Assange, the case now goes to another court. Comrade Stella Moris: “A serious judicial error”
The United States they won the appeal before the High Court of London against the first instance sentence which in January had denied the extradition of Julian Assange from the Great Britain for the risk of suicide. According to the judges, the US government has offered sufficient guarantees that Assange will receive adequate care to protect his mental health and thus the co-founder of Wikileaks can be extradited. The case now goes to another court.
THE legal from Assange will present as soon as possible appeal against the decision at the High Court in London to overturn the first instance sentence which in January had denied the extradition to the US of the co-founder of Wikileaks. This was announced by the fiancée Stella Moris.
“A serious miscarriage of justice”. As’ Stella Moris, Julian Assange’s partner and a member of his legal team, defined, in a post posted on Twitter by Wikileaks, today’s verdict of the High Court of London which overturns the first degree sentence in which the extradition of Julian Assange to the USA was denied. Moris has announced his will to appeal “as soon as possible” to the judicial authorities of the United Kingdom. The 50-year-old Australian founder of Wikileaks that Washington has been pursuing relentlessly for over 10 years, for the dissemination of secret documents, faces a sentence of 175 years in prison in the United States.
From Wikileaks to prison, Assange’s parable
Julian Assange in the US it would face 18 counts of espionage and computer piracy which could cost you up to 175 years in prison. In January the judge Vanessa Baraitser of the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London, found that the psychological state of the 50-year-old Australian would lead to suicide if transferred to the US. After the first sentence, Assange remained in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London, the latest chapter in a long judicial saga that has raised complex questions about the boundaries between freedom of the press and national security.
The origins of Wikileaks
Registered in 2006, Wikileaks began its activity the following year. Assange guarantees its sources the maximum possible cyber protection and the site begins to publish confidential information and secret documents that embarrass governments around the world.
In the ten million leaks released by the site, which collaborates with dissidents from every corner of the planet, the Chinese suppression of the Tibetan uprising, the purges of the opposition in Turkey, corruption in Arab countries, summary executions carried out by the Kenyan police.
But Assange’s main target is the United States. The first time that Wikileaks catches the attention of the international press is in 2007, when the manual for the Guantanamo prison guards is published. However, the mere publication of documents is not enough. The average internet user does not have the time or the tools to find their way around thousands of files. We need someone to separate the wheat from the chaff. And this can only be done by journalists.
Iraq, Cablegate and Chelsea Manning
2010 is the year of the ‘cablegate’. In July, 70,000 confidential documents on the international coalition’s operations in Afghanistan were released thanks to the joint work of Wikileaks and some of the most prestigious newspapers in the world: the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais.
An international collaboration model destined to remain (one example above all, the case of the ‘Panama Papers’). In October it is the turn of 400,000 confidential papers on the invasion of Iraq, from which the violence of American troops against civilians emerges. The following month, 250,000 US diplomatic cables are published which often reveal embarrassing judgments about Washington’s partners.
The colossal leak was made possible by a US soldier, Chelsea Manning, which turns over 700,000 classified documents in Assange. Sentenced to 35 years, Manning would later be released from prison on May 17, 2017, after the then President of the United States, Barack Obama, had commuted her sentence.
The allegations of rape
The ‘cablegate’ makes Assange an international icon of freedom of expression and the beast of authority. The gray-haired Australian programmer is in the crosshairs of many governments and in the US there are those who believe he collaborates with the Russians, a suspicion that will be strengthened in 2013 when he would have suggested to Edward Snowden to take refuge in Moscow, advice that the NSA mole would have followed. .
It is precisely at the end of 2010 that Assange’s troubles begin with the law, and not with the publication of state secrets. On November 18, the Swedish judiciary launched a European arrest warrant against the founder of Wikileaks, who was reported for rape by two Swedish women for facts which took place in August 2010.
Assange, then in London, replied that he had consented relations with the accusers and surrendered to the British police on 7 December. The activist is detained for nine days and then he is first granted house arrest and then probation. In February 2011 the extradition procedure in Sweden was submitted to a London court. The Australian fears that from Sweden he may be extradited to the United States and sentenced to death there. On June 19, 2012, Assange decides to take refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Closed in the embassy for seven years
Assange seeks political asylum from the then president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, who grants it to him in August. Correa also unsuccessfully asks the British authorities to grant safe conduct to his guest so that he can move to Quito. In this period, Assange’s activity does not stop. In 2016, Wikileaks reveals how the leaders of the US Democratic Party had plotted against the popular leftist candidate, Bernie Sanders, for Hillary Clinton to win the primary.
The 2 April 2019 the new president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, accuses Assange of having violated the conditions for political asylum. On 11 April, the British police obtained permission to enter the embassy to take away Assange, who the next day was deprived of the Ecuadorian citizenship that Correa had granted him in the meantime. The defense of the women who had accused him of rape obtains a reopening of the investigation, which had meanwhile been closed.
The first condemnation and the US offensive
On April 14, 2019, Assange’s lawyer and partner Stella Morris assures her client is willing to cooperate with the Swedish authorities provided that the risk of extradition to the USA is averted. On 1 May, however, the Australian was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison by a London court for having violated the conditions of probation by taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Shortly after he leaves the US Department of Justice offensive, which on May 23 adds 17 counts of accusation to the one already filed for computer piracy, by virtue of the anti-espionage laws. Now Assange faces 175 years in prison.
The UN intervenes on 31 May, with the special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, who visits the founder of Wikileaks in prison and says that his condition presents “all the symptoms of psychological torture” and that his life is in danger. “An impression that appears confirmed on October 21, when Assange appears in court confused and stammering.
Sweden withdraws the charges, London does not extradite him
On November 19 comes the first good news: the Swedish judiciary abandoned the investigation for sexual assault for lack of evidence. Assange, however, must finish serving his sentence in Great Britain and over his head hangs the sword of Damocles of extradition.
On February 24, 2020, British justice begins to review the request made by the United States. While the progress of the procedure is slowed down by the pandemic, international mobilization in favor of Assange is growing, with dozens of NGOs calling for his “immediate” release in July.
Assange’s lawyers say the extradition request is politically motivated. The hearing is adjourned to September 7, and on September 25, Judge Vanessa Baraitser agrees to allow more time for the defense to prepare its documentation. On January 4, 2021, the verdict: Assange remains in the United Kingdom because, if extradited to the US, he could commit suicide. The court denies him probation.
Assange, and the ‘mole’ of the NSA, Edward Snowden are among the absent excellent in the list of 147 people who they receive the annulment or reduction of their sentence from Donald Trump on his last day as president of the United States. On November 12, the Belmarsh maximum security prison grants him permission to marry in the London penitentiary with Stella Morris, his partner and mother of his two children. The date of the wedding has not yet been established. The WikiLeaks founder has been in prison in Belmarsh, South East London, since 2019, when the Ecuadorian embassy took away his immunity and the British police arrested him.
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