to follow Trump’s gambit aimed at subjecting Assange to the US brand of military-style justice allowed New York Times journalists Megan Specia and Charlie Savage to Friday’s decision by the British court as a success for the administration. “The ruling was a victory,” they wrote, “at least for now, for the Biden administration, which has pursued an effort to prosecute Mr. Assange begun under the Trump administration.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Victory:

Triumph in combat, including, at two extremes, cases marked by heroic action and others prompted by malicious self-serving motives and driven by the perpetrator’s confusion of the idea of justice with sadistic, vindictive pleasure

Contextual Note

The Times journalists quote Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice Department spokesman, who “said the government was ‘pleased by the ruling’ and would have no further comment.” At no point in the article do the authors evoke the hypothesis that Biden might have sought to overturn Trump’s policy. Nor do they analyze the reasons that could undermine the government’s case. They do quote several of Assange’s supporters, including one who called “on the Biden administration again to withdraw” the charge. Serious observers of the media might expect that a pillar of the press in a liberal democracy might be tempted to express its own concern with laws and policies that risk threatening its own freedom. Not The New York Times. This story didn’t even make its front page. None of its columnists deemed it deserving of comment.

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Journalist Kalinga Seneviratne, writing for The Manila Times, offered a radical . “If this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is about promoting ‘press freedom,’” he speculates, “the Norwegian Nobel Committee missed a golden opportunity to make a powerful statement at a time when such freedom is under threat in the very countries that have traditionally claimed a patent on it.” He quotes the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, who claims that “what has been done to Julian Assange is not to punish or coerce him, but to silence him and to do so in broad daylight, making visible to the entire world that those who expose the misconduct of the powerful no longer enjoy the protection of the law.” 

Deutsche Welle’s Matthias von Hein the interesting coincidence that three converging events took place on the same day. “In a bitter twist of irony,” he writes, “a court in London has essentially paved the way for Assange’s prosecution on Human Rights Day — of all days. And how ironic that it happened on the day two journalists were honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Last, but not least, it coincided with the second day of the Summit on Democracy organized by US President Joe Biden.”

Von Hein added this observation: “We’re constantly hearing how Western democracies are in competition with autocratic systems. If Biden is serious about that, he should strive to be better than the world’s dictators.” But, as the saying goes, you can’t teach a 79-year old dog new tricks.

Historical Note

The coincidences do not end there. On the same day the news of Julian Assange’s fate emerged, Yahoo’s investigative reporter Michael Isikoff the story of another man “brought to justice” by US authorities: Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The Mauritanian citizen had the privilege of spending 14 years in the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba without ever being charged with a crime, even after confessing to the crimes imagined by his torturers.

It turns out to be a touching moral tale. Even after years of imprisonment and gruesome torture, Slahi “holds no personal animus against his interrogators.” According to Isikoff, “he has even met and bonded with some of those interrogators,” years after the event. “I took it upon myself,” Slahi explained, “to be a nice person and took a vow of kindness no matter what. And you cannot have a vow of kindness without forgiving people.”

It wasn’t the Prophet Muhammad who said, “turn the other cheek” or “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Those words were spoken by the man George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld claimed to revere and whom Bush considered his “favorite philosopher.” The Quran did continue the original Christian insight, pronouncing that “retribution for an evil act is an evil one like it,” and that reconciliation and forgiveness will be rewarded by Allah.

There has clearly been no forgiveness in Washington for the “evil” committed by Assange: exposing war crimes conducted in secret with American taxpayers’ money. Slahi’s torture was conducted by the declared proponents of “Judeo-Christian” culture. Shahi’s forgiveness stands as an example of what that culture claims as a virtue but fails to embrace in its own actions.

Shahi is reconciled with his interrogators. But does he also feel reconciled with those who gave them their orders? In 2019, he , “I accept that the United States should follow and put to trial all the people who are harming their citizens. I agree with that. But I disagree with them that if they suspect you, they kidnap you, they torture you, and let you rot in prison for 15 or 16 years. And then they dump you in your country and they say you cannot have your passport because you have already seen so many things that we don’t want you to travel around the world to talk about.”

Despite appearances, Mohamedou Ould Shahi’s case is not all that different from Julian Assange’s.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Defending the US government’s request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the UK after his expulsion from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, US Vice-President Mike Pence that Assange was “involved in one of the greatest compromises of classified information in American history.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:Ěý

Classified information:

A label given indifferently to information that must remain confidential for reasons of security and evidence of crimes committed by authorities with the power to classify information

Contextual note

Everyone should recognize this definition as quite simply logical. All people and institutions are capable of crime and, having committed a crime, few confess. The more certain criminals are of being able to hide their crimes, the more they will be tempted to make use of that capacity. That’s why, if justice is to be valued as highly as security, whistleblowers represent a kind of last resort for democracy to work.

Not all classified information is evidence of crime, but some crimes will be denied and classified to keep all evidence from public view. That is how all governments work. The only alternative is to suppose that a specific government is incapable of ever committing a crime. But that is a manifestly absurd proposition.

This basic truth should help us to understand the deeper implications of the debate about whether Assange was guilty of an egregious crime or simply practicing the art of journalism, as his defenders claim. If a journalist or a media outlet discovers evidence of horrific acts and a coverup, do they have the right — some would say the moral duty — to communicate that information to the public, even if it is classified?

Focusing narrowly on the technical illegality of the act, permitting access to the information means losing the democratic and moral perspective that relates to the duty to expose crimes that have an impact on the community. Making public any classified information is obviously a violation of the law. But if that information permits the public to understand what their democratically-elected government is actually doing in its name, shouldn’t the dissemination of that information be considered a democratic duty?

Taking the establishment position, Hillary Clinton offered this : “[I]t’s not about punishing journalism, it is about assisting the hacking of a military computer to steal information from the United States government.” She clearly wishes to focus exclusively on the act of gathering information — which could in this case only have been done by illegal means — rather than the democratic and moral significance of the information revealed.

In strictly moral terms, this amounts to a conscious tactic of distracting attention from a major crime that goes unpunished by assiduously prosecuting a minor crime, the very subject of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure where the absent Duke’s deputy, Angelo, condemns a man to death for consorting with prostitutes (a minor offense), but when the condemned man’s sister, a nun, pleads with him for mercy, he blackmails her into sleeping with him (rape).

Historical note

The acts for which Julian Assange has been charged concern the publication in 2010 of classified information about US military activity in Iraq and include the dissemination of video footage of a by US helicopters on a group of journalists, including two employees of Reuters.

Reacting to the WikiLeaks publication three years after the event, Major Shawn Turner, a spokesman for US Central Command, said: “We regret the loss of innocent life, but this incident was promptly investigated and there was never any attempt to cover up any aspect of this engagement.” Reuters had, in fact, “pressed the U.S. military to conduct a full and objective investigation into the killing.” Immediately after the event, the news agency requested the video but, thanks to the complex bureaucratic procedure defined in the Freedom of Information Ac, it had to wait two years to receive a copy. WikiLeaks posted the video .

In claiming “there was never any attempt to cover up any aspect of this engagement,” Turner was technically correct. The video was kept secret as a classified document and only “released” — not to the public, but to Reuters — two years after the event. And Reuters obviously was unwilling to take the risk of publishing it in 2009, because it was classified. The military delayed releasing the copy to Reuters because they knew that its news value would be diminished by the lengthy wait. News agencies such as Reuters don’t like to report on two-year-old events, especially if it means having to tell a complex story around classified information, just to make sense of it for the public.

The ultimate question concerns how much the public trusts its government and how much governments count on the apathy of the public as the foundation of that trust. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama promised to protect whistleblowers, but as president he accelerated the . “In his eight years in office, the Obama Justice Department spearheaded eight Espionage Act prosecutions, more than all US administrations combined.”

The Bush-Obama-Trump era, marked by the forever and everywhere “war on terror,” has made a wide range of criminal actions — preemptive war, rendition and torture, assassination, fomenting revolutions, revolt and regime change — “justifiable” in the name of national security. It has led to an official policy that considers any role in exposing those crimes as potentially criminal. And whereas the official crimes must never be prosecuted, actions that lead to exposure will be punished without exception. This includes on the International Criminal Court in The Hague for simply attempting to investigate reported US war crimes in Afghanistan.

This system of punishing whistleblowers only — and never the culprits of the crimes — makes sense in Saudi Arabia and other despotic regimes. In the US, its justification depends on the prevalent belief in , which a majority of US citizens appear to accept. Prompted by the media, they do so simply by suspending their moral reasoning while favoring a narrow and selective form of legal reasoning. They not only consciously ignore international laws and standards of conduct, but threaten the legitimate institutions that attempt to enforce them.

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Democrats cannot forgive actions by WikiLeaks that they believe were linked to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Vladimir Pozner, an independent Russian-American journalist, the answer he received from a “high-ranking gentleman” in the CIA to the question, “Does America interfere in elections anywhere?” The CIA man admitted, “Yes, we do interfere, but we interfere for good and you [the Russians] interfere for bad.” That sums up American exceptionalism.

Claiming to be a journalist, Julian Assange has at times played fast and loose with the notion of media neutrality and objectivity, but not quite as much or as often as , The Washington Post or any other respectable organ of the press. They all have a political agenda less candidly expressed than Assange, but for the careful observer.

What a democracy needs to remain honest is not just a WikiLeaks, but multiple WikiLeaks, ones whose agenda may focus on different targets that thrive on the secrecy of information. Such as the mafia, offshore banking in tax havens, to name some obvious ones. We know they exist, but we need to know more about what they do. And there are others we don’t know about simply because they have been more effective in classifying their information and practicing the law of (code of silence).

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Is the US Right to Extradite Julian Assange? appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Julian Assange, the founder and editor of WikiLeaks, gave this interview to John Pilger in the embassy of Ecuador in London where he has lived as a political refugee for more than four years. Granted asylum by the government of Ecuador, Assange faces arrest and extradition to Sweden and the United States if he steps outside the embassy.

WikiLeaks has published more than 33,000 emails from, to or about US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

John Pilger: What’s the significance of the FBI’s intervention in these last days of the US election campaign, in the case against Hillary Clinton?

Julian Assange: If you look at the history of the FBI, it has become effectively America’s political police. The FBI demonstrated this by taking down the former head of the CIA [General David Petraeus] over classified information given to his mistress. Almost no-one is untouchable.ĚýThe FBI is always trying to demonstrate that no-one can resist us. But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI’s investigation, so there’s anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak.ĚýWe’ve [WikiLeaks] published about 33,000 of Clinton’s emails when she was secretary of state. They come from a batch of just over 60,000 emails, [of which] Clinton has kept about half—30,000—to herself, and we’ve published about half.

Then there are the Podesta emails we’ve been publishing. [John] Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign manager, so there’s a thread that runs through all these emails; there are quite a lot of pay-for-play, as they call it, giving access in exchange for money to states, individuals and corporations. [These emails are] combined with the cover up of the Hillary Clinton emails when she was secretary of state, [which] has led to an environment where the pressure on the FBI increases.

Pilger: The Clinton campaign has said that Russia is behind all of this, that Russia has manipulated the campaign and is the source for WikiLeaks and its emails.

Assange: The Clinton camp has been able to project that kind of neo-McCarthy hysteria: that Russia is responsible for everything. Hilary Clinton stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 US intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications. That is false; we can say that the Russian government is not the source.

WikiLeaks has been publishing for 10 years, and in those 10 years, we have published 10 million documents, several thousand individual publications, several thousand different sources, and we have never got it wrong.

Pilger: The emails that give evidence of access for money and how Hillary Clinton herself benefited from this, and how she is benefitting politically, are quite extraordinary. I’m thinking ofĚýwhen the Qatari representative was given five minutes with Bill Clinton for a million-dollar check.

Assange: And $12 million dollars from Morocco.

Pilger: $12 million from Morocco, yeah.

Assange: For Hillary Clinton to attend [a party].

Pilger: In terms of the foreign policy of the United States, that’s where the emails are most revealing, where they show the direct connection between Hillary Clinton and the foundation of jihadism, of ISIL [Islamic State], in the Middle East. Can you talk about how the emails demonstrate the connection between those who are meant to be fighting the jihadists of ISIL are actually those who have helped create it?

Assange: There’s an early 2014 email from Hillary Clinton, not so long after she left the State Department, to her campaign manager John Podesta that states ISIL is funded by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Now, this is the most significant email in the whole collection, and perhaps because Saudi and Qatari money is spread all over the Clinton Foundation.ĚýEven the US government agrees that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIL, or ISIS. But the dodge has always been that, well it’s just some rogue princes, using their cut of the oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves.

But that email says that no, it is the governments of Saudi and Qatar that have been funding ISIS.

Pilger: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis—particularly the Saudis and the Qataris—are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation while Hilary Clinton is secretary of state and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly to Saudi Arabia.

Assange: Under Hillary Clinton, the world’s largest ever arms deal was made with Saudi Arabia, [worth] more than $80 billion. In fact, during her tenure as secretary of state, total arms exports from the United States in terms of the dollar value doubled.

Pilger: Of course, the consequence of that is that the notorious terrorist group called ISIL or ISIS is created largely with money from the very people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation.

Assange: Yes.

Pilger: That’s extraordinary.

Assange: I actually feel quite sorry for Hillary Clinton as a person because I see someone who is eaten alive by their ambitions, tormented literally to the point where they become sick; they faint as a result of [the reaction] to their ambitions. She represents a whole network of people and a network of relationships with particular states. The question is how does Hilary Clinton fit in this broader network?ĚýShe’s a centralizing cog. You’ve got a lot of different gears in operation from the big banks like Goldman Sachs and major elements of Wall Street, and intelligence and people in the State Department and the Saudis.

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She’s the centralizer that inter-connects all these different cogs. She’s the smooth central representation of all that, and “all that” is more or less what is in power now in the United States. It’s what we call the establishment or the DC consensus. One of the more significant Podesta emails that we released was about how the Obama cabinet was formed and how half the Obama cabinet was basically nominated by a representative from Citibank. This is quite amazing.

Pilger: Didn’t Citibank supply a list … ?

Assange: Yes.

Pilger: … which turned out to be most of the Obama cabinet?

Assange: Yes.

Pilger: So Wall Street decides the cabinet of the president of the United States?

Assange: If you were following the Obama campaign back then, closely, you could see it had become very close to banking interests.

So I think you can’t properly understand Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy without understanding Saudi Arabia. The connections with Saudi Arabia are so intimate.

Pilger: Why was she so demonstrably enthusiastic about the destruction of Libya?ĚýCan you talk a little about just what the emails have told us, told you about what happened there, because Libya is such a source for so much of the mayhem now in Syria, the ISIL jihadism and so on, and it was almost Hillary Clinton’s invasion.ĚýWhat do the emails tell us about that?

Assange: Libya, more than anyone else’s war, was Hillary Clinton’s war. Barack Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person championing it?ĚýHillary Clinton.ĚýThat’s documented throughout her emails. She had put her favored agent, Sidney Blumenthal, on to that; there’s more than 1,700 emails out of the 33,000 Hillary Clinton emails that we’ve published just about Libya. It’s not that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of [Muammar] Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state—something that she would use in her run-up to the general election for president.

So, in late 2011, there is an internal document called the Libya Tick Tock that was produced for Hillary Clinton, and it’s the chronological description of how she was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state, which resulted in around 40,000 deaths within Libya—jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in, leading to the European refugee and migrant crisis.

Not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people fleeing Syria, the destabilization of other African countries as a result of arms flows, but the Libyan state itself err was no longer able to control the movement of people through it. Libya faces along to the Mediterranean and had been effectively the cork in the bottle of Africa. So all problems, economic problems and civil war in Africa—previously people fleeing those problems didn’t end up in Europe because Libya policed the Mediterranean. That was said explicitly at the time, back in early 2011 by Gaddafi: “What do these Europeans think they’re doing, trying to bomb and destroy the Libyan State? There’s going to be floods of migrants out of Africa and jihadists into Europe,” and this is exactly what happened.

Pilger: You get complaints from people saying, “What is WikiLeaks doing?ĚýAre they trying to put Donald Trump in the White House?”

Assange: My answer is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that?Ěý Because he’s had every establishment off side; Trump doesn’t have one establishment—maybe with the exception of the evangelicals, if you can call them an establishment—but banks, intelligence [agencies], arms companies … big foreign money … are all united behind Hillary Clinton, and the media as well, media owners and even journalists themselves.

Pilger: There is the accusation that WikiLeaks is in league with the Russians. Some people say, “Well, why doesn’t WikiLeaks investigate and publish emails on Russia?”

Assange: We have published about 800,000 documents of various kinds that relate to Russia. Most of those are critical; and a great many books have come out of our publications about Russia, most of which are critical. Our [Russia] documents have gone on to be used in quite a number of court cases: refugee cases of people fleeing some kind of claimed political persecution in Russia, which they use our documents to back up.

Pilger: Do you yourself take a view of the US election?ĚýDo you have a preference for Clinton or Trump?

Assange: [Let’s talk about] Donald Trump. What does he represent in the American mind and in the European mind? He represents American white trash, [which Hillary Clinton called] “deplorable and irredeemable.” It means from an establishment or educated cosmopolitan, urbane perspective, these people are like the red necks, and you can never deal with them.ĚýBecause he so clearly—through his words and actions and the type of people that turn up at his rallies—represents people who are not the middle, not the upper-middle educated class, there is a fear of seeming to be associated in any way with them, a social fear that lowers the class status of anyone who can be accused of somehow assisting Trump in any way, including any criticism of Hillary Clinton. If you look at how the middle class gains its economic and social power, that makes absolute sense.

Pilger: I’d like to talk about Ecuador, the small country that has given you refuge and [political asylum] in this embassy in London.ĚýNow Ecuador has cut off the internet from here where we’re doing this interview, in the embassy, for the clearly obvious reason that they are concerned about appearing to intervene in the US election campaign.ĚýCan you talk about why they would take that action and your own views on Ecuador’s support for you?

Assange: Let’s let go back four years.ĚýI made an asylum application to Ecuador in this embassy, because of the US extradition case, and the result was that after a month, I was successful in my asylum application. The embassy since then has been surrounded by police: quite an expensive police operation which the British government admits to spending more than ÂŁ12.6 million. They admitted that over a year ago.

Now there’s undercover police and there are robot surveillance cameras of various kinds—so that there has been quite a serious conflict right here in the heart of London between Ecuador, a country of 16 million people, and the United Kingdom, and the Americans who have been helping on the side.ĚýSo that was a brave and principled thing for Ecuador to do. Now we have the US election [campaign], the Ecuadorian election is in February next year, and you have the White House feeling the political heat as a result of the true information that we have been publishing.

WikiLeaks does not publish from the jurisdiction of Ecuador, from this embassy or in the territory of Ecuador; we publish from France, we publish from, from Germany, we publish from The Netherlands and from a number of other countries, so that the attempted squeeze on WikiLeaks is through my refugee status; and this is, this is really intolerable. [It means] that [they] are trying to get at a publishing organization; [they] try and prevent it from publishing true information that is of intense interest to the American people and others about an election.

Pilger: Tell us what would happen if you walked out of this embassy.

Assange: I would be immediately arrested by the British police, and I would then be extradited either immediately to the United States or to Sweden. In Sweden I am not charged—I have already been previously cleared [by the Senior Stockholm Prosecutor Eva Finne]. We were not certain exactly what would happen there, but then we know that the Swedish government has refused to say that they will not extradite me to the United States—we know they have extradited 100% of people whom the US has requested since at least 2000. So over the last 15 years, every single person the US has tried to extradite from Sweden has been extradited, and they refuse to provide a guarantee [that won’t happen].

Pilger: People often ask me how you cope with the isolation in here.

Assange: Look, one of the best attributes of human beings is that they’re adaptable; one of the worst attributes of human beings is they are adaptable.ĚýThey adapt and start to tolerate abuses, they adapt to being involved themselves in abuses, they adapt to adversity and they continue on. So in my situation, frankly, I’m a bit institutionalized—this [the embassy] is the world … it’s visually the world [for me].

Pilger: It’s the world without sunlight, for one thing, isn’t it?

Assange: It’s the world without sunlight, but I haven’t seen sunlight in so long, I don’t remember it.

Pilger: Yes.

Assange: So, yes, you adapt.ĚýThe one real irritant is that my young children, they also adapt. They adapt to being without their father. That’s a hard, hard adaption which they didn’t ask for.

Pilger: Do you worry about them?

Assange: Yes, I worry about them; I worry about their mother.

Pilger: Some people would say, “Well, why don’t you end it and simply walk out the door and allow yourself to be extradited to Sweden?”

Assange: The UN [the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention] has looked into this whole situation. They spent 18 months in formal, adversarial litigation. [So it’s] me and the UN versus Sweden and the UK. Who’s right? The UN made a conclusion that I am being arbitrarily detained illegally, deprived of my freedom, and that what has occurred has not occurred within the laws that the United Kingdom and Sweden, and that [those countries] must obey. It is an illegal abuse.ĚýIt is the United Nations formally asking, “What’s going on here? What is your legal explanation for this? [Assange] says that you should recognize his asylum.” [And here is]

Sweden formally writing back to the United Nations to say, “No, we’re not going to [recognize the UN ruling],” so leaving open their ability to extradite.

I just find it absolutely amazing that the narrative about this situation is not put out publicly in the press, because it doesn’t suit the Western establishment narrative—that yes, the West has political prisoners, it’s a reality, it’s not just me, there’s a bunch of other people as well.ĚýThe West has political prisoners. Of course, no state accepts [that it should call] the people it is imprisoning or detaining for political reasons, political prisoners. They don’t call them political prisoners in China, they don’t call them political prisoners in Azerbaijan, and they don’t call them political prisoners in the United States, UK or Sweden. It is absolutely intolerable to have that kind of self-perception.

Here we have a case, the Swedish case, where I have never been charged with a crime, where I have already been cleared [by the Stockholm prosecutor] and found to be innocent, where the woman herself said that the police made it up, where the United Nations formally said the whole thing is illegal, where the state of Ecuador also investigated and found that I should be given asylum.ĚýThose are the facts, but what is the rhetoric?

Pilger: Yes, it’s different.

Assange: The rhetoric is pretending, constantly pretending that I have been charged with a crime, and never mentioning that I have been already previously cleared, never mentioning that the woman herself says that the police made it up. [The rhetoric] is trying to avoid [the truth that] the UN formally found that the whole thing is illegal, never even mentioning that Ecuador made a formal assessment through its formal processes and found that yes, I am subject to persecution by the United States.

*[John Pilger’s articles and films can be found on his . This interview has been republished with permission from Mr. Pilger.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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What we read in newspapersĚýisn’t just a list of facts or an objective account of an actual event. It’s always an exercise in style, such as thisĚý. I love creative journalism. Well, actually I hate this particular type of it, but I love having a go at deconstructing it. So here we go.

The title promises an exciting read even before we understand the context: “As Democrats Gather, A Russian Sublot Raises Intrigue.” The reader will get the impressionĚýthat this could be a compendious John Le CarrĂŠ novel. It sounds likeĚýsomething akin to terrorism. The word “subplot” followed by “intrigue”—although literally used in the sense of curiosity, it subtly connotes conspiracy—clearly suggests subterfuge and criminal complicity. “As Democrats Gather” establishes a setting that sounds friendly and harmonious. As in a Hollywood horror film, theĚýgathering DemocratsĚýare designated as the innocent, unsuspecting community of targeted victims on whom the horror will be unleashed. For the moment, we have no reason to suspect that the subject at the heart of the article is the recently broken scandal of intercepted that revealed the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) tipping of the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Let’s look first at one key sentence from the lead paragraphs of the article, a gem of journalistic style worth spending the time to deconstruct. Here’s where we first get an idea of what the article will be describing:

“But the release on Friday of some 20,000 stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, many of them embarrassing to Democratic leaders, has intensified discussion of the role of Russian intelligence agencies in disrupting the 2016 campaign.”

“Stolen emails” tells us we are confronted with not just a petty crime (20,000ĚýindicatesĚýit isn’t petty), but a form of lèse-majestĂŠ, an affront against our sacred privacy, a cross-border act of evil intention that is worse than an ordinary crime because, as we quickly learn, it has a sinister international dimension. By the end of the sentence we learnĚýthat the guilty party is “Russian intelligence.”

Goal of the Crime

But before we can identify the culprit, we need to appreciate the goalĚýof the crime, “embarrassing Democratic leaders.” This tells us why we should be reading this. From a journalistic point of view, the embarrassment of leaders makes for great copy. It’s even become a major trend I wrote about .ĚýThe story we are about to read isn’t just important. It is also titillating. Who doesn’t enjoy hearing aboutĚýthe powerful being humiliated?

The next thing we read is that the crime “has intensified discussion of the role of …”—a dramatic way of saying we are about to talk about what are, for the moment, nothing more than tendentious rumors, while carefully obscuringĚýthe fact that they are both tendentious and rumors. We are nevertheless intriguingly informed with these words that things have becomeĚýintense.

Then comes the climax we were waiting for, “a crime of our enemy, Russian intelligence.” Russia is peremptorily designated asĚý“our enemy,” something which hasn’t been the case since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Those who remember 2009 will know that newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had “reset” the relationship between the two nations, cancelling the very idea of enmity.

But our diligent journalists are making sure we understand what they understand. This is where we should ask ourselves, who are the authors and what do they mean byĚý“ourĚýenemy”? Should we imagine that “our” refers to an enemy of The New York Times? No, our pair of journalists are making it clear that we—you and I, the readers as well as the authors themselves—feel that we are together in this, as a people. Russia is America’s enemy, our common enemy, an enemy we can share among ourselves.

Of course, the authors bringĚýforwardĚýnothing to justify considering Russia as an enemy. They are simply counting on the reader’s reflex of feeling that Russia is “our enemy.” When we learn that it the enemy they are referring to isn’t just Russia in general, but that fearful entity known as Russian “intelligence” we can feel authentically frightened. We’ve been transportedĚýmomentarily into the cultural space of a James Bond movie.

This is when we get a special surprise. The aim of this sinister initiative is described as Ěý“disrupting the 2016 campaign.” This suggests the lovely fiction that all was going smoothly until then in the Republican and Democratic primaries. There was no drama, certainly no low blows or tampering as the two champions, Trump and Clinton, progressed valiantlyĚýthrough the ordeal of the long months of primaries to earn their nominations. In the end we find the calm splendor of Amityville awaiting the ghastly horror we, as spectators, bought tickets to see. We are invited to think that theĚý2016 campaign was Norman Rockwell’s America before the Russians barged in.

We are thus compelled to understandĚýthat this is clearly a gratuitous, evil foreign invasion, something far more fearful than finding out and reflecting on the fact that DNC had undermined its own democratic principles by seeking to sabotage the Sanders campaign. This is journalism that tells you how to think, because it supposes you don’t need to. All that in one sentence.

Rhetorical Ploys

But the article has only begun to create its intriguing story. Just before the sentence we’ve just looked at, the authors had taken the trouble to whet our appetite with this question:ĚýIs Valdimir V. Putin trying to meddle in the American presidential election?ĚýAs we read the article we expect to see evidence that will support this. So we must keep on reading.

Instead of pursuing the logic of the Clinton campaign’s strategy, the authors develop an entirely imaginative, if not imaginary, scenario that involves not only unidentified Russians as well as Putin himself, but also—wait for this—Donald Trump. The story is beginning to be worthy of Alex Jones.

What we do see is an elaborate construct of speculation that takes us further and further away from the issue of the stolen emails and their content.ĚýLeaving aside the ethical issue of how the DNC might justify violating its own principle of objectivity—attacking a legitimate, popular candidate—readers of as serious a newspaper as The New York Times might at this point expect to see the analysis focusing on the more interesting point: how the Democrats, by launching this accusation against Russia, were dodging the real issues by constructing aĚýstrategic defense against embarrassment.

The journalists could have pointed out that this is a somewhat typical case of using the tactic of deviating the discussion toward an imaginary but more serious event: foreign interference in our democratic process. Had they pursued this idea they would have had the opportunity to teach us a lot about how political strategy works and, in this particular case, also throw light on a visibleĚýtrend promoted inĚýthe media of branding Russia—a country with which we have no formal conflict—ourĚýenemy.

But these are themes that most of the media avoid developing probably because it would require tact and subtle analysis—something for which readers are assumed to have no time or patience.

Good Journalism

The trigger for the article was a statement by Ron Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager. Good journalism would immediately have focused on his motives for making that statement. But at no point do the journalists even consider this. His opinion is the story, not how he formed that opinion. The obvious observation would have been to point out that this is a classicĚýwag the dogĚýstrategy—an attempt to distractĚýfrom the actual and tangible scandal of the emails and develop a more exciting and frightening talking point:ĚýtheĚýscandal of not just Russian but Putin’s personal interference in American election processes.ĚýThreatened by the effects of their own scandal, the Democratic establishment preferred creating the idea of a threat to all of us fromĚýour enemy.

Instead of pursuing the logic of the Clinton campaign’s strategy, the authors develop an entirely imaginative, if not imaginary, scenario that involves not only unidentified Russians as well as Putin himself, but also—wait for this—Donald Trump. The story is beginning to be worthy of Alex Jones. The journalists begin by quoting verbatim Mook’s sensationalist claim that the emails were leaked “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump,” a speculative and tendentious attribution of intention and agency that serious journalists should immediately query.

At the same time they shouldĚýpoint outĚýhow predictable this would be from the mouth of the head ofĚýClinton’sĚýpresidential campaign. But rather than query it and remind the reader of Mook’s political motive, they are content with approvingly citing his own analysis which “also suggested that the Russians might have a good reason to support Mr. Trump.”

This is wonderfully creative journalism, whose effects of style are again worth analyzing. Let’s have a closer look. Ron Mook, the interested party who launched the story,ĚýsuggestedĚý(i.e. gave a self-interested interpretation) that the RussiansĚýmight haveĚý(i.e. are not known to have) aĚýgood reasonĚý(i.e. we know nothing about their actual motives and intentions) to support Trump (the other declared enemy, this time of the Democrats, not the Americans).

The fanciful lack of substance continues in anotherĚýsentence that ends tellingly: “Whether the thefts were ordered by Mr. Putin, or just carried out by apparatchiks who thought they might please him, is anyone’s guess.”

This is a clever rhetorical ploy. Although there is no conclusive evidence for either hypothesis, by offering the choice between the two, the reader is invited to select the most likely to be true and is left feeling that one of them must be valid. It’s either this Russian or those Russians—take your choice. Binary algorithmic processing always does the trick. In its perverse way, this can be compared to the “opportunity” Americans have in 2016 to express their deepest, most sincere democratic ideals by choosing between Clinton and Trump.

But we haven’t finished. As the article continues, following the threads suggested by Mook, we learn yet another technique for making the speculative appear to be substantial, this time with the key phrase—“would be among”: “But the theft from the national committee would be among the most important state-sponsored hacks yet of an American organization …”

It combines a conditional (would be) and a superlative (most important), but of course we are told nothing either about the conditions or the points of comparison. It sounds dire, though, so it must be effective. And yet the implied dire comparison appears singularly weak when the journalists admit later in the article: “Intrusions for intelligence collection are hardly unusual, and the United States often does the same, stealing emails and other secrets from intelligence services and even political parties.”

Learning to read, unpack, deconstruct the texts that concern our lives is a particular skill we cultivate in the realm of one of the arts, literature. Largely neglected in the past and threatened in the present, it should be developed in schools.

And then, we get this:Ěý“It is unclear how WikiLeaks obtained the email trove. But the presumption is that the intelligence agencies turned it over, either directly or through an intermediary … Moreover, the timing of the release … seems too well planned to be coincidental.”

The lack of facts to work with couldn’t be more obvious, but this doesn’t prevent the journalists from getting the job done. Our thinking is carefully guided towards the desired form of speculation: “seems too well planned to be coincidental.”

Seems? Seems?ĚýAn honest journalist should take Hamlet’s wisdom to heart and counter: “‘Seems,’ madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems.’” But “is” requires checking for truth. And if the truth isn’t available, there will be no story.

Finally, the rhetoric moves to another dimension when the journalists consider another declared enemy of the United States, WikiLeaks: “But the release to WikiLeaks adds another strange element, because it suggests that the intelligence findings are being “weaponized”—used to influence the election in some way.”

The concept itself is strange,Ěýweaponized emails.ĚýBut the newspaper that did the most to support George W. Bush’s pursuit of imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq back in 2003 may well have developed a culture of seeing weapons everywhere.

Coda and Warning

I hope that I have been able to establish that although appearing in a “newspaper of reference,” this is clearly a partisan article that exploits sensationalism and a certain number of pop cultural memes at the expense of political analysis, but uses a degree of detail that makes it appear seriously analytical. Caveat lector. Let the reader beware.

This articleĚýexemplifies a certain type ofĚýjournalism with a purpose and a style. The style may, in certain cases, obscure the purpose. We need to understand what journalists and politicians are trying to tell us. We need as a society to develop skills that enable us to do that. We live increasingly in a world of shifting perspectives and multiple subjectivities. We can and must acquire the tools to make sense of our world.

A personal note:ĚýI studied literature in three universities in two different countries and somewhere along the line learned the importance of what we call close reading. This is the tool I’ve used to write this article.

Today, among politicians, all the emphasis in education is on what is called STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Some generous souls would like to include the Arts to make a program called STEAM. In our hyper-technological world, all of the arts are important, if only because they take us outside of and beyond our increasingly materially constructed environment of devices and gadgets, allowing us to achieve a more holistic view of the universe we live in.

Creativity and imagination, which can and should be applied to technology and mathematics, are born in the domain of the arts. They should always occupy an important place on their own and at the same time accompany the development of the technical competencies our 21^stĚýcentury civilization seems to privilege. Learning to read, unpack, deconstruct the texts that concern our lives is a particular skill we cultivate in the realm of one of the arts, literature. Largely neglected in the past and threatened in the present, it should be developed in schools. It is the only hope we have of making sense of a world in which we are all called upon to see ourselves as responsible citizens.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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One of the epic miscarriages of justice of our time is unraveling. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention—the international tribunal that adjudicates and decides whether governments comply with their human rights obligations—has ruled that has been detained unlawfully by Britain and Sweden.

After five years of fighting to clear his name—having been smeared relentlessly yet charged with no crime—Assange is closer to justice and vindication, and perhaps freedom, than at any time since he was arrested and held in London under a European Extradition Warrant, itself now discredited by parliament.

The United Nations Working Group bases its judgments on the European Convention on Human Rights and three other treaties that are binding on all its signatories. Both Britain and Sweden participated in the 16-month long United Nations (UN) investigation and submitted evidence and defended their position before the tribunal. It would fly contemptuously in the face of international law if they did not comply with the judgment and allow Assange to leave the refuge granted to him by the Ecuadorean government in its London embassy.

In previous, celebrated cases ruled upon by the Working Group—Aung Sang Suu Kyi in , imprisoned opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, detained Washington Post journalist in Iran—both Britain and Sweden have given support to the tribunal. The difference now is that Assange’s persecution and confinement endures in the heart of London.

The Background

The Assange case has never been primarily about allegations of sexual misconduct in Sweden, where the Stockholm chief prosecutor, Eva Finne, dismissed the case, saying: “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” One of the women involved accused the police of fabricating evidence and “railroading” her, protesting that she “did not want to accuse JA of anything,” and a second prosecutor mysteriously reopened the case after political intervention, but then stalled it.

The Assange affair is rooted across the Atlantic in Pentagon-dominated Washington, obsessed with pursuing and prosecuting whistleblowers, especially Julian Assange for having exposed, in WikiLeaks, US capital crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of civilians and contempt for sovereignty and international law.ĚýNone of this truth-telling is illegal under the US Constitution. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal.”

Obama, the betrayer, has since prosecuted more whistleblowers than all the US presidents combined. The courageous Chelsea Manning is serving 35 years in prison, having been tortured during her long pre-trial detention.

Ecuador Embassy Š Shutterstock

The prospect of a similar fate has hung over Assange like a Damocles sword. According to documents released by , Assange is on a “Manhunt target list.” US Vice President Joe Biden has called him a “cyber terrorist.” In Alexandra, Virginia, a secret grand jury has attempted to concoct a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted in a court. Even though he is not an American, he is currently being fitted up with an espionage law dredged up from a century ago when it was used to silence conscientious objectors during World War I; the Espionage Act has provisions of both life imprisonment and the death penalty.

Assange’s ability to defend himself in this Kafkaesque world has been handicapped by the US declaring his case a state secret. A federal court has blocked the release of all information about what is known as the “national security” investigation of WikiLeaks.

The supporting act in this charade has been played by the second Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny. Until recently, Ny had refused to comply with a routine European procedure that required her to travel to London to question Assange and so advance the case that James Catlin, one of Assange’s barristers, called “a laughing stock … it’s as if they make it up as they go along.”

Indeed, even before Assange had left Sweden for London in 2010, Ny made no attempt to question him. In the years since, she has never properly explained, even to her own judicial authorities, why she has not completed the case she so enthusiastically reignited—just as the she has never explained why she has refused to give Assange a guarantee that he will not be extradited to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In 2010, The Independent in London revealed that the two governments had discussed Assange’s onward extradition.

Then there is tiny, brave Ecuador. One of the reasons Ecuador granted Julian Assange political asylum was that his own government, in Australia, had offered him none of the help to which he had a legal right and so abandoned him. Australia’s collusion with the United States against its own citizen is evident in leaked documents; no more faithful vassals has America than the obeisant politicians of the Antipodes.

Freeing Assange

Four years ago, in Sydney, I spent several hours with Malcolm Turnbull, a Liberal member of the Federal Parliament. We discussed the threats to Assange and their wider implications for freedom of speech and justice, and why Australia was obliged to stand by him. Turnbull is now the prime minister of Australia and, as I write, is attending an international conference on Syria hosted the British government—about a 15-minute cab ride from the room that Julian Assange has occupied for three and a half years in the small Ecuadorean embassy just along from Harrods. The Syria connection is relevant if unreported; it was WikiLeaks which revealed that the US had long planned to overthrow the Assad government in Syria.

Today, as he meets and greets, Prime Minister Turnbull has an opportunity to contribute a modicum of purpose and truth to the conference by speaking up for his unjustly imprisoned compatriot, for whom he showed such concern when we met.ĚýAll he need do is quote the judgment of the UN Working Party on Arbitrary Detention. Will he reclaim this shred of Australia’s reputation in the decent world?

What is certain is that the decent world owes much to Julian Assange. He told us how indecent power behaves in secret, how it lies and manipulates and engages in great acts of violence, sustaining wars that kill and maim and turn millions into the refugees now in the news. Telling us this truth alone earns Assange his freedom, whereas justice is his right.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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is misleadingly mistitled, given that it was not written by Julian Assange. Nonetheless, he collaborated for a time with the author, Andrew O’Hagan, but never legitimated the work as his own statement or verified it with respect to facts. He certainly supplied information—precisely what we may never know—with a view to publication in satisfactory form. Nothing did take shape to his satisfaction, but the title was published regardless in 2012.

In early 2014, O’Hagan followed up with an article titled “,” which relates impressions of his encounter with Assange. As the complementary insult for injurious aspects of the former work, it was received with much . Even presented a cut-and-paste digest of “Ghosting” as an article, ending with its only noteworthy compliment—perhaps to suggest a fair and balanced nature.ĚýThe latter quote, at least, is worth reproducing:

“At the time of the Egyptian uprising,Ěý[Hosni] MubarakĚýtried to close down the country’s mobile phone network, a service that came throughĚýCanada. Julian and his gang hacked into Nortel and fought againstĚýMubarak’sĚýofficial hackers to reverse the process. The revolution continued and Julian was satisfied, sitting back in our remote kitchen eating chocolates.

“What Julian lacked in efficiency or professionalism he made up for in courage. What he lacked in carefulness he made up for in impact.”

But apparently nothing made up forĚýAssange’sĚýneglect of O’Hagan’s writing assignment. Nor did he seem to recover in the latter’s estimation from displaying such hubris as to respond in kind with criticism to important people and institutions that had previously co-operated withĚýWikiLeaks.

After all, consider it from their point of view: Shouldn’t it be preposterous that so many respected figures could be wrong together while the solitary object of their ire was right? Any structural problem that vast in society would be glaring through resulting atrocities.

Yet the ultimate hub of intellectual and physical atrocity, war of deceitful choice, must be due to some problem of that description, since it commandeered the English-speaking world for invasion of Iraq. Without such deep malaise, it would also be difficult to explain how the article above can typify current journalism. So it is by no means preposterous for this lone voice to be right while the provoked syndicate errs.

Defamation by Psycho-dramatic Narrative

One has to be fair to O’Hagan by granting that he writes in a fairly nuanced way that is at least compelling enough to keep you scanning the sentences. But if you bring a critical mindset to something like the excerpt below, you might not be so readily spellbound or consequently swayed.

“‘I have been detained,’ he said, ‘without charge, for 1000 days.’ And there it is, the old conflation, implying that his detention is to do with his work against secret-keepers in America. It is not. He was detained at Ellingham Hall while appealing against a request to extradite him toĚýSwedenĚýto answer questions relating to two rape allegations. A man who conflates such truths loses his moral authority right there: I tried to spell this out to him while writing the book, but he wouldn’t listen, sometimes suggesting I was naive not to consider the rape allegations to have been a ‘’ set by dark foreign forces, or that the Swedes were merely keen to extradite him to America. Because he has no ability to see through other people’s eyes he can’t see how dishonest this conflation seems even to supporters such as me. It was a trap he built for himself when he refused to go toĚýSweden and instead went into the embassy of a nation not famous for its respect for freedom of speech. He will always have an answer to these points. But there is no real answer. He made a massive tactical error in not going toĚýSwedenĚýto clear his name.”

O’Hagan asserts here thatĚýAssange’sĚýdetention has nothing to do with work against secret-keepers in America, almost as if it were entailed by the subsequent remark about rape allegations. But no such putative fact is established by anything in the embedding paragraph or essay.

Nor has it been made clear by any other writer, notwithstanding . Rather, much is Ěýthat substantiates the contrary view that political factors have conditioned the case through its unfolding from the beginning. Whether or not he is aware of such documentation, O’Hagan does nothing to accommodate anyone who might take it seriously, offering only dubious narrative with blunt assertion for substance. Perhaps he wishes to evoke an impossibility of dealing with childish irrationality any other way, yet such conceits tend to backfire where adults reserve judgment or respond.

The extent to which opinions can differ about Assange’s predicament is clearly vast, and O’Hagan quickly portrays the contrary view as unreasonable. This constitutes a practical problem. How do you, in Assange’s shoes for instance, reason with those who refuse to take you seriously until you admit the world is the way they see it?

Perhaps you could try massaging their prejudices to some point of amicable agreement, and that might occasionally work one-on-one. But “one-on-world” is a very different situation that calls for sticking to facts, responding to avalanches of distortion in the public space with razor acuity and otherwise throwing all back on their own judgment. Such necessity is obvious on a moment’s reflection, yet this particular reflection is naturally rare. Sadly, it is also needed to counter a naive presumption that the behavior just mentioned is due to arrogance or narcissism.

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Jemima Khan, for instance, just couldn’t understand why Julian didn’t have time to talk her through the flaws in Green’sĚýattack, and this grievance was bandied everywhere as another proof of Assange’s failures. Like O’Hagan, she alsoĚýĚýAssange should have really appreciated AlexĚýGibney’sĚýfilm, We Steal Secrets—the thrust of which is thatĚýWikiLeaksĚýwas a great thing for which Assange deserves credit, though he’s hopelessly lost the plot now. Their received wisdom appears to be that if Assange really cared about the ideals ofĚýWikiLeaks,Ěýhe would not object to such criticism but take the reproof to heart and get on the right track again. He should not be so self-absorbed and instead cooperate more with those holding different views, or being nearer to establishment, since they can help bring the ideal to manifestation.

Yet it is plainly ironic that adherents of this view betray the ideal they affirm by dismissing its unrivaled exponent. Nor is it consistent to pose as worthy of more trust while fomenting antipathy with complaints that his role is not better played.

Aspersive Terms in Scatter-shot

Two pivotal negative words used by O’Hagan are “obsessing” and “paranoid,” of which something should be said in turn. “Julian had lost all those appeals that had so preoccupied him, but was no less preoccupied and no less time-wasting. He was obsessing about the DreamWorks film and said it was bound to be a smear.”

Conveyed in neutral terms, the imparted facts would be unlikely to make the reader surmise that Assange was being obsessive. Indeed, one cannot obsess about something unless it is trivial in context, yet a big-budget movie about WikiLeaks could easily erode the standing of WikiLeaks as an organization. So, the only information conveyed by choice of the term “obsessing” here is that the author describes Assange as obsessive with no evident warrant.

This is the pattern with a host of negative terms on which the article’s impact depends. All the prime examples are showcased in the aforementioned articles, as an automatic result of contemporary news echoing, and as usual, all that gets left out is any thought of how unsound the entire critique may be.

The use of the term “paranoid,” which has long been obligatory when mentioningĚýAssange,Ěýis supposedly vindicated in O’Hagan’s article by reference to things like one mistaken assumption Assange made about being followed, or his checking behind foliage for assassins.

Indeed, someone should let Julian in on the fact that when a raft of public figures and authorities call explicitlyĚýon for your precipitous death, or describe your status as that of an enemy combatant, all they could possibly mean is that they hope to someday give you a big fuzzy cuddle and a huge slice of apple pie. And if you must worry that there might be some other meaning in there, just activate a security plan that banishes any strained response to emerging circumstances. Failing to achieve this, even without an army or bunker, clearly warrants derisory anecdotes.

And really, who should be so bothered byĚýAssange’sĚýprojects as to go after him? Certainly the last James Bond installment vilified a white-haired hacker. But that’s just a movie. Would any set of contractors or public servants on the intrigue side of things actually be moved to act on the official view regarding Assange’sĚýharm or threat to security? In other words, might those who really espouse that view ever take their job seriously? Even bizarrely assuming that none ever would, it strains credulity to around the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, lately exceeding ÂŁ12 million, as intended for Julian’s protection.

Despite that aberrant claim, it seems everyone is meant to know—perhaps because it’s repeated by the right people—thatĚýAssange’s fears for safety are sheer and groundless paranoia. Likewise for other alleged character flaws (arrogance, narcissism,Ěýetc.) such that many writers grant them as fact, whether mostly agreeing with O’Hagan or apologetically begging toĚý. If this counts as swimming with the stream, it might just as well be called splashing in a swamp.

Consider instead a ground rule with merits only limited by our capacity to abide by it: Never take anyone seriously who expects to be believed as to what occurs in another’s mind without supporting it with more than narrative, non-sequiturs or concurrence of bedfellows.

Strip all the latter from O’Hagan’s piece and you have a small set of facts confirming that Julian Assange is in some ways ordinary and in others extraordinary—none of the latter being appalling and several being most laudable. But the moral is not so much about Assange as a literary and media culture of slanderous psychoanalytic conceit.

Perhaps it’s debatable whether it’s ever necessary to indulge besmirching, but if 50 pages of “Ghosting” is worthy of the London Review of Books, then contemporary literature begs for an upturn.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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George Orwell said: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

These are dark times, in which the propaganda of deceit touches all our lives. It is as if political reality has been privatized and illusion legitimized. The information age is a media age. We have politics by media; censorship by media; war by media; retribution by media; diversion by media—a surreal assembly line of clichés and false assumptions.

Wondrous technology has become both our friend and our enemy. Every time we turn on a computer or pick up a digital device—our secular rosary beads—we are subjected to control: to surveillance of our habits and routines, and to lies and manipulation.

Edward Bernays, who invented the term “public relations” as a euphemism for “propaganda,” predicted this more than 80 years ago. He called it “the invisible government.”

He wrote: “Those who manipulate this unseen element of [modern democracy] constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country … We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

The aim of this invisible government is the conquest of us—of our political consciousness, our sense of the world, our ability to think independently, to separate truth from lies.

This is a form of fascism, a word we are rightly cautious about using, preferring to leave it in the flickering past.ĚýBut an insidious modern fascism is now an accelerating danger. As in the 1930s, big lies are delivered with the regularity of a metronome. Muslims are bad. Saudi bigots are good. Islamic State bigots are bad. Russia is always bad. China is getting bad. Bombing Syria is good. Corrupt banks are good. Corrupt debt is good. Poverty is good. War is normal.

Those who question these official truths, this extremism, are deemed in need of a lobotomy—until they are diagnosed on-message. The BBC provides this service free of charge. Failure to submit is to be tagged a “radical”—whatever that means.

Real dissent has become exotic, yet those who dissent have never been more important. is an antidote to a fascism that never speaks its name.

It’s a revolutionary book, just as WikiLeaks itself is revolutionary—exactly as Orwell meant in the quote I used at the beginning.ĚýFor it says that we need not accept these the daily lies. We need not remain silent. Or as Bob Marley once sang: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.”

In the introduction, Julian Assange explains that it is never enough to publish the secret messages of great power: That making sense of them is crucial, as well as placing them in the context of today and historical memory.

That is the remarkable achievement of this anthology, which reclaims our memory. It connects the reasons and the crimes that have caused so much human turmoil—from Vietnam and Central America, to the Middle East and Eastern Europe, with the matrix of rapacious power: the United States.

There is currently an American and European attempt to destroy the government of Syria. British Prime Minister David Cameron is especially keen. This is the same Cameron I remember as an unctuous PR man employed by an asset stripper of Britain’s independent commercial television.

Cameron, Obama and the ever obsequious Francois Hollande want to destroy the last remaining multicultural authority in Syria, an action that will surely make way for the fanatics of the Islamic State.

This is insane, of course, and the big lie justifying this insanity is that it is in support of Syrians who rose against Bashar al-Assad in the Arab Spring. As The WikiLeaks Files reveals, the destruction of Syria has long been a cynical imperial project that pre-dates the Arab Spring uprising against Assad.

To the rulers of the world in Washington and Europe, Syria’s true crime is not the oppressive nature of its government, but its independence from American and Israeli power—just as Iran’s true crime is its independence, and Russia’s true crime is its independence and China’s true crime is its independence. In an American-owned world, independence is intolerable.

This book reveals these truths, one after the other—the truth about a War on Terror that was always a war of terror; the truth about Guantanamo; the truth about Iraq, Afghanistan and Latin America.

Never has such truth-telling been so urgently needed. With honorable exceptions, those in the media paid ostensibly to keep the record straight are now absorbed into a system of propaganda that is no longer journalism, but anti-journalism. This is true of the liberal and respectable as it is of Rupert Murdoch. Unless you are prepared to monitor and deconstruct every specious assertion, so-called news has become unwatchable and unreadable.

Reading The WikiLeaks Files, I remembered the words of the late Howard Zinn, who often referred to “a power that governments can’t suppress.” That describes WikiLeaks, and it describes true whistleblowers who share their courage.

On a personal note, I have known the people of WikiLeaks for some time now. That they have achieved what they have in circumstances not of their choosing is a source of constant admiration. Their rescue of Edward Snowden comes to mind. Like him, they are heroic—nothing less.

Sarah Harrison’s chapter, “Indexing the Empire,” describes how she and her comrades set up an entire Public Library of US Diplomacy. There are more than 2 million documents, now available to all. “Our work,” she writes, “is dedicated to making sure history belongs to everyone.”ĚýHow thrilling it is to read those words, which also stand as a tribute to her own courage.

From the confinement of a room in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, the courage of Julian Assange is an eloquent response to the cowards who have smeared him and the rogue power seeking revenge on him and waging a war on democracy. None of this has deterred Assange and his comrades at WikiLeaks—not one bit. Isn’t that something?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Author’s Note: This is an updated version of John Pilger’s 2014 , which tells the unreported story of an unrelenting campaign to deny Julian Assange justice and silence WikiLeaks—a campaign now reaching a dangerous stage.

The siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a grueling farce.ĚýFor three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean Embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. It has costĚýÂŁ12 million. The quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given to him by a brave South American country. His “crime” is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.

The persecution of is about to flare again as it enters a dangerous stage. FromĚýAugust 20, three-quarters of the Swedish prosecutor’s case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as the statute of limitations expires. At the same time, Washington’s obsession with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive American power that offers the greatest threat—as Chelsea Manning and those still held in can attest.

The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in and : the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the United States, having just published top secret US intercepts—American spies’ reports detailing private phone calls of French presidents and German chancellors and other senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic affairs.

None of this is illegal under the US Constitution. As a presidential candidate in 2008, , a professor of constitutional law, lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal.” In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his first term than all other US presidents combined. Before Chelsea Manning had even received a trial, Obama had pronounced the whistleblower guilty. Manning was subsequently sentenced to 35 years in prison, having been tortured during his long pre-trial detention.

The Prosecutor

Few doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. Threats of the capture and assassination of Assange became the currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice-President Joe Biden’s preposterous slur that the WikiLeaks founder was a “cyber-terrorist.” Those doubting the degree of ruthlessness Assange can expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian president’s plane in 2013—wrongly believed to be carrying .

According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a “Manhunt target list.” Washington’s bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is “unprecedented in scale and nature.” In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has spent five years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers.

Faced with this constitutional hurdle, the US Justice Department has contrived charges of “espionage,” “conspiracy to commit espionage,” “conversion” (theft of government property), “computer fraud and abuse” (computer hacking) and general “conspiracy.” The Espionage Act has life in prison and death penalty provisions.

Assange’s ability to defend himself in this Kafkaesque world has been handicapped by the US declaring his case a state secret. In March, a federal court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the “national security” investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was “active and ongoing” and would harm the “pending prosecution” of Assange. The judge, Barbara J. Rothstein, said it was necessary to show “appropriate deference to the executive in matters of national security.” Such is the “justice” of a kangaroo court.

The supporting act in this grim farce is Sweden, played by the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny. Until recently, Ny refused to comply with a routine European procedure that required her to travel to London to question Assange and so advance the case. For four and a half years, Ny has never properly explained why she has refused to visit London, just as Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010,ĚýThe Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US.

Contrary to its 1960s reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret “renditions” by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the United Nations Committee Against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables. In summer 2010, Assange had flown to Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the Afghanistan War—in which Sweden had forces under US command.

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“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”

Why hasn’t the Swedish prosecutor resolved the Assange case?ĚýMany in the legal community in Sweden believe her behavior inexplicable. Once implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines such as: “Go to London, for God’s sake.”

Why hasn’t she? More to the point, why won’t she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won’t she hand them over to Assange’s Swedish lawyers? Ny says she is not legally required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn’t she question him? And if she did question him, the conditions she would demand of him and his lawyers—that they could not challenge her—would make injustice a near certainty.

On a point of law, the Swedish Supreme Court has decided Ny can continue to obstruct on the vital issue of the SMS messages. This will now go to the European Court of Human Rights. What Ny fears is that the SMS messages will destroy her case against Assange. One of the messages makes clear that one of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him.” She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test.” She “did not want to accuse JA [Julian Assange] of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges.” (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her.”)

The Case

Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” That they were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident—whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga that blights the reputation of Sweden itself.

For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On August 20, 2010, Swedish police opened a “rape investigation” and immediately—and unlawfully—told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for Assange’s arrest for the “rape of two women.” This was the news that went round the world.

In Washington, a smiling US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that the arrest “sounds like good news to me.” Twitter accounts associated with the Pentagon described Assange as a “rapist” and a “fugitive.”

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Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm chief prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.”ĚýThe file was closed.

Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high profile politician in the Social Democratic Party, then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well, personally and politically.

OnĚýAugust 30, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case. Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.” Assange’s Australian barrister, James Catlin, responded, “This is a laughing stock … it’s as if they make it up as they go along.”

On the day Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service—which has the acronym MUST—publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers.” Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Sweden sheltered him.

For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the new investigation to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq “War Logs,” based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee. His lawyer in Stockholm asked Ny if she had any objection to his leaving the country. She said he was free to leave.

Inexplicably, as soon as he left Sweden—at the height of media and public interest in the WikiLeaks disclosures—Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol “red alert,” which is normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals. Put out in five languages around the world, it ensured a media frenzy.

Assange attended a police station in London, was arrested and spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on ÂŁ340,000 bail, he was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the Supreme Court. He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers repeated his offer to be questioned by Ny in London, pointing out that she had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility at Scotland Yard commonly used for that purpose. She refused.

Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote:

“The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction … The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will. [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?”

This question remained unanswered as Ny deployed the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), a draconian and now discreditedĚýĚýproduct of the “War on Terror” supposedly designed to catch terrorists and organized criminals. The EAW had abolished the obligation on a petitioning state to provide any evidence of a crime. More than a thousand EAWs are issued each month; only a few have anything to do with potential “terror” charges. Most are issued for trivial offences, such as overdue bank charges and fines. Many of those extradited face months in prison without charge. There have been a number of shocking miscarriages of justice, of which British judges have been highly critical.

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UK Courts

The Assange case finally reached the UK Supreme Court in May 2012. In a judgment that upheld the EAW—whose rigid demands had left the courts almost no room for maneuver—the judges found that European prosecutors could issue extradition warrants in Britain without any judicial oversight, even though Parliament intended otherwise. They made clear that Parliament had been “misled” by the Blair government. The court was split, 5-2, and consequently found against Assange.

However, the chief justice, Lord Phillips, made one mistake. He applied the Vienna Convention on treaty interpretation, allowing for state practice to override the letter of the law. As Assange’s barrister, Dinah Rose QC, pointed out, this did not apply to the EAW.

The Supreme Court only recognized this crucial error when it dealt with another appeal against the EAW in November 2013. The Assange decision had been wrong, but it was too late to go back. With extradition imminent, the Swedish prosecutor told Assange’s lawyers that, once in Sweden, he would be immediately placed in one of Sweden’s infamous remand prisons.

Assange’s choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his last opportunity for refuge and safety. Supported by most of Latin America, the courageous government of Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis of documented evidence and legal advice that he faced the prospect of cruel and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and colluded with Washington. The Labor government of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard had even threatened to take away his passport.

Gareth Peirce, the renowned human rights lawyer who represents Assange in London, wrote to then-Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd:

“Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions … it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”

It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she raised. In a meeting this author attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew “only what I read in the newspapers” about the details of the case.

Meanwhile, the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice was drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks were aimed at a man not charged with any crime, yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, to freedom of speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious.

Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. The editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years.” It became part of his marketing plan to raise the newspaper’s cover price.

With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous.” They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean Embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh.”

The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons the British Parliament reformed the Extradition Act to prevent the misuse of the EAW. The draconian catch-all used against him could not happen now; charges would have to be brought and “questioning” would be insufficient grounds for extradition. “His case has been won lock, stock and barrel,” Gareth Peirce told this author. “these changes in the law mean that the UK now recognizes as correct everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit.” In other words, the change in British law in 2014 mean that Assange would have won his case and he would not have been forced to take refuge.

One Room

Ecuador’s decision to protect Assange in 2012 bloomed into a major international affair. Even though the granting of asylum is a humanitarian act, and the power to do so is enjoyed by all states under international law, both Sweden and the United Kingdom refused to recognize the legitimacy of Ecuador’s decision. Ignoring international law, the Cameron government refused to grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador. Instead, Ecuador’s embassy was placed under siege and its government abused with a series of ultimatums. When William Hague’s Foreign Office threatened to violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, warning that it would remove the diplomatic inviolability of the embassy and send the police in to get Assange, outrage across the world forced the government to back down. During one night, police appeared at the windows of the embassy in an obvious attempt to intimidate Assange and his protectors.

Since then, Julian Assange has been confined to a small room under Ecuador’s protection, without sunlight or space to exercise, surrounded by police under orders to arrest him on sight. For three years, Ecuador has made clear to the Swedish prosecutor that Assange is available to be questioned in the London embassy, and for three years Marianne Ny has remained intransigent. In the same period, Sweden has questioned 44 people in the UK in connection with police investigations. Her role, and that of the Swedish state, is demonstrably political; and for Ny, facing retirement in two years, she must “win.”

In despair, Assange has challenged the arrest warrant in the Swedish courts. His lawyers have cited rulings by the European Court of Human Rights that he has been under arbitrary, indefinite detention, and that he had been a virtual prisoner for longer than any actual prison sentence he might face. The Court of Appeal judge agreed with Assange’s lawyers: The prosecutor had indeed breached her duty by keeping the case suspended for years. Another judge issued a rebuke to the prosecutor. And yet she defied the court.

Last December, Assange took his case to the Swedish Supreme Court, which ordered Marianne Ny’s boss—the Prosecutor General of Sweden Anders Perklev—to explain. The next day, Ny announced, without explanation, that she had changed her mind and would now question Assange in London.

In his submission to the Supreme Court, the prosecutor general made some important concessions: He argued that the coercion of Assange had been “intrusive” and that that the period in the embassy has been a “great strain” on him. He even conceded that if the matter had ever come to prosecution, trial, conviction and serving a sentence in Sweden, Julian Assange would have left Sweden long ago.

In a split decision, one Supreme Court judge argued that the arrest warrant should have been revoked. The majority of the judges ruled that, since the prosecutor had now said she would go to London, Assange’s arguments had become “moot.” But the court ruled that it would have found against the prosecutor if she had not suddenly changed her mind. Justice by caprice. Writing in the Swedish press, a former Swedish prosecutor, Rolf Hillegren, accused Ny of losing all impartiality. He described her personal investment in the case as “abnormal” and demanded that she be replaced.

Having said she would go to London in June, Ny did not go, but she sent a deputy, knowing that the questioning would not be legal under these circumstances, especially as Sweden had not bothered to get Ecuador’s approval for the meeting. At the same time, her office tipped off the Swedish tabloid newspaperĚýExpressen, which sent its London correspondent to wait outside Ecuador’s embassy for “news.” The news was that Ny was cancelling the appointment and blaming Ecuador for the confusion and by implication an “unco-operative” Assange—when the opposite was true.

As the statute of limitations date approaches—August 20—another chapter in this hideous story will doubtlessly unfold, with Marianne Ny pulling yet another rabbit out of her hat and the commissars and prosecutors in Washington the beneficiaries. Perhaps none of this is surprising.ĚýIn 2008, a war on WikiLeaks and on Julian Assange was foretold in a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch.” It described a detailed plan to destroy the feeling of “trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “center of gravity.” This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution.” Silencing and criminalizing such a rare source of truth-telling was the aim, smear the method. While this scandal continues, the very notion of justice is diminished, along with the reputation of Sweden, and the shadow of America’s menace touches us all.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:ĚýĚý/ / /Ěý

We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. YourĚýĚýis tax-deductible. Join over 400 people to become a donor or you could choose to be aĚý.

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, the founder and editor of WikiLeaks, has now been a refugee in the Ecuador Embassy in London for three years.

The key issue in his extraordinary incarceration is justice. He has been charged with no crime. The first Swedish prosecutor dismissed the misconduct allegations regarding two women in Stockholm in 2010. The second Swedish prosecutor’s actions were and are demonstrably political. Until recently, she refused to come to London to interview Assange. Finally, when the British government almost pleaded with her to come, she agreed. She has now cancelled her trip.

The entire episode is a , but one with grim consequences for Assange, should he dare step outside the Ecuador Embassy. The US criminal investigation against him and WikiLeaks—for the “crime” of exercising a right enshrined in the US constitution, to tell unpalatable truths—is “unprecedented in scale and nature,” according to US documents. For this, Assange faces much of a lifetime in the hellhole of a US supermax prison if he leaves the protection of Ecuador in London.

The Swedish allegations are no more than a sideshow to this—the SMS messages between the women involved, read by lawyers, alone would exonerate him. They refer to the accusations as “made up” by the police. In the police report, one of the women says she was “railroaded” by Swedish police. What a disgrace this is for Sweden’s justice system.

Julian Assange is a refugee under international law, and he should be given the right of passage by the British government out of the United Kingdom to Ecuador. The nonsense about him “jumping bail” is just that—nonsense. If his extradition case went through the British courts today, the European Arrest Warrant would be thrown out and he would be a free man.

So what is the British government trying to prove by its absurd police cordon around an embassy whose refuge Assange has no intention of giving up? Why don’t they let him go? Why is a man charged with no crime having to spend three years in one room, without light, in the heart of London?

The Assange case amplifies many truths, and one is the accelerating, global totalitarianism of Washington, regardless of who is elected president.

I am often asked if I think Assange has been “forgotten.” It is my experience that countless ordinary people all over the world, especially in Australia, his homeland, understand perfectly well the injustice being meted out to Julian Assange. They credit him and WikiLeaks with having performed an epic public service by informing millions about what the powerful plan for them behind their backs, the lies governments and their vested interests tell, the violence they initiate. Power that is corrupt loathes this, because it is true democracy in action.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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The post The Injustice Handed Out To Julian Assange Must End appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Embassy in has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given to him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.

The persecution of must end. Even the government clearly believes it must end. On October 28, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told parliament he would “actively welcome” the prosecutor in London and “we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that.” The tone was impatient.

The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 — even though Swedish law allows for it and the procedure is routine for and . The documentary evidence of a threat to Assange’s life and freedom from the United States — should he leave the embassy — is overwhelming. On May 14 this year, court files revealed that a “multi subject investigation” against Assange was “active and ongoing.”

Ny has never properly explained why she will not come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and . In December 2010, The Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US before the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) was issued.

Perhaps an explanation is that, contrary to its reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret “renditions,” including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee Against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and cables. In summer 2010, Assange had been in Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the Afghanistan War — in which Sweden had forces under US command.

The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in and : the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up; and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables.

A “Manhunt Target List”

For his part in disclosing how US soldiers murdered and civilians, the heroic soldier received a sentence of 35 years, having been held for more than a thousand days in conditions which, according to the UN special rapporteur, amounted to torture.

The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On October 28, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told parliament he would “actively welcome” the Swedish prosecutor in London and “we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that.”

Few doubt that should the Americans get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. Threats of capture and assassination became the currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice President ’s preposterous slur that Assange was a “cyber-terrorist.” Anyone doubting the kind of US ruthlessness he can expect should remember the forcing down of the president’s plane in 2013 — wrongly believed to be carrying .

According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a “Manhunt target list.” Washington’s bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is “unprecedented in scale and nature.” In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has spent four years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers. As a presidential candidate in 2008, lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal.” Under Obama, more whistleblowers have been prosecuted than under all other US presidents combined. Even before the verdict was announced in the trial of Manning, Obama had pronounced the whistleblower guilty.

“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network — an authority on the multiple twists and dangers facing Assange — “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”

There are signs that the Swedish public and legal community do not support prosecutor’s intransigence. Once implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines such as: “Go to London, for God’s sake.”

Why won’t she? More to the point, why won’t she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won’t she hand them over to Assange’s Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally required to do so, until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn’t she question him?

This week, the Swedish Court of Appeal will decide whether to order Ny to hand over the SMS messages; or the matter will go to the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice. In high farce, Assange’s Swedish lawyers have been allowed only to “review” the SMS messages, which they had to memorize.

One of the women’s messages makes it clear that she did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him.” She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test.” She “did not want to accuse JA [Assange] of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges.” (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her.”)

Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” That they were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident — whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga worthy of Kafka.

The “Case” Against Assange

For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On August 20, 2010, Swedish police opened a “rape investigation” and immediately — and unlawfully — told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for Assange’s arrest for the “rape of two women.” This news went round the world.

In Washington, a smiling US defense secretary, , told reporters that the arrest “sounds like good news to me.” Twitter accounts associated with the described Assange as a “rapist” and “fugitive.”

Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm chief prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying: “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying: “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.” The file was closed.

Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high-profile politician in the Social Democratic Party, then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well. She, too, was involved with the Social Democrats.

Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks, and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.

On August 30, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was reopening the case. Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied: “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.” Assange’s Australian barrister, James Catlin, responded: “This is a laughing stock … it’s as if they make it up as they go along.”

On the day Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service (“MUST”) publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled, “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers.” Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAP, had been told by its American counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Stockholm sheltered him.

For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the new investigation to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq War Logs, based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee. His lawyer in Stockholm asked Ny if she had any objection to his leaving the country. She said he was free to go.

Inexplicably, as soon as he left Sweden — at the height of media and public interest in the WikiLeaks disclosures — Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol “red alert,” which are normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals. Put out in five languages around the world, it ensured a media frenzy.

Assange attended a police station in London, was arrested and spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on ÂŁ340,000 bail, he was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the Supreme Court. He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers repeated his offer to be questioned by Ny in London, pointing out that she had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility at Scotland Yard used for that purpose. She refused.

Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote: “The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction … The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will.[Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?”

This question remained unanswered as Ny deployed the EAW, a draconian product of the “” supposedly designed to catch and organized criminals. The EAW had abolished the obligation on a petitioning state to provide any evidence of a crime. More than a thousand EAWs are issued each month; only a few have anything to do with potential “terror” charges. Most are issued for trivial offences — such as overdue bank charges and fines. Many of those extradited face months in prison without charge. There have been a number of shocking miscarriages of justice, of which British judges have been highly critical.

The Assange case finally reached the UK Supreme Court in May 2012. In a judgment that upheld the EAW — whose rigid demands had left the courts with almost no room for maneuver — the judges found that European prosecutors could issue extradition warrants in Britain without any judicial oversight, even though parliament intended otherwise. They made clear that parliament had been “misled” by the Blair government. The court was split, 5-2, and consequently found against Assange.

However, the chief justice, Lord Phillips, made one mistake. He applied the Vienna Convention on treaty interpretation, allowing for state practice to override the letter of the law. As Assange’s barrister, Dinah Rose QC, pointed out, this did not apply to the EAW.

The Supreme Court only recognized this crucial error when it dealt with another appeal against the EAW in November 2013. The Assange decision had been wrong, but it was too late to go back.

Assange’s choice was stark: Extradition to a country that had refused to say whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his last opportunity for refuge and safety. Supported by most of Latin America, the courageous government of Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis of documented evidence and legal advice that he faced the prospect of cruel and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and colluded with Washington. The Labor government of Prime Minister had even threatened to take away his passport.

Gareth Peirce, the renowned human rights lawyer who represents Assange in London, wrote to then-Australian Foreign Minister : “Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions … it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”

It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she raised. In a meeting I attended with her, Australian Consul-General Ken Pascoe made the astonishing claim that he knew “only what I read in the newspapers” about the details of the case.

Big Money

Meanwhile, the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice was drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks were aimed at a man not charged with any crime, yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, to freedom of speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious.

Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks, and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. The editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years.” It became part of his marketing plan to raise the newspaper’s cover price.

With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous.” They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean Embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh.”

The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons parliament will eventually vote on a reformed EAW.Ěý The draconian catch-all used against him could not happen now; charges would have to be brought and “questioning” would be insufficient grounds for extradition. “His case has been won lock, stock and barrel,” Peirce told me. “These changes in the law mean that the UK now recognizes as correct everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit. And the genuineness of Ecuador’s offer of sanctuary is not questioned by the UK or Sweden.”

On March 18, 2008, a war on WikiLeaks and Assange was foretold in a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch.” It described a detailed plan to destroy the feeling of “trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “center of gravity.” This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution.” Silencing and criminalizing this rare source of independent journalism was the aim — smear the method. Hell hath no fury like great power scorned.

*[John Pilger’s articles and films can be found at .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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The British government’s recent extraditions of Mustafa Kamel Mustafa (aka Abu Hamza al-Masri), Khalid al-Fawwaz, Adel Abdel Bary, Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan, along with the American government’s failed extradition attempt of Gary McKinnon and the speculated extradition of Wikileaks principal Julian Assange, all raise troubling implications for international relations, international law, and geopolitics for the United States and its European allies in their prosecution of the ongoing war on terror. These cases, and other national security and terrorism matters being prosecuted in the US, reveal an apparently coordinated effort by the American government to build support for American and allied military, intelligence, and foreign policy actions fundamentally aggressive in nature.

Mustafa, al-Fawwaz, Bary, Ahmad, and Ahsan were extradited to the United States and first appeared in American courts on October 6, 2012 after lengthy extradition battles involving both the United Kingdom’s court system and the European Court of Human Rights. These extradition battles involved direct challenges to the American prison system and its allegedly harsh conditions, as well as the fact that they each face lengthy (life) sentences, should they be convicted. Specifically, Mustafa, al-Fawwaz, Bary, Ahmad, and Ahsan alleged that if they were convicted in the United States, they would be subject to detention at the American prison in Florence, Colorado, the so-called “Super Max” facility, and would be subjected to the American government’s special administrative measures (“SAMS”). SAMS are a series of rules imposed by the American Department of Justice that severely restrict the detainees’ ability to communicate with the outside world, including their own attorneys. They also complained that they might face sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or that their sentences would otherwise be extremely long in violation of their human rights

Mustafa is facing the possibility of a life sentence as a result of allegations that he coordinated the kidnapping and killing of hostages in Yemen. Two of the kidnapping victims were American nationals. He also faces the possibility of a 15-year sentence for allegedly supplying financing for an Afghanistan-based Taliban-controlled computer lab and his alleged involvement in plans to wage jihad in Afghanistan and a 10-year sentence for his alleged efforts to establish a terrorist training camp in the United States. Al-Fawwaz and Bary face the possibility of life sentences stemming from their alleged involvement in the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the same series of events that led to my former client Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani’s conviction and life imprisonment in the United States. Al-Fawwaz, if convicted of certain counts, would face a mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment. Finally, Ahmad and Ahsan face possible life sentences for their alleged involvement in conspiring to commit murder and kidnapping in Afghanistan and Chechnya, as well as determinate sentences of either 20 or 15 years for lesser charges. The American government waived the applicability of the death penalty as to any of these five defendants who may have otherwise faced that penalty if convicted in order to secure their extradition from the UK.

These cases, along with the failed extradition of McKinnon, raise interesting selective-prosecution issues and call into question the motive, intent, and objectives of the American government and its European allies. McKinnon, a 46-year-old Scot, was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, during his extradition ordeal. Sufferers of Asperger’s frequently find it difficult to relate to others and are unable to fully understand the interpersonal ramifications of their actions. Apparently, McKinnon made claims that, as a result of his Asperger’s condition and related depression, he is in grave danger of ending his life, should he be extradited to face what he and his supporters believe to be the harsh conditions in the American penal system. British Home Secretary Theresa May, in explaining her extradition decision, found it to be “incompatible with Mr. McKinnon’s human rights” to permit his extradition because of the risk of McKinnon ending his own life. Ahsan, on the other hand, who has also received an Asperger’s diagnosis, was nonetheless extradited to the United States. In short, the selection of those subject to extradition calls into question demographic and geopolitical issues seemingly coordinated in support of American military aggression in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Much like the war crimes trials depicted in George Orwell’s 1984, America’s national security and terrorism prosecutions are serving a central role in justifying America’s and its allies’ aggressive military campaign in Arab and Muslim lands.

While these suspects have received recent news coverage in the United States and even broader coverage overseas, it is Assange’s case that has garnered the most wide-spread international media attention. Assange is resisting his extradition to Sweden – to face questioning on sexual assault allegation – on the grounds that he claims that it is mere pretext for his eventual transfer to the United States to face a death penalty prosecution for espionage-related allegations. While American law provides for the death penalty under situations arguably akin to Assange’s (see section 794 of Title 18 of the United States Code), it is highly unlikely that, should he be extradited to America, he would face such a sanction. First, America faces an unfavorable international political climate for such a prosecution in light of the world community’s aversion to the death penalty. After all, Assange’s aims were arguably well-intended and his conduct ultimately led to little more than embarrassment to those arguably worthy of embarrassment.

Secondly, there is apparently no allegation that a death resulted from Assange’s alleged conduct. Under this circumstance, it is far from clear that such a prosecution would pass constitutional muster in the American court system. While American criminal law provides for the death penalty in situations where death does not result from the defendant’s actions, the American Supreme Court’s death penalty jurisprudence leaves open to question of whether death can be imposed unless death results. Finally, the applicable death penalty law, with only limited exceptions, requires America to be at war before the death penalty applies. While the American government, for political purposes, likes to cast itself as being at war, that claim is not to be taken seriously with respect to the legal requirements necessary to trigger application of the relevant death penalty provisions.

Regardless of whether Assange’s death penalty concerns are sincere or merely opportunistic, he, and all defendants facing American criminal prosecution for national security- or terrorism-related matters, has reason for concern about the state of the American justice system with respect to national security- and terrorism-related litigation. First, the American government is arguably using these litigations in a coordinated campaign to lend a sense of justification to its war on terror. By carefully selecting the defendants, issues, and demographics of those used to enable these matters, the American government is using terrorism and national security defendants from specific nation-states to justify military operations in and around those countries. The 2008 arrest and 2010 New York prosecution of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American scientist, for her attempt to kill American agents allegedly attempting to question her in Afghanistan at a time when the United States was escalating its Predator drone attacks and clandestine special forces operations in Pakistan is but one of many examples of this trend.

Another case-in-point is the New York prosecution of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American, prosecuted for a terror plot directed at New York City when American Army General (and recently retired CIA director) David Petraeus, then the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan, was attempting to build support for his counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan to American political leaders and their constituents. Similarly, the New York prosecution of Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen of Pakistani-descent, for his failed bombing attempt in Times Square in Manhattan during a period of on-going controversy regarding American Predator Drone attacks in Pakistan lent yet more support for the American war effort. A more recent example is the prosecution of Iranian Manssor Arbabsiar for hatching a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States and to attack the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, during a period of aggressive Western and Israeli saber-rattling directed at intimidating Iran into curtailing its nuclear program and building support for an eventual American and Israeli invasion of Iran.

Not only has the American government carefully controlled the initiation and prosecution of national security- and terrorism-related criminal cases, it has been heavily involved in selecting the defense attorneys to represent the defendants in these matters. I was an eyewitness to aggressive American government involvement in selecting defense attorneys for detainees at Guantánamo Bay and for Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani’s matter in New York, including severing the ties between the detainees and their retained civilian counsel. In my own case, the American Department of Defense suspended my right to practice before the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay to silence my efforts on behalf of my Guantánamo Bay-based clients, including Ghailani, Ammar al-Baluchi, Mustafa bin Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and Rahim al-Nashiri. Furthermore, the American government has enacted a statute that has arguably made it a crime, punishable by up to 15 years of imprisonment, for an attorney to represent a member of a terrorist organization without prior American government approval. The American government utilizes two separate tactics to control the selection and behavior of attorneys handling these matters. First, attorneys seeking to avoid criminal prosecution for providing legal services to terrorist organizations can apply through the American Department of the Treasury for a license to do so. If approved, the attorneys can represent the terrorist organizations or their agents. However, the licensing scheme affords the American government near-complete discretion in the selection of the attorneys granted such licenses and the unfettered ability to revoke licenses of these attorneys.

The second government tactic for controlling the defenses in these cases is the so-called Criminal Justice Act Panel (the “Panel”), which exists in each judicial district in the American court system. The Panel is the group of attorneys within each judicial district who are authorized to accept court appointments for criminal matters involving indigent defendants in the American court system. The reality of the Panels is that they are largely staffed with co-opted attorneys who circumscribe the extent and nature of their advocacy in order to protect their place on the Panel and the income stream that comes with it. In New York, where the majority of terror- and national security-related cases are prosecuted, . These attorneys are hand-picked, purportedly for their superior qualifications. This second-level selection process affords the American government the opportunity for further attorney vetting.

In conclusion, the American criminal justice system has arguably been politicized in national security and terrorism matters at the expense of due process, fundamental fairness, and basic human decency. Foreign governments should, whenever possible, resist extraditions to the United States for those facing national security- or terrorism-related litigation. Those facing prosecution in the American court system in these matters should avoid, wherever possible, extradition to America and particularly refuse counsel assigned, and selected, by the American government. Finally, those non-governmental bodies interested in these matters should account for the American government’s alarming conduct in these cases in their training and operations. While it may be too late for Mustafa, al-Fawwaz, Bary, Ahmad, and Ahsan, as they have already been extradited and assigned Panel attorneys, Assange and those similarly situated can and should both resist extradition to the United States and the involvement of American attorneys whose client is, at the end of the day, the American justice system, not the defendants they purport to represent.

Image:ĚýCopyright Š . All Rights Reserved.Ěý

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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