Tag: julian assange

Did Keir Starmer destroy the Assange files, illegally pursue Assange for 14 years, and attempt to destroy Assange’s mind?

After nine years of legal battles, a British judge has finally challenged the wall of secrecy erected by British and Swedish authorities around the legal abuse of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Judge Foss, sitting at the London First-Tier Tribunal, has ruled that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) must explain how it came to destroy key files that would have shed light on why it pursued Assange for 14 years. The CPS appears to have done so in breach of its own procedures.

Assange was finally released from Belmarsh high-security prison last year in a plea deal after Washington had spent years seeking his extradition for publishing documents revealing US and UK war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The CPS files relate to lengthy correspondence between the UK and Sweden over a preliminary investigation into rape allegations in Sweden that predate the US extradition case.

A few CPS emails from that time were not destroyed and have been released under Freedom of Information rules. They show that it was the UK authorities pushing reluctant Swedish prosecutors to pursue the case against Assange. Eventually, Swedish prosecutors dropped the case after running it into the ground.

In other words, the few documents that have come to light show that it was the CPS – led at that time by Keir Starmer, later knighted and now Britain’s prime minister – that waged what appears to have been a campaign of political persecution against Assange, rather than one based on proper legal considerations.

It is not just Britain concealing documents relating to Assange. The US, Swedish and Australian authorities have also put up what Stefania Maurizi, an Italian journalist who has been doggedly pursuing the FoI requests, has called “a wall of darkness”.

There are good grounds for believing that all four governments have coordinated their moves to cover up what would amount to legal abuses in the Assange case.

Starmer headed the CPS when many highly suspect decisions regarding Assange were made. If the documents truly have been destroyed, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to ever know how directly he was involved in those decisions.

Extraordinarily, and conveniently for both the UK and Sweden, it emerged during legal hearings in early 2023 that prosecutors in Stockholm claim to have destroyed the very same correspondence deleted by the CPS.

The new ruling by Judge Foss will require the CPS to explain how and why it destroyed the documents, and provide them unless it can demonstrate that there is no way they can ever be retrieved. Failure to do so by February 21 will be treated as contempt of court.

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Judge Threatens To Break the UK’s Wall of Secrecy Around Assange’s Persecution

After nine years of legal battles, a British judge has finally challenged the wall of secrecy erected by British and Swedish authorities around the legal abuse of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Judge Foss, sitting at the London First-Tier Tribunal, has ruled that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) must explain how it came to destroy key files that would have shed light on why it pursued Assange for 14 years. The CPS appears to have done so in breach of its own procedures.

Assange was finally released from Belmarsh high-security prison last year in a plea deal after Washington had spent years seeking his extradition for publishing documents revealing US and UK war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The CPS files relate to lengthy correspondence between the UK and Sweden over a preliminary investigation into rape allegations in Sweden that predate the US extradition case.

A few CPS emails from that time were not destroyed and have been released under Freedom of Information rules. They show that it was the UK authorities pushing reluctant Swedish prosecutors to pursue the case against Assange. Eventually, Swedish prosecutors dropped the case after running it into the ground.

In other words, the few documents that have come to light show that it was the CPS – led at that time by Keir Starmer, later knighted and now Britain’s prime minister – that waged what appears to have been a campaign of political persecution against Assange, rather than one based on proper legal considerations.

It is not just Britain concealing documents relating to Assange. The US, Swedish and Australian authorities have also put up what Stefania Maurizi, an Italian journalist who has been doggedly pursuing the FoI requests, has called “a wall of darkness”.

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“Wolves In MAGA Hats”: Assange Details CIA’s War Against Him In First Remarks Since Gaining Freedom

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this week traveled to Strasbourg, France for his first ever public remarks since gaining his freedom in June, after his many years-long ordeal in the Ecuadorian Embassy and then Belmarsh Prison in London. His speech was given Tuesday before the legal affairs and human rights committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The assembly subsequently issued a formal resolution recognizing Assange as a ‘political prisoner’ and highlighted the chilling effect on journalism worldwide that his case caused. The US government spent years pursuing his extradition, and at one point there were even alleged assassination plans hatched by US operatives.

Among the more interesting and illuminating parts of his speech included a detailed retelling of how the CIA waged war against him personally, especially under the Trump administration, given that “Trump appointed two wolves in MAGA hats. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas Congressman and former arms executive as CIA director and William Barr, a former CIA officer as US attorney general.” Assange further talked about how the CIA has infiltrated European governments and institutions via sophisticated software later exposed by WikiLeaks, and how this unleashed further government retribution against him and whistleblowers. His full speech is below.

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Julian Assange makes first public statement since being freed: ‘I pled guilty to journalism’

Julian Assange has said that he is free after years of incarceration because he “pled guilty to journalism.”

Assange was released in June after five years in a British prison after he pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concluded a drawn-out legal saga.

Prior to his time in prison, he had spent seven years in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution.

Assange said since his incarceration he has observed a campaign to internationally criminalise journalism, adding: “I want to be totally clear: I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today [after] years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism. I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source, and I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was.”

Assange’s wife Stella, who he married while in a top security London jail, said he would need some time to regain his health and sanity after his long incarceration, as well as to be with their two children who he had never seen outside of a prison.

He added: “My wife and my infant son were also targeted, a CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife, and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six-month-old son’s nappy.

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Assange Freed, but Supporters Say Guilty Plea a ‘Big Blow to Freedom of the Press’

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. government and was released on bail, leaving Belmarsh maximum security prison and the United Kingdom (U.K.) on Monday morning WikiLeaks announced on X, formerly known as Twitter.

His wife, Stella Assange, an attorney who has worked for years for his release, celebrated the deal on X.

“This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations,” WikiLeaks wrote. “This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised.”

A federal judge must still approve the plea deal.

Assange is en route to appear Wednesday in a U.S. federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands near Australia. He is scheduled to return to Australia after the hearing.

In exchange for his release, Assange agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material in violation of the U.S. Espionage Act, The New York Times reported.

Under the terms of the agreement, Justice Department prosecutors will seek a 62-month sentence, which is equal to the amount of time Assange has served at Belmarsh while he fought his extradition to the U.S. The deal would credit that period as time served, which would allow Assange to return home, according to CNN.

The deal would also disallow him from later making any claim that his long prison time in Belmarsh, where he was confined to a cell for 23 hours a day, was unjust, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald.

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JULIAN ASSANGE IS FINALLY FREE

Julian Assange has agreed to a plea deal with the United States. He left Belmarsh on Monday and is headed to Australia, WikiLeaks said.

“He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK,” WikiLeaks said in a tweet early Tuesday morning London time.   

Stella Assange, tweeted: “Julian is free!!!! Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU- yes YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true. THANK YOU. tHANK YOU. THANK YOU.”

Assange was released as a result of a plea deal with the United States, the BBC reported. The British national broadcaster said:

“According to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, Assange will spend no time in US custody and will receive credit for the time spent incarcerated in the UK.

Assange will return to Australia, according to a letter from the justice department.

The deal – which will see him plead guilty to one charge – is expected to be finalised in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday, 26 June.” 

The New York Times reported that Assange agreed to the one count of the Espionage Act — “conspiracy to disseminate national defense information” —  in exchange for a five year sentence, which the U.S. agreed had already been served on remand in Belmarsh.

WikiLeaks released this video of Assange walking onto the pane on his way out of London, where he was imprisoned for five years. 

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Assange To Be Freed: DoJ Agrees ‘Time Served’ Plea Deal With WikiLeaks Founder

In a shocking turn of events, Julian Assange will plead guilty to leaking US national security secrets and return to his native Australia, under a deal with Biden’s DoJ that ends a nearly 15-year battle nightmare for the WikiLeaks founder.

After spending more than a decade holed up and imprisoned in London – mainly to avoid being sent to the US – Assange, 52, is expected to be sentenced to time served (62 months in a London prison) during a court appearance Wednesday in Saipan, in the US Northern Mariana Islands, avoiding a potentially lengthy sentence in an American prison.

Prosecutors had been in talks with Assange to resolve the 2019 case, The Wall Street Journal reported in March, with one sticking point being Assange’s desire to never set foot in the United States.

To enter a felony plea, defendants generally have to show up in person in court. 

Assange’s team had floated the possibility of pleading guilty to a misdemeanor, the Journal reported, which would mean Assange could enter the plea remotely.

The Justice Department and Assange’s legal team reached a compromise under which Assange wouldn’t have to travel to suburban Virginia, where the original case is filed, and prosecutors could still get a felony plea, the people said.  

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Julian Assange Is Being Murdered by a Fake Case that Has No Basis in Law

In the 1970s Pentagon Official Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times published them. It helped to end the war by showing Americans how they had been deceived by Washington. Washington tried to prosecute Ellsberg and the New York Times, but the presiding judge declared a mistrial citing government misconduct so severe as to “offend the sense of justice.”

Four decades later documents were leaked by Manning to Assange at Wikileaks who made them available to the New York Times and The Guardian, both of which published some of the documents, and the leaked information was published by Wikileaks. Assange was not the leaker but had the role of the New York Times in the 1970s. The documents exposed US war crimes and deceptions by Washington of allies.

In the intervening years between Ellsberg and Assange “the sense of justice” has departed the American and British governments and courts. The American and British media whose free speech rights are destroyed by the persecution of Assange actually helped the two corrupt governments to build a public case against Assange. Consequently, the written US Constitution and the unwritten British Constitution have been undermined as protections against vengeful arbitrary actions of governments. Assange has been incarcerated in one form or another for more than a decade in complete violation of habeas corpus. The British play a game of keeping Assange in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison, where he most certainly does not belong, while appeal after appeal plays out. It is a way of imprisoning Assange without convicting and sentencing him.

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Julian Assange Granted Right to Appeal Extradition to U.S. Over First Amendment Questions

Julian Assange can file an appeal by Friday to fight his extradition to the United States, according to a new ruling from a British court on Monday. The decision, first reported by the New York Times, comes as Assange sits in a London prison over computer hacking and espionage charges first brought by the U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald Trump.

Assange’s right to fight his extradition comes down to fundamental questions about how the 52-year-old WikiLeaks co-founder would be treated in prison if he was actually extradited to the U.S. to face federal charges. One early British court ruling in 2021 noted that the U.S. prison system allows the use of solitary confinement, largely considered torture by other wealthy countries. It was on that basis the court initially denied the extradition to the U.S., though that was reversed by a higher court a year later.

The British court also noted U.S. law allows the death penalty for espionage, another practice seen as barbaric by many people in the rest of the world. Even so, Assange’s efforts to appeal his extradition had been denied until Monday’s ruling. Another issue central to the extradition fight is whether Assange can claim protections under the First Amendment since he’s an Australian citizen.

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Journalism Is Not a Crime, Even When It Offends the Government

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been imprisoned in London for five years, while Texas journalist Priscilla Villarreal was only briefly detained at the Webb County Jail. But both were arrested for publishing information that government officials wanted to conceal.

Assange and Villarreal argue that criminalizing such conduct violates the First Amendment. In both cases, the merits of that claim have been obscured by the constitutionally irrelevant question of who qualifies as a “real” journalist.

Assange, an Australian citizen, is fighting extradition to the United States based on a federal indictment that charges him with violating the Espionage Act by obtaining and publishing classified documents that former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked in 2010. He has already spent about as much time behind bars as federal prosecutors say he would be likely to serve if convicted.

President Joe Biden says he is “considering” the Australian government’s request to drop the case against Assange. But mollifying a U.S. ally is not the only reason to reconsider this prosecution, which poses a grave threat to freedom of the press by treating common journalistic practices as crimes.

All but one of the 17 charges against Assange relate to obtaining or disclosing “national defense information,” which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Yet all the news organizations that published stories based on the confidential State Department cables and military files that Manning leaked are guilty of the same crimes.

More generally, obtaining and publishing classified information is the bread and butter of reporters who cover national security. John Demers, then head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, implicitly acknowledged that reality in 2019, when he assured reporters they needn’t worry about the precedent set by this case because Assange is “no journalist.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit took a similarly dim view of Villarreal in January, when it dismissed her lawsuit against the Laredo prosecutors and police officers who engineered her 2017 arrest. They claimed she had violated Section 39.06(c) of the Texas Penal Code, an obscure law that makes it a felony to solicit or obtain nonpublic information from a government official with “intent to obtain a benefit.”

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