Wednesday October 27, 2021
Will activist be extradited soon?
Fear for Assange’s life
From Frauke Niemeyer
Eleven years ago, Assange’s life ended in freedom, and now he is again threatened with extradition to the United States, which have sued him on suspicion of espionage. In the London prison, however, the revealer seems to be losing his last life force.
How long can Julian Assange keep his will to live? For more than two years, the Wikileaks founder has been sitting in London’s maximum security prison Belmarsh for violating bail conditions. As of today, the Royal Courts of Justice are again negotiating whether Assange will be extradited to the USA or not. In the first trial, at the beginning of the year, the judge had rejected a corresponding application from the Americans. Among other things, she saw the danger of an extradition that Assange could commit suicide in the USA.
His life in freedom ended eleven years ago when the Swedish police started an investigation into the investigative activist. The charge: rape. Within a few days, the rigorous revelator turned into a suspected sex offender. Neither the media nor the Swedish public prosecutor’s office is interested in the fact that the two women involved never reported rape, but instead tried to force him to have an HIV test after consensual but unprotected sex.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, investigates the Assange case years later and finds explosive material that incriminates the judicial authorities. The report of one of the women has been rewritten by police officers, her signature on the document is missing. The women protested against the falsification of their testimony, but the Swedish public prosecutor nonetheless issued an arrest warrant. Assange is being searched across Europe on the basis of a “fabricated” rape charge, as the UN investigator will later call it.
But Assange fears being extradited from Sweden to the USA, which is looking for him, among other things, on suspicion of espionage. He is accused there on 18 counts, he faces 175 years imprisonment to date. That is why the revelator does not face the authorities, but fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, which he did not leave for seven years. There were always police officers in front of the house who would have arrested him the first time he stepped out the door.
Assange would “not survive extradition”
Finally, Ecuador lifts his asylum and Assange ends up in a maximum security prison, which he has not been able to leave until today. The now 50-year-old is said to be in very bad mental and physical condition. His fiancée Stella Moris, who is raising their two children in London, last saw Assange at the weekend. “Julian would not survive an extradition,” she said at a press conference with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) earlier this week.
The organization that fights for press freedom worldwide sees Assange being wrongly persecuted by the USA on suspicion of espionage. In 2010 and 2011 in particular, the hacker posted secret government material online that documented war crimes committed by US soldiers in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Civilians were knowingly killed and prisoners of war mistreated. The films and documents had been leaked to Wikileaks by former soldier Chelsea Manning. Reporters Without Borders cannot detect an act of espionage.
“The US has targeted Julian Assange for his contributions to journalism, and extradition and prosecution there would be a devastating sign of freedom of the press worldwide,” said RSF General Secretary Christophe Deloire, who is in London to observe the trial .
The human rights organization Amnesty International cited reports suggesting that the US planned to kidnap or kill Assange while he was at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. “This makes the diplomatic assurances of the US authorities that Assange expects good treatment in the US, even less credible,” it said. Amnesty Secretary General Agnès Callamard said that no one has been held responsible for US war crimes in Afghanistan or Iraq. But anyone who exposed these crimes is threatened with life behind bars.
Controversial because of its radicalism
It is true that Assange is driven by a radicalism in his striving for transparency, which also earned him a lot of criticism. In the 2016 US presidential election campaign, Wikileaks made tens of thousands of emails from the Democratic Party public. Some of them were then turned into conspiracy stories by political opponents. These, too, ultimately helped Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton. Wikileaks still denies that the emails were leaked to the revelers by Russian agents.
But as much as Assange is controversial for his uncompromising attitude, many, including critics, are convinced that the espionage charges and the imminent 175 years of imprisonment are inadequate for the activist’s actions. Almost a year ago the working group “Freedom for Julian Assange” was founded in the Bundestag, which includes members of the CDU, SPD, FDP, the Greens and the Left. They call on the UK not to extradite the Wikileaks founder to the US and to take his physical and mental health into account when making the decision. The trial will continue on Thursday and a verdict is expected in a few weeks.