Julian Assange’s extradition order will be sent to the U.K. home secretary Wednesday. Here is an open letter taking into account Assange’s changed health as it affects U.S. “assurances.”
U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel at Essex Police Headquarters for new recruits’ graduation parade, October 2020. (Pippa Fowles, No 10 Downing Street, Flickr)
WikiLeaks‘ publisher Julian Assange’s extradition order will be sent to British Home Secretary Priti Patel on Wednesday morning by Westminster Magistrate’s Court after the U.K. Supreme Court declined to hear Assange’s appeal of a High Court decision to allow the extradition to the United States to proceed.
Assange initially won his extradition case in the magistrate’s court based on the high likelihood that his mental health would lead to his suicide in harsh prison conditions in the United States.
After the case was lost, the U.S. made diplomatic “assurances” to Britain that it would not put Assange in so-called Special Administrative Measures (SAMS), the most severe condition of isolation in the U.S. prison system. The U.S. also promised that Assange would be given adequate physical and mental health care.
The U.S. then appealed. Based on those assurances alone, the High Court on Dec. 10, 2021 overturned the lower court’s decision to block extradition. But that decision was made after Assange had suffered a stroke during the first day of the two-day High Court hearing. The stroke was not made public until the day after the ruling.
That markedly changed the conditions upon which the decision was reached as one of the High Court judges made the distinction during the hearing that Assange was suffering only from a mental and not physical disability. The crucial question remains: when did the High Court learn about the stroke?
The Assange legal team has four weeks to appeal to Patel not to follow through with sending Assange to the United States. The following is an open letter sent by Consortium News to the home secretary, addressing these issues.
Cathy Vogan is the executive producer of CN Live!
Britians poooodle will respond to what ever America Wants. Because whatever America Wants America gets. Is there anyone in this country left who can think for themselves or even question what comes out of the BBC. What ever happened to freedom of speech?
How can all these people (judges, politicians, etc) go home after work and be with their family and loved ones without thinking what they have done. How can they be so evil?
I just cant explain this.
Assuming that’s not a rhetorical question, you mean how come they can all so readily fling around their ‘moral outrage’ over the alleged war crimes of their foes, whilst remaining completely silent about their own, even going as far as imprisoning the journalist who exposed them, in order to bury the truth?
“When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even cunning, treachery, violence, simony, prison, death, for all order is for the sake of the community, and the individual must be sacrificed to the common good” – Dietrich Von Nieheim Bishop of Verden AD1411
We (and I include the masses in that) have not evolved beyond a fearful animalistic Human Psychology, one that has been with us since the dawn of our time. A ‘scapegoat’ is an essential requirement of that psychology, one that reinforces the sick dance between the masses and their rulers. The majority of the masses will happily burn whichever witch is presented to them, comforted in the fact that its someone else and not them that’s being persecuted. Unless we evolve beyond this psychology, I see little chance that any of the troubles we see in our World (and keep returning to), will ever change……..
I would argue that addressing anyone so respectfully – either in a letter or personally – as ‘Right Honourable’, when that person has clearly demonstrated their credentials as nothing more than a Human Being with a ‘totally abstract institutional backbone that sustains their personal flaccidity’, (a powerful coward in simpler terms), is a complete waste of time. They have no integrity, certainly no ‘honour’, no honesty or congruence. Militantly begging such individuals for some kind of mercy, only increases the delusions that they have of themselves….
Andrew Stretton:
I agree with everything you write, but if officials fail to act on Cathy Vogan’s cogent plea it will expose the moral bankruptcy of the system and the lack of integrity, honor and honesty of its compromised agents. Her letter does useful work in undermining the legitimacy of the British courts. Let’s see what mental gymnastics the powers that be will now resort to to “justify” their action (or inaction).
The moral bankruptcy of the system, along with the lack of integrity, honor and honesty of its compromised agents, are all factors that, for anyone like myself who has no interest in militantly begging for reform, have been exposed on so many countless occasions over the centuries, that their exposure and the mental gymnastics that always follow, have become little more than banal, a continually refined Machievellian game. That said, I fully respect your choice to believe in the reform process.
The ultimate question is whether the U.K. is a democracy or is a totalitarian society that pretends to be a democracy.
Bravo, Cathy! Your reasoning appears to be quite irrefutable.
Of course, the question now becomes whether the UK will finally adopt a legitimately moral/ethical stance or just continue to kowtow to the demands of the US. I’m not optimistic, but I sincerely *hope* it’s the former and that your efforts will have come to fruition.
America’s poodle will do whatever its master asks.
You really need to know that you cannot trust the US to keep its word even under oath. After all count the treaties that have been broken.
Finally some1 raising that issue. Does any1 think that maybe JA`s lawyers were forbidden from attending the court date where the HC ruling was read in order to NOT address that issue in public? Did his lawyers raise it in writing with the court btw the appeal hearing and the verdict?
Thanks for your comment Susi2. Some1 does think that’s a possibility. No idea if the matter has been raised by the lawyers in writing but Doctors for Assange have written a letter and issued this statement: hxxps://youtu.be/IQP87AO1SVw