Julian Assange’s defense denounces the ‘political motivation’ of his case to stop extradition to the United States | International

The surrounding areas of the imposing neo-Gothic building that houses the Royal Courts of Justice in London are regularly the scene of protests. Tuesday’s, however, exceeded expectations. “Everyone is watching us,” Stella Assange, the wife of WikiLeaks portal co-founder Julian Assange, told hundreds of gathered people. It is the legendary phrase sung in 1968 by demonstrators protesting in Chicago against the Vietnam War. And an encouragement for the dozens of citizens who came to express their solidarity with Assange, like the Colombian Daniela, who arrived early in the morning and continued to hold one of the now famous posters with Assange’s face in her hand. exhacker and his mouth gagged by the American flag.

Daniela was one of the first, but it didn’t take long for the street to fill up with activists. The international campaign organized to prevent the extradition to the United States of the person who today more than anyone else represents the need to defend freedom of the press has brought important speakers involved in Assange’s case to the doors of the courts.

Assange’s defense was the first to present its arguments before the magistrates. From the beginning they have denounced the political character which, according to them, hides the judicial process. “The accusation is politically motivated. Mr. Assange exposed serious criminal acts to the public and was persecuted for carrying out a common journalistic practice: obtaining and publishing confidential information that was truthful and in the public interest,” said his lawyer, Ed Fitzgerald. “It is an abuse of the judicial process to ask for extradition for a political crime,” he denounced.

Two judges, Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson, will hear arguments from Assange’s defense and the US government on Tuesday and Wednesday. They must decide, in a preliminary hearing that has attracted immense worldwide attention, whether or not to grant the WikiLeaks founder a final opportunity to legally argue their case before the British justice system, or if they give the final green light to his extradition to the United States, where he will be charged with 17 crimes against the Espionage Act and one for computer interference. The Australian publisher would face 175 years in prison for the leak of more than 250,000 classified US State Department documents in November 2010. EL PAÍS was one of the media outlets that participated in this concerted effort to publish these documents.

“The idea that Julian could be charged with violating the United States Espionage Act, the same one that applied to Daniel Ellsberg [el responsable de filtrar los Papeles del Pentágono, que revelaron las mentiras sobre Vietnam] and for others it is scandalous,” said Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the British Labor Party, on the witness stand. “This court today has the opportunity to allow Assange to make his case known, so that justice is done and so that he is finally a free man.”

Assange, who has been locked up in Belmarsh maximum security prison on the outskirts of London for five years, was not present on the first day of the trial. Neither he nor he connected via video conference, as on other occasions. The lawyer explained that he was not in good health. Judge Sharp wanted to make it clear, from the beginning of the appearance, that no obstacle had been posed to this remote presence.

The legal team of exhacker He also reminded the court, to counter guarantees offered by the US government over the detainee’s life or health, of the alleged CIA plot to try to assassinate him in 2017, when he was held in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. “There were red warning signs even then,” explained attorney Mark Summers, also part of the defense. “The plan only fell apart when the British authorities showed their disgust at the idea of ​​a possible shooting on the streets of London.”

In defense of freedom of the press

The limited space reserved for the press in the room and the technical shortcomings of the audio offered in another room called into question the transparency of the magistrates.

Assange’s cause has become the world’s cause for press freedom. The pressure of the campaign in favor of his release is not so much directed towards the judges who pass the hot iron between themselves, but towards the American and British governments, who have in their hands the possibility of stopping the persecution.

“This matter should never have been a matter resolved in court. And you don’t have to continue down that path. We continue to call on the United States to release Assange,” Rebecca Vincent, head of the campaign for Assange’s release, exclaimed to protesters. exhacker on behalf of the organization Reporters Without Borders.

“The publication of classified Wikileaks documents in 2010 generated public interest journalism around the world. We know that he has reported war crimes and human rights violations. And only the man who allowed all this to be published was prosecuted. If he were extradited to the United States, it would set a very dangerous precedent for any journalist or news organization working with classified information,” Vincent warned.

The decision to give the green light to Assange’s extradition was adopted in 2022 by the then British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, once the Supreme Court approved the guarantees offered by Washington on the prisoner’s safety and the measures that would be adopted to avoid it. prevent him from ending his life.

But the insistence on persecuting the founder of WikiLeaks arose from Donald Trump’s government. Former US President Barack Obama had already commuted the sentence of soldier Chelsea Manning, the main source of the secret documents on American security published by the portal, and which brought to light serious Episodes From dirty war in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“A corrupt system”

“All those who committed these war crimes were freed and even benefited financially from those crimes. And Julian, who threw the truth in the face of power, will have to face a trial. The British system, the British government, the American government and a whole deeply corrupt system should be judged,” said Andrew Feinstein, former MP of the South African African National Congress, Nelson Mandela’s party. He was one of those who came from all over the world to protest in front of the London courthouse.

The two judges could announce their decision at the end of Wednesday’s session, although it will take several days to publish their reasons. In this way they could help speed up Assange’s surrender.

If they ruled in favor of the prisoner, it would give the British justice system the green light to once again discuss the legality or illegality of extradition. The last option remains, if the attempt by the Wikileaks founder’s lawyers fails, to turn to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. But even if they obtained the order from this institution to suspend the delivery, it remains to be seen what the reaction of Rishi Sunak’s British government would be.

It was precisely these ECHR orders that paralyzed London’s attempts to deport irregular migrants to Rwanda. Downing Street and the hard-line Conservative Party have since conspired to ignore these requirements, even if it means disobeying international law.

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