{"id":5922,"date":"2024-03-26T22:55:53","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T20:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=5922"},"modified":"2024-03-26T23:00:23","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T21:00:23","slug":"assange-reprieve-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2024-03-26\/assange-reprieve-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Assange’s ‘reprieve’ is another lie, hiding the real goal of keeping him endlessly locked up"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US has had years to clarify its intention to give Assange a fair trial but refuses to do so. The UK court’s latest ruling is yet more collusion in his show trial<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The interminable and abhorrent saga of Julian Assange\u2019s incarceration for the crime of journalism continues. And once again, the headline news is a lie, one designed both to buy our passivity and to buy more time for the British and US establishments to keep the Wikileaks founder permanently disappeared from view.<\/p>\n

The Guardian \u2013 which has a mammoth, undeclared conflict of interest in its coverage of the extradition proceedings against Assange (you can read about that here<\/a> and here<\/a>) \u2013 headlined the ruling by the UK High Court today as a \u201ctemporary reprieve<\/a>\u201d for Assange. Nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

Five years on, Assange is still caged in Belmarsh high-security prison, convicted of absolutely nothing.<\/p>\n

Five years on, he still faces a trial in the US on ludicrous charges under a century-old, draconian piece of legislation called the Espionage Act. Assange is not a US citizen and none of the charges relate to anything he did in the US.<\/p>\n

Five years on, the English judiciary is still rubber-stamping his show trial \u2013 a warning to others not to expose state crimes, as Assange did in publishing details of British and US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

Five years on, judges in London are still turning a blind eye to Assange\u2019s sustained psychological torture, as the former United Nations legal expert Nils Melzer has documented.<\/p>\n

The word \u201creprieve\u201d is there \u2013 just as the judges\u2019 headline ruling that some of the grounds of his appeal have been \u201cgranted\u201d \u2013 to conceal the fact that he is prisoner to an endless legal charade every bit as much as he is a prisoner in a Belmarsh cell.<\/p>\n

In fact, today\u2019s ruling is yet further evidence that Assange is being denied due process and his most basic legal rights<\/a> \u2013 as he has been for a decade or more.<\/p>\n

In the ruling, the court strips him of any substantive grounds of appeal, precisely so there will be no hearing in which the public gets to learn more about the various British and US crimes he exposed, for which he is being kept in jail. He is thereby denied a public-interest defence against extradition. Or in the court\u2019s terminology, his \u201capplication to adduce fresh evidence is refused\u201d.<\/p>\n

Even more significantly, Assange is specifically stripped of the right to appeal on the very legal grounds that should guarantee him an appeal, and should have ensured he was never subjected to a show trial in the first place. His extradition would clearly violate the prohibition in the Extradition Treaty between the UK and the US against extradition on political grounds.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, in their wisdom, the judges rule that Washington\u2019s vendetta against Assange for exposing its crimes is not driven by political considerations. Nor apparently was there a political factor to the CIA\u2019s efforts to kidnap and assassinate<\/a> him after he was granted political asylum by Ecuador, precisely to protect him from the US administration\u2019s wrath.<\/p>\n

What the court \u201cgrants\u201d instead are three technical grounds of appeal \u2013 although in the small print, that \u201cgranted\u201d is actually subverted to \u201cadjourned\u201d. The \u201creprieve\u201d celebrated by the media \u2013 supposedly a victory for British justice<\/a> \u2013 actually pulls the legal rug from under Assange.<\/p>\n

Each of those grounds of appeal can be reversed \u2013 that is, rejected \u2013 if Washington submits \u201cassurances\u201d to the court, however worthless they may end up being in practice. In which case, Assange is on a flight to the US and effectively disappeared into one of its domestic black sites.<\/p>\n

Those three pending grounds of appeal on which the court seeks reassurance are that extradition will not:<\/p>\n