On Contact: Assange Can Appeal UK Supreme Court

The British High Court of England and Wales on Monday said it would allow the imprisoned publisher of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, to, in essence, appeal a ruling that would have seen him extradited to the United States where he faces a possible 175 years in prison for the publication of classified documents and videos.

The High Court technically refused to allow an appeal to the Supreme Court, but, in a legal loophole, it left it up to that court to determine whether it will grant permission to consider one legal issue.

“We certify a single point of law … in what circumstances can an appellate court receive assurances from a requesting state which were not before the court of first instance in extradition proceedings,” the High Court said in an appearance that lasted less than a minute.

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Assange Hearing Day

it is customary that the High Court refuses leave to appeal; with the certification of public interest, Julian can now appeal direct to the Supreme Court which will decide whether or not to take the case. The refusal of leave by the High Court is purely a show of deference to the Supreme Court, which decides itself what it will take. The lawyers put this as “the Supreme Court dines a la carte”.

Now some of the appeal points which the High Court refused to certify as arguable and of general public interest, were important. One point was that the diplomatic assurances by the United States promised not to engage in certain illegal practices amounting to torture, but made that assurance conditional on Assange’s future behavior.

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British High Court Opens Door For Assange To Appeal To Supreme Court

London – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange prevailed in his effort to obtain certification from the British High Court of Justice, which would allow him to appeal their prior decision to the Supreme Court.

Under the law, the court must determine that the request for an appeal involves a “point of law” that is of “public importance.”

Journalist Mohamed Elmaazi, who was in the courtroom to cover the very brief proceedings, reported that the High Court certified the following point of law: “in what circumstances can an appellate court receive [diplomatic] assurances which were not before the court of first instance in extradition proceedings.”

Although the High Court maintained it had settled the question, they acknowledged the Supreme Court had not previously considered the question.

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Assange To UK Court: Certify Three Points To Appeal Supreme Court

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has requested the U.K. High Court of Justice to approve three points of law of general public importance, as at least one certified point is necessary for the Supreme Court to hear Assange’s appeal against extradition to the United States, his fiancee Stella Moris said on Thursday.

For the country’s Supreme Court to hear the case of an appeal, it must be first recognized that the appeal concerns legal matters that are important to the larger public.

“Julian Assange has asked the High Court to certify three points of law of general public importance. The Supreme Court cannot hear his appeal unless the High Court agrees to certify at least one of them. The High Court could notify its decision about certification at any moment,” Moris tweeted.

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Thousands Sign Petition Supporting Assange Release

Washington, DC – Led by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), more than 26 antiwar groups and 2,500 individual peace and justice advocates have cosponsored a statement calling for the immediate release of publisher Julian Assange and commending him for his contributions toward global peace.

Assange is currently fighting extradition to the United States after the Trump administration indicted him on unprecedented Espionage Act charges. His indictment marked the first time in U.S. history that a journalist has been charged for publishing truthful information. 

Since being removed from Ecuador’s London embassy after a new Ecuadorian administration bowed to U.S. pressure to withdraw his asylum, Assange has been held for more than 1,000 days in Belmarsh Prison while his extradition case is being heard through UK courts.

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Security Expert Ola Bini’s Trial Set For This Week

For over two years EFF has been following the case of Swedish computer security expert Ola Bini, who was arrested in April, 2019, in Ecuador, following Julian Assange’s ejection from that country’s London Embassy. Bini’s pre-trial hearing, which was suspended and rescheduled at least five times during 2020, was concluded on June 29, 2021. Despite the cloud that has hung over the case—political ramifications have seemed to drive the allegations, and Bini has been subjected to numerous due process and human rights violations—we are hopeful that the security expert will be afforded a transparent and fair trial and that due process will prevail.

Ola Bini is known globally as a computer security expert; he is someone who builds secure tools and contributes to free software projects.

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Peace And Justice Organizations Call For Freedom For Julian Assange

Imprisoned Wikileaks founder, journalist and free speech champion Julian Assange today faces life imprisonment for telling the truth about U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the U.S. torture base in Guantanamo Bay.

Assange faces charges under the 1917 U.S. Espionage Act. Prosecution under that WWI anti-democratic law placed thousands of antiwar activists in prison for exercising their free speech right to protest WWI.

Ironically, the Dec 19, 2021 New York Times front-page two-part series entitled, Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes, follows in Assange’s footsteps in reporting U.S. war crimes, yet The Times staff writers remain free.

Some 100 Times reporters evaluated Pentagon confidential document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

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What I Got Wrong About Julian Assange

I wrote a piece for Australian online publisher Crikey just before Julian Assange’s extradition hearings resumed in September 2020 in which I regurgitated a slur that has done enormous harm to his reputation.

Australian journalists should stop using the WikiLeaks treasure trove in their stories if they wouldn’t speak up for Assange, I’d written. Journalists like to think they’d go to jail to protect a source. Well, their source was suffering in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, I said.

The problem was I also wrote that Assange dumped the Iraq and Afghan war logs on the internet without redacting names. I was wrong and lazy in repeating that slur which appeared whenever you Googled Assange’s name.

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NBC News Uses Ex-FBI Official Frank Figliuzzi To Urge Assange’s Extradition

Two of the television outlets on which American liberals rely most for their news — NBC News and CNN — have spent the last six years hiring a virtual army of former CIA operatives, FBI officials, NSA spies, Pentagon chiefs, and DOJ prosecutors to work in their newsrooms. The multiple ways in which journalism is fundamentally corrupted by this spectacle are all vividly illustrated by a new article from NBC News that urges the prosecution and extradition of Julian Assange, claiming that the WikiLeaks founder, once on U.S. soil, will finally provide the long-elusive proof that Donald Trump criminally conspired with Russia.

The NBC article is written by former FBI Assistant Director and current NBC News employee Frank Figliuzzi, who played a central role during the Obama years in the FBI’s attempt to investigate and criminalize Assange: a rather relevant fact concealed by NBC when publishing this.

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PEN America And The Betrayal Of Julian Assange

Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, is one of the very few establishment figures to denounce the judicial lynching of Julian Assange. Melzer’s integrity and courage, for which he has been mercilessly attacked, stand in stark contrast to the widespread complicity of many human rights and press organizations, including PEN America, which has become a de facto subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee.

Those in power, as Noam Chomsky points out, divide the world into “worthy” and “unworthy” victims. They weep crocodile tears over the plight of Uyghur Muslims persecuted in China while demonizing and slaughtering Muslims in the Middle East. They decry press censorship in hostile states and collude with the press censorship and algorithms emanating from Silicon Valley in the United States.

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On Contact: Slow-Motion Execution Of Julian Assange

On the show, Chris Hedges discusses the torture of Julian Assange with his father, John Shipton.

Julian Assange committed the empire’s greatest sin – he exposed it as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, callous disregard for human life, rampant corruption, and innumerable war crimes. Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Labour, Trump or Biden – it does not matter. The goons who oversee the empire sing from the same satanic songbook. Empires always kill those who inflict deep and serious wounds.

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Committee To Protect Journalists Excludes Assange From Jailed Journalist Index

A record number of journalists are imprisoned throughout the world, according to the annual prison index released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). But that number excludes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

CPJ, which is based in New York, opposes the United States Justice Department’s prosecution against Assange. However, for the third year, the press freedom organization declined to classify him as a jailed journalist.

In the organization’s press release on the 2021 index, it states, “No journalists were jailed in North America at the time of the census deadline.” That may be true, but it obscures what the U.S. government is doing to keep a journalist detained in the United Kingdom.

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I Want To Get Our Rights From The Americans Who Harmed Us

On 12 July 2007, two US AH-64 Apache helicopters fired 30-millimetre cannon rounds at a group of Iraqi civilians in New Baghdad. These US Army gunners murdered at least a dozen people, including Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh. Reuters immediately asked for the US to conduct a probe into the killing. Instead, they were fed the official story by the US government that soldiers of Bravo Company, 2-16 infantry had been attacked by small arms fire as part of their Operation Ilaaj in the al-Amin al-Thaniyah neighbourhood. The soldiers called in air strikes, which came in and cleared the streets of insurgents. Reuters had information that the helicopters filmed the attack, and so the media house requested the video from the US military.

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300 Doctors Implore Australia To Bring Assange Home

The letter begins by commending Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce for his recent statements calling for the U.S. extradition request against Julian Assange to be dropped. It continues:

“We are concerned that Mr. Assange’s apparent mini stroke [reported in the Daily Mail on 11 December] may be the tip of a medical iceberg. Indeed his symptoms suggest as much. It is therefore imperative that Mr. Assange be released from prison, where his health will otherwise continue to deteriorate and where his complex medical needs cannot be met.” Continued incarceration, the doctors warn, will place Julian Assange’s life at risk.

In appendices to the letter, the doctors have released all former correspondence with the Australian Government – including previously unpublished material – in which they warned of cardiovascular pathology, such as that reported in the Daily Mail.

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Freeing Julian Assange

The legal systems in the United Kingdom and the United States will not spare WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The only way this political case will end is if U.S. officials conclude the cost is no longer worth the benefit of making an example out of him. Support for prosecuting Assange comes from within U.S. intelligence agencies (particularly the C.I.A.), the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Defense Department, the national security division of the U.S. Justice Department, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia, and several influential senators and representatives in the U.S. Congress. On December 10, the British High Court of Justice granted the U.S. government’s appeal in the extradition case against Assange and significantly increased the likelihood that he will one day be transported to the U.S. for an unprecedented trial involving charges under the Espionage Act.

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