SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 5.20.2024
The only reason Julian Assange is still locked up in the Belmarsh British prison is the obscene behavior of the Biden administration.
Assange has been confined in London since 2012. Initially for five years in the Ecuadorian Embassy and since then in British prisons. The American so called Justice Department seeks to try him for making public American wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan through his Wikileaks site.
Assange is a journalist and whistleblower who made public information which every citizen has a right to know.
A court in London today decided that Assange has legal grounds to appeal his extradition to America. This sordid saga will continue while Assange continues to wither in an English prison.
Joe Biden could put a stop to it immediately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
Excerpted from Democracy Now 5.20.2024
Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent, covering the extradition hearing for Jacobin magazine. His recent piece for The Nation is headlined “End the Persecution of Julian Assange.”
“Assange remains confined in Belmarsh, one of the harshest prisons. We know his health is deteriorating. That’s why he was not allowed in court today. We also know they have forbidden remote access to journalists who are not based in England and Wales, because they can’t be prosecuted for taking a screenshot of the hearing. That’s why I’m in London and not in my house in D.C. watching this. I suspect the reason why they won’t grant these transmissions is they’re afraid, if Julian Assange does show up, someone will take a screenshot of him, because we know they don’t want people filming or taking pictures of Julian Assange, revealing the terrible shape that he’s in.
So, this is a victory for Julian Assange in that he lives on to fight another day, his case lives to fight another day, but he’s not out of Belmarsh yet, and he’s not in the clear yet. This could still end in him being sent to the U.S.
And the person who can stop this is Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. They could drop these charges today. They keep claiming, “Oh, this is the Justice Department. We don’t want to politicize the Justice Department.” But this is a political prosecution. The choice to bring charges against a journalist for exposing U.S. war crimes is the choice to bring a political prosecution. It was a political decision when Barack Obama refused to bring the case, and it was a political decision when Trump and Sessions and Barr chose to bring it. And, you know, Biden can sit there and say he’s not like Trump, he believes in democracy, journalism is not a crime, all of those sorts of things, but those words are extremely hollow so long as Biden continues to make the political decision to continue this Trump-era persecution of a journalist whose only crime is exposing war crimes, abuses of power and state criminality.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/20/assange_extradition_chip_gibbons
Lee's Perspective 