On Monday, a British court will decide whether or not Julian Assange will be extradited to the US, to face charges of espionage and cybercrimes.
Assange has been in jail since his arrest by the London Metropolitan Police on April 11, 2019 and as of today, has spent nearly a decade in confinement in one form or the other.
On Monday, Judge Vanessa Baraitser will decide whether Assange is to be extradited to the US to stand trial. Julian Assange faces 18 charges under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If extradited and convicted in the United States, he could face a jail term of up to 175 years.
If extradited, Assange would almost certainly be tried in northern Virginia, where 85 percent of the population is employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Department and the State Department. Espionage cases are tried behind closed doors and on the basis of secret evidence. Conviction is virtually certain.
Assange would almost certainly wind up in the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado. He would be in permanent solitary confinement in a concrete box cell with a window four inches wide, with six bed checks a day and one hour of exercise in an outdoor cage.
Probably Judge Baraitser’s decision will be appealed, which means that Assange could remain where he is, in Belmarsh Prison. Known as “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay,” Belmarsh is normally reserved for the most violent and dangerous offenders and is no better than the Colorado supermax prison.
Assange had been confined to his cell for 23 hours a day. Since an outbreak of the coronavirus in his wing of the prison, he has been kept in his cell 24 hours a day. He is in poor health, and has been denied requested medical care.
His supporters say his life is in danger. Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, has said Assange’s treatment amounts to torture and asked for an end to his “arbitrary detention.”
The charges against Assange have to do with his work with whistleblower Chelsea Manning in exposing US war crimes and other atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as Suzie Dawson reminds us in the video above (from 2018), Assange has done much, much more for the world than this.
The basic issue is clear. Does the U.S. government, or any other government, have the legal authority to commit crimes and punish people for revealing those crimes? If it does have such authority, then what is our supposed democracy worth?
LINKS
Verdict in Julian Assange’s extradition case to be delivered on Monday by the People’s Dispatch.
The Kafkaesque Imprisonment of Julian Assange Exposes U.S. Myths About Freedom and Tyranny by Glenn Greenwald on Substack.
Crown Prosecutors Submit Final Argument for Assange Extradition by Kevin Gosztola for ShadowProof.
Assange Legal Team Submits Closing Argument Against Extradition to the United States by Kevin Gosztola for The Dissenter.
For Years, journalists cheered Assange’s abuse – now they’ve paved his way to a U.S. gulag by Jonathan Cook on his blog.
Phil Ebersole's Blog 
January 4, 2021 at 2:05 am |
The tree of Liberty is watered by the blood of tyrants and patriots. He’s one of the patriots.
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January 4, 2021 at 3:22 am |
Trump could still go out as something of an anti-establishment hero by pardoning Assange and Snowden, releasing files etc.
However, based on the last four years, I don’t think he’s got it in him.
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