British High Court rules in favor of U.S. extradition of Julian Assange

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

LONDON — A British High Court ruled on Friday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States to face charges of violating the Espionage Act. The 50-year-old Australian will remain in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he has been held since April 2019 after the Ecuadoran Embassy revoked his political asylum. Assange’s lawyers will likely file a final appeal to the British Supreme Court, which could either reject to hear the case or take it — if the highest court sees in the appeal “a point of law of general public importance.”

That process could take weeks or months. If the British Supreme Court declines to hear Assange’s final appeal, his could seek a stay of extradition from the European Court of Human Rights. The High Court ruling on Friday brings Assange one step closing to being turned over to U.S. Marshals for a flight back to Washington, where he would stand trial in federal court in northern Virginia. In January, a British judge ruled that Assange should not be extradited to the United States, because he would be at high risk of suicide. The U.S. government appealed that decision.

Assange was charged under the Trump administration with violating the Espionage Act, the first time U.S. federal prosecutors have targeted not just the source but the publisher of classified information. Chelsea Manning, the Army private who shared secret diplomatic and military information with WikiLeaks in 2010, was released from prison under President Obama but spent roughly a year in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Assange.

Under President Biden, the Department of Justice has continued to assure British courts that Assange can be put on trial in the United States despite his mental health issues. If convicted, the U.S. government in October assured the British courts that Assange would not be sent to country’s highest-security prison or automatically placed in solitary confinement. He could seek to serve his sentence in his native Australia.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/wikileaks-assange-verdict-extradition/2021/12/10/fff2ee92-5926-11ec-8396-5552bef55c3c_story.html

[cstanleytech]

1. I wonder if it might help if they change it from "He could seek" to "he would".

[BumRushDaShow]

2. Well per an article back in October

Julian Assange could serve jail term in Australia, lawyer for the US tells London court

Australian Associated Press
Wed 27 Oct 2021 17.42 EDT


(snip)

Assange’s lawyer Edward Fitzgerald accused US lawyers of seeking to “minimise the severity of Mr Assange’s mental disorder and suicide risk”.

Fitzgerald said in a written submission Australia had not yet agreed to take Assange if he was convicted.

(snip)

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/oct/28/julian-assange-could-serve-jail-term-in-australia-lawyer-for-the-us-tells-london-court

So I suppose it would be up to Australia whenever this got decided (which could take years).

[Ziggysmom]

3. The US did so well keeping Epstein "Safe" in jail.

[JT45242]

4. Being afraid of polonium cocktails is not mental illness

If you work for Putin and no longer have value, it's not suicide. It's more likely he had you killed to tie up the loose ends.
Less sympathy for this guy than RWNJ who get the Herman Caine award.

A rapist who became a weapon for Putin is the lowest form of scum imaginable. Just like TFG.

[Ghost Dog]

14. None of these assertions

have any validity.

[malthaussen]

5. If only he'd stormed the Capitol and tried to overthrow the government.

He'd be home free.

-- Mal

[orangecrush]

13. Yup

[cadoman]

6. let this be a lesson

To anyone dumb enough to think they can perform "journalism" on a topic as nuanced as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars without proper education, training, and accreditation.

Hopefully this serves as a warning to everyone considering "doing my own journalism" on the complex issues of our day. We have papers and television networks of record for a reason.

[oioioi]

7. agreed. nobody should be allowed

publish any any document or book without an accredited university degree and a government-issued press pass. It's out of control, especially since the internet started allowing ordinary people to say whatever silly ideas that pop into their head. Anybody with a damn cell phone can write newspeak these days. It's downright Orwellian.

[Happy Hoosier]

8. So what's YOUR answer?

Seems like an "anything goes" mentality will just lead to foreign actors posing as "journalists." It is my feeling that that is EXACTLY what Assange did since he seemed to pull punches when it came to certain U.S. adversaries.

And I'd point out that Assange is not a U.S. Citizen. He was... and IS... a foreign national publishing sensitive data. Some of that data you might be able to argue should see the light of day, but he was pretty indiscriminate about what he published.

So, I'll wrap up by asking again, what's YOUR solution. Free-for-all?

[oioioi]

9. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Vietnam:_A_Time_to_Break_Silence

[TomWilm]

10. 👍

[Happy Hoosier]

11. That's not an answer

You are arguing that the ends justifies the means. That may make you feel morally superior, but the fact is that covering such behavior under the false cover of “the press,” but allowing such unfettered criminality also leads to things like Assange coordinating with Russian hackers to undermine the Hillary Clinton campaign.

You okay with that too!?

Fuck Assange.

[oioioi]

12. Moral Relativism

The published communications taken when Podesta was allegedly phished by Russian operatives showed that the DNC was coordinating efforts to undermine the Sanders campaign during the primaries.

None of the indictments relate to publishing those communications - the charges are for publishing information leaked by a conscience-troubled US Service member who walked it out on physical media and requested its publication.

Unfettered criminality indeed.

Lock him up, I say, lock him up!

“...out from the door of the farmhouse came a long file of pigs, all walking on their hind legs..." - Orwell, George. Animal Farm. 1945