Wikileaks

Protesters Gather In DC In Solidarity With Assange

January 4, 2021 Sam Carliner, Medium. Resist! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

Press freedom activists and independent journalists endured the cold and rain outside the British Embassy in Washington D.C. on Sunday Jan. 3. With less than 24 hours until a potential blow to the future of press freedom, the crowd of free speech advocates was there to make as much noise as possible. On Monday, Jan. 4, U.K. judge Vanessa Baraitser will announce if the U.K. government will extradite Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States. Assange faces up to 175 years in prison for charges under the Espionage Act. Leading press freedom and human rights groups have acknowledged that if Baraister rules in favor of extradition, it will set a dangerous precedent that journalists can be charged by the United States government for publishing truthful information.

Assange Extradition: Legal Teams Likely Informed Already Of Judge’s Decision

January 3, 2021 Alexander Mercouris, Consortium News. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

In accordance with a British magistrate court’s usual procedure, Julian Assange’s Judgment has almost certainly already been written and sent in draft form to the respective teams of lawyers, probably early on Friday evening. The lawyers therefore already know what the decision is, as well as the British government and at least the Department of Justice in Washington. Under established procedure, Assange’s lawyers are not supposed to tell Assange himself what the decision is so he and his family are probably the only people who are directly involved in his case who don’t yet know its outcome. The purpose in sending the Judgment in draft form to the lawyers in advance of the Court hearing is to give them an opportunity to check it for factual mistakes.

Upcoming Ruling In Assange Trial Threatens More Than Freedom Of The Press

January 3, 2021 Steve Brown, Covert Action Magazine. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

Although important legal principles are at stake in the extradition trial of Julian Assange, for which a ruling will be handed down on January 4, it should not be forgotten that there are important human issues at stake as well. One such issue is Assange’s health, which has progressively worsened under what seems to be cruel and even sadistic maltreatment by the British government, including the refusal of appropriate medical care and confining him in his cell for 23 hours a day, seven days a week. The other is that, if the Judge’s ruling is adverse, Julian’s two children may never see their father again. Many stories have been written about the legal issues in Julian’s case, and the chilling effect that his extradition to the U.S.—where he will almost certainly be imprisoned for life...

What We Learned In Julian Assange’s Extradition Hearing

January 1, 2021 Assange Defense. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Legal System, Wikileaks

The prosecution of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange would be a landmark test of the First Amendment right to publish if he were brought to trial in the United States, as press freedom groups, constitutional lawyers, and newsrooms across the board have sounded the alarm about the ways in which the U.S. indictment intends to silence investigative journalism around the world. But Assange would first have to be extradited from the United Kingdom, where he has been imprisoned in HMP Belmarsh for over a year and a half. At Assange’s extradition hearing in London, comprising one week of oral arguments in February and four weeks of witness testimony in September...

The Fate Of Press Freedom To Be Decided On January 4

December 28, 2020 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

Judge Vanessa Baraitser will announce her decision on the United States' request to extradite Julian Assange on January 4. Assange faces 18 charges, 17 of them under the Espionage Act, which has been weaponized to go after journalists who expose war crimes and other truths the United States wants to keep secret. If he is extradited, it will end press freedom as we know it. Any journalist anywhere in the world will know they could face similar consequences if they expose the US government. I speak with Kevin Gosztola of Shadowproof, who has been following the extradition process closely, about what is likely to happen and what activists can do to protect Julian Assange and our right to know.

Misconduct In Public Office In The Assange Case

November 16, 2020 Rod Driver, WISE Up Action. Resist! Court abuse, Julian Assange, Torture, Wikileaks

Both Snow and Taylor showed extreme bias against Julian. Their hearings were about Julian seeking asylum at the Ecuadorean Embassy in 2012, which meant that he had not complied with his bail conditions relating to earlier hearings. Under UK law, you do not have to comply with your bail conditions if you have a good reason. When Julian asked for asylum, it was based on the risk that he could be extradited to the US. The Ecuadorean authorities accepted this as a reason for granting him asylum. This is self-evidently a reasonable excuse for not complying with bail conditions.

Assange Legal Team Submits Closing Argument Against Extradition

November 10, 2020 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! Extradition, Free Press, Julian Assange, Wikileaks

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s legal team submitted their closing argument to a British magistrates’ court. They argue, “It is politically motivated, it is an abuse of the process of this court, and it is a clear violation of the Anglo-U.S. treaty that governs this extradition.” The closing argument relies on evidence presented by witnesses, who testified during a trial in September, and details how President Barack Obama’s administration declined to prosecute Assange. President Donald Trump’s administration reversed this “principled” position because of the nature of Assange’s “disclosures...

Persecuting Assange Is A Blow To Reporting And Human Rights Advocacy

October 17, 2020 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Human Rights, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

If it were not for a tiny handful of journalists—ShadowProof’s Kevin Gosztola preeminent among them—Americans might be utterly unaware that a London magistrate, for the last month, has been considering nothing less than whether journalists have a right to publish information the US government doesn’t want them to. Not whether outlets can leak classified information, but whether they can publish that information on, as in the case of Wikileaks, US war crimes and torture and assorted malfeasance to do with, for instance, the war on Afghanistan, which just entered its 19th year, with zero US corporate media interest.

Ten Reasons Why The Assange Trial Threatens Freedom Of Speech

October 14, 2020 Fidel Navaez and Ben Norton, The Grayzone. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

At the end of the hearings that seek to extradite journalist Julian Assange to the United States, on October 1, his defense team should have felt triumphant. Because with more than 30 witnesses and testimonies, throughout the whole month of September, they gave a beating to the prosecution representing the U.S. If the case in London were decided solely on justice, as it should in a state based on law, this battle would have been won by Assange. However, this “trial of the century” is, above all, a political trial, and there remains the feeling that the ruling was made beforehand, regardless of the law.

The Belmarsh Tribunal

October 5, 2020 Srećko Horvat, Open Democracy. Resist! Julian Assange, United States, War crimes, Wikileaks

On November 13, 1966 – at the height of the resistance war in Vietnam – Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre convened a people's tribunal to hold the US government accountable for its escalating war crimes. “The tribunal has no clear historical precedent”, Russell said. It represented no state power; it had no capacity to sentence the accused. “I believe that these apparent limitations are, in fact, virtues. We are free to conduct a solemn and historic investigation”, said Russell, “presented to the conscience of mankind.”

On Contact: Assange Extradition Hearing

October 4, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

Chris Hedges discusses with former British ambassador Craig Murray the hearing that just adjourned in London to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States. Murray’s exhaustive reporting, which can be found at craigmurray.org.uk, has become one of the few sources of reliable information about the hearing, which has become notoriously difficult to cover due to court restrictions imposed on the press, and is being ignored by most mainstream news organizations.

Reportback: Julian Assange Hearing On Tuesday September 29

September 30, 2020 Craig Murray. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

Tuesday has been another day on which the testimony focused on the extreme inhumane conditions in which Julian Assange would be kept imprisoned in the USA if extradited. The prosecution’s continued tactic of extraordinary aggression towards witnesses who are patently well informed played less well, and there were distinct signs that Judge Baraitser was becoming irritated by this approach. The totality of defence witnesses and the sheer extent of mutual corroboration they provided could not simply be dismissed by the prosecution attempting to characterise all of them as uninformed on a particular detail, still less as all acting in bad faith.

Report: Bad Day For Julian Assange

September 29, 2020 Craig Murray. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

Today was the worst day for the defence since the start of the trial, as their expert witnesses failed to cope with the sheer aggression of cross-examination by the US Government and found themselves backing away from maintaining propositions they knew to be true. It was uncomfortable viewing. It was not that the prosecution had in any way changed their very systematic techniques of denigrating and browbeating; in fact the precise prosecution template was once again followed. It goes like this. undermine academic credentials as not precisely relevant humiliate by repeated memory test questions of precise phrasing of obscure regulations or definitions

Report: Julian Assange Hearing

September 28, 2020 Craig Murray. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

It is hard to believe, but Judge Baraitser on Friday ruled that there will be no closing speeches in the Assange extradition hearing. She accepted the proposal initially put forward by counsel for the US government, that closing arguments should simply be submitted in writing and without an oral hearing. This was accepted by the defence, as they need time to address the new superseding indictment in the closing arguments, and Baraitser was not willing for oral argument to take place later than 8 October. By agreeing to written arguments only, the defence gained a further three weeks to put together the closing of their case.

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