Lessons from fighting for Assange freedom
There are vital lessons and warnings that must be considered in the freeing of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
He survived. He’s free. He’s home.
Notwithstanding his abuse and torture for over a decade, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has successfully waited it out. There’s little doubt that his release was assisted by political pressures coinciding with a looming US election, the mounting Assange campaign in the United States and perhaps also by Australia’s “quiet diplomacy”, but in reality there are probably other factors at play, too.
Given that Assange won the right to appeal to the UK’s highest court, and considering the Perfected Grounds of Appeal filed on his behalf, it is not improbable that the United States was advised that the writing was on the wall as far as its extradition request went and the risk of global humiliation in failing to have Assange extradited.
There was also a real risk of a dangerous precedent being set in terms of findings that might be made about legal questions like the selective application of the First Amendment and extraterritorially, as well as embarrassing factual findings about the suitability of carceral facilities in the United States, his likely treatment there and the reliability of US assurances.
This seems to be supported by Assange’s criminal defence lawyer, Barry Pollack, when he confirmed yesterday that, “The negotiations were a protracted process that went on for several months in fits and starts. They were not close to any sort of resolution until a few weeks ago when the Department of Justice reengaged in the very intense negotiations over the last few weeks.”
The 150-page Perfected Grounds of Appeal is even more striking when read as a summary of the brutality of the United States’ actions on a global scale. In the context of AUKUS, all Australians should be asking larger questions about the criminal enterprise that underpins Australia’s relationship with the United States.
The claim by some US officials that the plea arrangement and Assange’s consequent conviction reflect a victory is preposterous. How could any person who has been subjected to the treatment Assange has not accept an offer to plea to the comparatively minor offence of conspiring to commit espionage and walk free, rather than spin the judicial roulette wheel, weighted by legislation favouring the persecutors, and risk extradition and death?
And further, as Assange’s criminal defence........
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