Julian Assange Loses Appeal - will be extradited to U.S.
In a London courtroom on Friday morning, Julian Assange suffered a devastating blow to his quest for freedom. A two-judge appellate panel of the United Kingdom's High Court ruled that the U.S.'s request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges is legally valid...
The U.S. then offered multiple assurances that Assange would be treated "humanely"...
What makes the High Court's faith in these guarantees from the U.S. Government particularly striking is that it comes less than two months after Yahoo News reported that the CIA and other U.S. security state agencies hate Assange so much that they plotted to kidnap or even assassinate him during the time he had asylum protection from Ecuador....
Assange has been imprisoned in the high-security Belmarsh prison, described in the BBC in 2004 as “Britain's Guantanamo Bay.”...
Knowing Assange's release was finally imminent, the U.S. Government quickly acted to ensure he remained in prison indefinitely. In May 2019, it unveiled an 18-count felony indictment against him for espionage charges, based on the role he played in WikiLeaks’ 2010 publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and diplomatic cables, which revealed multiple war crimes by the U.S. and U.K. as well as rampant corruption by numerous U.S. allies throughout the world.
Even though major newspapers around the world published the same documents in partnership with WikiLeaks — including The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais and others — the DOJ claimed that Assange went further than those newspapers by encouraging WikiLeaks’ source, Chelsea Manning, to obtain more documents and by trying to help her evade detection: something all journalists have not only the right but the duty to their sources to do....
Kenneth Roth, Director of Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times that “most of the charges against Assange concern activities that are no different from those used by investigative journalists around the world every day.” Shortly after the indictment was issued, I explained in a Washington Post op-ed why the theory on which the indictment was based “would make journalism a felony”...
In other words, the Biden administration is eager to see Assange punished and silenced for life not out of any national security concerns but instead due to a thirst for vengeance over the role he played in publishing documents during the 2016 election that reflected poorly on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee...
Extradited! Why Assange Fears Being ‘Epsteined’, by Ilana Mercer, Unz Review, December 23, 2021.
The indictment of Assange is a blueprint for making journalists into felons - The First Amendment is meaningless if it only protects people the government recognizes as journalists, by Glenn Greenwald, The Washington Post, May 28, 2019.
Assange: The Masks are Crumbling, by Caitlin Johnstone, Consortium News, December 10, 2021.
The Assange case is the most important battle for press freedom in our time, RT, October 22, 2021.
The Deep State Is Assassinating Julian Assange, Aaron Kesel via ActivistPost.com, Zero Hedge, October 26, 2019.
Julian Assange Suffers Stroke; Father Says He Was Vaxxed In Prison, Information Liberation, December 13, 2021.
WATCH: Hedges on Assange Ruling With the Editor-in-Chief, Consortium News, December 12, 2021. Chris Hedges interviewed Consortium News Editor-in-Chief Joe Lauria on his program On Contact about the High Court ruling allowing Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States. Broadcast before news of Assange’s stroke.
Note: if you watch the above video on youtube, you will see a disclaimer that RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government. That's good news: reliable reporting from a source outside the reach of mainstream media censorship.
Using Assange to Send a Three-Part Message, by Jacob G. Hornberger, The Future of Freedom Foundation / Lew Rockwell, December 17, 2021:
Julian Assange denied permission to appeal against extradition, BBC, 15 March 2022.