In the Mail, Peter Hitchens takes up the cause of Julian Assange, arguing that if the boot was on the other foot there’s no chance America would hand the Wikileaks founder over to the U.K. Here’s how he begins.
Even a self-respecting poodle would object to the way we are currently behaving towards the USA. We are on the brink of allowing the American Government to reach into this country and seize a man who has broken no British law.
Once they have hold of him, there is every chance that he will be buried alive in some federal dungeon, quite possibly until he dies. We would not allow Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or Turkey to behave like this. And quite right too. There is every reason to believe that if the circumstances were reversed, the Americans would laugh in our faces and refuse to hand over such a person.
The man involved is the Australian journalist Julian Assange, whose Wikileaks organisation is hated by the USA because he embarrassed them, and who has languished in Belmarsh maximum security prison ever since being arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2019.
As I asked in the Mail on Sunday nearly four years ago: “Do we really want the hand of a foreign power to be able to reach into our national territory at will and pluck out anyone it wants to punish? Are we still even an independent country if we allow this?”
You will have heard many bad things about Mr. Assange. I had too, but – while I disagree with him politically about most things – I found when I inquired that he has in fact been the victim of many smears which do not stand up to examination.
Ignore claims that he carelessly endangered the lives of Americans when he released material provided by the U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. In the words of my distinguished and far-from-Leftist colleague Andrew Neil, who, like me, opposes Mr. Assange’s extradition, the material revealed: “War crimes covered up. Torture. Brutality. The rendition and incarceration of suspects without due process. The corruption of inquiries trying to hold it to account. The bribery of foreign officials to look the other way when America did bad things.”
In short, Julian Assange published scandalous facts which proper journalists in a free society are entitled – and in fact obliged – to disclose, for the benefit of that society.
But Julian Assange took great care to edit the material to prevent individuals being endangered, and no evidence has ever been produced that any such harm resulted.
Interestingly, Chelsea Manning was pardoned by President Barack Obama. His administration also decided not to proceed with charges against Mr. Assange. But they were then revived by President Donald Trump.
This is the clearest possible evidence that the prosecution is openly political, not criminal. As the text of the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty states, using the American spelling of ‘offence’, in a document bearing the Royal Coat of Arms: (Article 4, clause 1): “Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense.”
It is quite astonishing that the British courts and more than one Home Secretary have been persuaded by lawyers to pretend that this is not such an offence.
Worth reading in full.
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One of the shoddiest of New Labour’s capitulations and believe me there are many contenders. A one way extradition treaty. What kind of a traitor signs such a thing. Blunkett had no problem at all with it in fact he was smiling. Churchill on his deathbed said never fall out with the Yanks and it made sense at the time. In our time it is a big mistake to not see the fundamental power shift that has occurred. The strength of this country lies in the mercurial and a pragmatism based upon solid scrutiny. To ally yourself with the Yanks at this moment in time is to sign your own death warrant. I think most Yanks would agree with that right now.
“To be an enemy of the US is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal”? Kissinger
…and who has languished in Belmarsh maximum security prison ever since being arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2019 after skipping bail in 2012.
…for the crime of journalism.
To the downvoters:
Do you trust our leaders implicitly?
Is this trust unimpeachable, with no questions whatsoever?
How sure are you that they’d never ever betray our trust?
What qualifies them to lead us with any credibility?
When talking of the “powers that be” we must emphasize the word “power” then examine these questions again.
Those who seek power are those who least deserve it. Those who want to be left alone will fall unless they engage.
…for the crime of journalism.
No. He skipped bail after losing his case against extradition to Sweden over an allegation of rape.
Some argue the allegation and extradition proceedings were orchestrated by the US or other powers he had pissed off. Personally, I think he had greater risk of facing extradition to the US from the UK (as now seems likely) than from Sweden. I would also have thought he faced greater risk of ‘extraordinary rendition’ (kidnap) from a place like Ecuador (had he made it there) than from Sweden.
For what crime is he currently imprisoned? Does bail jumping come with a 5 year sentence?
He is imprisoned, but he is not currently imprisoned for a crime. He is detained as he is the subject of an extradition request. Normally a person would be granted bail while the case and any/all appeals were heard. Unfortunately for him he has a track record of skipping bail in similar circumstances.
The extradition request from the USA for Assange was received while he was imprisoned for a year for skipping bail in the earlier case.
It does seem to have taken an extraordinary length of time for the case and appeals to be heard – but I’m not sure what is typical in extradition cases and it would be a shame to just hand him over without examining the case properly.
It seems to me that his timing is again unfortunate (crap). My gut feeling is that Biden would be more likely to issue a Presidential Pardon than Trump – and it looks like Trump may have another go in the hot seat. Assange can’t be pardoned unless he is tried and found guilty – like Private Manning – and that trial in the US is unlikely to conclude while Biden is still warming (wetting?) the chair.
If he is extradited what do you reckon for his chances of getting bail while he’s awaiting trial in the ‘States? Not good, I’d guess?
Tell the USA to F. off for once.
If only.
Been a reliable lapdog since 1945.
Oh, and we’re stil lowe them lots of money, for WW1 and 2.
Yes. If only.
What would amuse me immensely is if the courts declared the USA to be not a ‘safe country’.
Still owing the USA money for WW1 and WW2? Yes. Though I thought I read something somewhere about Cameron’s government trying to cook the books on that.
Hell, we’ve only just (relatively speaking) paid off the money lenders over the money the country borrowed to implement the abolition of slavery (might have been from the same article).
When will we pay off the money borrowed in the Covid debacle? Never. That’s a problem for future Homer.
I saw how he was pushed into the back of a police wagon and how the police were smiling as they manhandled him. At that point I felt the British were in for a bad time. Because we as Englishmen shouldn’t have stood for that but we did. With our police taking delight in it. And that is before you even get on to his humiliation in court.
Without reading the article and only as an arbitary comment, headlines such as this ‘No, We Shouldn’t Extradite Julian Assange’ are a relic of the sort of paternalistic nature that infests current MSM. The headline itself tells the reader the position they should take, belittling and overbearing. We are adults with mostly decent intelligence, and we don’t need to be told what position the author of an article would like us to take.
This is a fault along simmilar lines of many MSM articles which attempt to tell the reader what 5 things we should know about X or Y. It’s an anethema to me so I will rage against it as I find it. Please, Mr Jones, Do not attempt to include ‘me’ in your ‘we’.
The very fact that Assange is in a prison going through this charade tells one everthing they need to know about the corruption and evil that exists in governments around the world…and No, I dont think he should be extradited..but I have come to that thinking via my own routes.
Rant over.
You don’t have to read it. And I don’t see any problem with the title being a summary of what you’re about to read.
First tell the audience what you’re going to tell them.
Then tell them.
Lastly, tell them what you’ve just told them.
He doesn’t have to read it, but perhaps he would have read it if the headline, as johnboy12 pointed out, hadn’t been such an unappealing hackneyed type of headline reminiscent of ‘fact checkers’ who want to tell you what to believe and then proceed to lie.
The breakdown of the rule of law is a difficult thing to talk about for many reasons. The working class, the por folk, the downtrodden have always known that the dice are loaded. The more educated people tend to dismiss such claims as alarmist. It really isn’t alarmist given how the black iron prison is encroaching on all of us. It really is a do or die moment in the sense that if we just carry on then all that you love will be carried away. This isn’t a long term projection either things change very rapidly or you and your progeny could be trapped in a soul-harvesting operation forever.
Bye bye Anglo-American corporate power. Your reign was short and shoddy. You are the most disgusting power structure ever to walk the earth. Don’t think that your crimes will go unpunished.
I have long thought that the persecution of Assange was a watershed moment. It marked the moment the press stopped challenging authority and became its shameless propaganda unit.
Isn’t this how all the illegal immigrants walking up our beaches manage to evade deportation – by claiming that their country of origin will be mean to them on the grounds of their politics, religion, sexual orientation and subject them to inhuman treatment etc etc if they are deported. It’s a phenomenally successful argument for them but not, it seems, for Mr Assange who would be (and – outrageously – has been here) locked up without trial. His story beggars belief, the injustice is medieval level barbarism.
Their other claim is the entitlement to family life, which for reasons unknown doesn’t apply to Assange who is married with children.
Yes, responsible investigative journalists are an essential ingredient of a free society, but Assange CANNOT have ‘edited’ hundreds of thousands of emails/documents as Hitchen claims in this article and so JA must be open to criticism for that alone. Even if he didn’t expose any operatives (???!) then there was clearly the potential to do so but he published anyway. As Assange is an Australian citizen, why not send him back there?
What we have done to this poor man is nothing short of horrendous! Well done to Hitchens for speaking out however its a shame our MSM is so deep in the government’s pockets they have totally lost all sense or humanity.
We are witnessing the death spiral of western civilization. Almost everything we know and value is being destroyed. Putin’s observations are clear. IMHO most countries around the world are glad.
The USA is currently a fine, glowing example of jurisprudence.