After a four-year long legal battle, Julian Assange will be back in court on 20-21 February 2024 for a hearing which may be his last chance to contest his extradition to the US. If he loses and the extradition goes ahead, this will set a dangerous precedent for the future of independent journalism. SEAMUS O’TUARISC reports.
Assange faces charges of espionage relating to the 2010 publication of 250,000 US embassy cables, many of which exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. This material was put into the public domain by Assange’s outlet WikiLeaks, with much of it further disseminated by leading international newspapers, including The Guardian and The New York Times.
At the February hearing, Assange’s legal team will contest an earlier Court of Appeal ruling in June 2023 that the request for extradition was valid and there were no remaining grounds of challenge. At this point either he will be granted a further opportunity to argue his case before the British courts, or he will have exhausted all avenues of appeal and there will no longer be any legal barrier to his extradition. If Assange is subsequently convicted in the US, he could serve up to 175 years in a maximum security prison. Assange’s legal team have also made an application to the European Court of Human Rights, asking it to step in and block the extradition but this strategy is not guaranteed.
Deadly extradition
One of Julian Assange’s lawyers Jennifer Robinson explained in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on 10 January that if he is extradited to the US he would be at a high risk of suicide. Robinson said that Assange has become very unwell and suffers a major depressive illness as a result of 13 years of restricted liberty – first while he took sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy and, since 2019, while he has been held in high security prison conditions.
Indeed, the extradition was initially blocked in January 2021, specifically on the grounds of his deteriorating mental health. Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled then that the harsh conditions of solitary confinement would be oppressive and could cause Assange to take his own life. However, this decision was subsequently overturned when the US filed a successful appeal in which it claimed Baraitser had put too much weight on the testimony of the psychiatrist who assessed Assange, and in which the US government’s lawyers provided a set of dubious assurances around the conditions of his incarceration if he were to be extradited.
Spying on supporters
The US authorities have gone to great lengths to ensure Assange’s extradition and are believed to have spied on Assange’s supporters and visitors.
After the leaked cables were published in 2010, anti-war protests took place in cities across Assange’s home country of Australia in support of WikiLeaks. Documents recently released by the US State Department following a freedom of information request indicate that US embassy officials in Canberra monitored these protests for ‘anti-US sentiment’, and fed that information back to Washington. The documents also revealed how the embassy derided the Australian media’s coverage of this as ‘sensationalist’.
In August 2022, four US citizens — lawyers Margaret Ratner Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek and journalists John Goetz and Charles Glass — filed a lawsuit against the CIA and its former director Mike Pompeo. They allege that when they visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, they were forced to surrender their electronic devices to employees of UC Global, a Spanish company that was contracted to provide security for the embassy and also had access to audio and video feeds from cameras within the embassy.
The claimants allege that UC Global copied the content on their devices and shared it with the CIA. After the first hearing in this claim in Manhattan on 16 November, Judge John Koeltl ruled that the lawsuit was allowed to proceed and the four claimants had grounds to sue the CIA as the seizure of their electronic devices violated their rights to privacy as protected by the fourth amendment of the US constitution. The US government is likely to appeal against this decision and claims that there is no constitutional protection of US citizens’ rights to privacy when they travel abroad.
The US was clearly deeply embarrassed by the information made public through WikiLeaks and is therefore seeking retribution against Julian Assange and those seen to support him. Britain has been a willing participant in holding Assange prisoner and facilitating his extradition. At this critical time, we must continue to fight against his extradition to the US and for the future of independent, principled journalism.
Join the protest
Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 February
8.30am-4.30pm
outside the High Court, Strand, London WC2A 2LL
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 298 February/March 2024
