Craig Murray: The Film About Julian Assange

Ithaka is a heart-rending film that offers an important rebuttal to more than a decade of propaganda aimed at dehumanizing the WikiLeaks publisher. 

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

Away from the Tory Babel over who will be the top “world-leading” sociopath, I just spent two evenings in the company of decent people. John and Gabriel Shipton, Julian’s father and brother, were in Glasgow and Edinburgh for the screening of Ithaka, the documentary that follows the fight by Julian Assange’s family to have him freed. I was moderating the Q & A. 

The odd pub may also have been visited.

Ithaka is heart-rending, and it has an important message in rehumanizing Julian after over a decade of concerted (I use that word advisedly) propaganda aimed at dehumanizing him.

[Related: WATCH: CN Live! — ‘The Assange Family Struggle’]

The sheer baseness of the extraordinary lies told by the mainstream media about his personal hygiene — leaving toilets unflushed and even smearing Embassy walls with excrement — is something straight out of Joseph Goebbels’ playbook. 

The cold calculation behind Assange’s treatment in his last months in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, when he was denied access to wash and shave, in order to produce the apparent monster for the photos of his arrest, is a true example of evil unfolding. 

Two days before his expulsion I telephoned the embassy and spoke to the first secretary (a call I recorded). I explained that if, as we understood, Julian were no longer welcome, they only had to say so and he would leave voluntarily to the police station. Instead, we had that calculated piece of theater. 

Presentation aside, it also enabled them to retain all of Julian’s possessions, including all his legal papers covered by client-attorney privilege relating to his defence.

As we heard in the extradition hearing, all of those papers were taken to Quito and then given to the C.I.A. This was admitted by counsel for the U.S. government who claimed that “Chinese walls” — a direct quote — within the U.S. government prevented the C.I.A. from passing any of that information to the Justice Department, which is running the case.

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. But the fact is that it is the U.S. government that is applying for extradition and the U.S. government has stolen the legal papers of the other party in the case. In any other case this would lead to the case being kicked out immediately. 

If you add that together with the fact that the extradition treaty specifically bars political extradition, that the U.S. government’s key witness is a convicted fraudster and pedophile who was paid for his evidence (which he has since denounced), and that no journalist in the U.S. has ever been charged with espionage before, you begin to start to understand the depth of state depravity that has kept Julian in the U.K.’s strongest security prison for four birthdays. 

Pompeo Calls on Patel

I found this curious. Mike Pompeo, former U.S. secretary of state, who oversaw the plot to kidnap or potentially assassinate Julian in the Ecuadorian embassy, called on U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel on June 30, just after she signed Julian’s extradition order and also just after Pompeo had been summoned by a Spanish court to give evidence on the plot.

Delighted to host my friend, former US Secretary of State @MikePompeo at the @UKHomeOffice. Our nations stand shoulder to shoulder to uphold and respect our shared values and right now that could not be clearer than in our steadfast support for Ukraine against Putin’s aggression. pic.twitter.com/R9Qr8hWZDq

— Priti Patel (@pritipatel) June 30, 2022

That photo is more unusual than might be immediately realized. With a Democrat in the White House, it is extremely rare for a senior British cabinet minister, acting in an official capacity, openly to flaunt friendship with senior Republicans from the defeated administration and to hold official meetings with them. 

Pompeo is now a private citizen. He could quite naturally be meeting Patel as a friend in her home — but officially, at the Home Office? This is really not done, or if exceptionally needed, it is done quietly.

What did they discuss in the Home Office?

Here is something else downright peculiar. According to The Wall Street Journal, Priti Patel asked the U.S. government to give her public congratulations for agreeing the extradition of Julian Assange:

“After Ms. Patel’s ruling on June 17, for example, a U.K. official asked the U.S. Embassy in London if officials there or at the Justice Department could release a statement welcoming Ms. Patel’s ruling, adding that she would appreciate such a show of support, according to people familiar with the request.”

The Justice Department declined to issue such a statement.

There is a very strange smell surrounding this extradition.

The film Ithaka is not a dissection of the legal issues, nor an in-depth recounting of the Assange case. It rather focuses on the devastating effect of his cruel imprisonment on his family, both his wife and children, and on his father John Shipton. 

[Related: WATCH: CN Covers Assange Movie Premiere in Sydney]

John’s personal crusade to save his son is the main focus. The insight into the fundamentals of the case — that the man who did most to expose war crimes is the man locked up and tortured, not the people who committed the war crimes — mostly come from interviews with Professor Nils Melzer, then U.N. special rapporteur on torture.

Do go see the film — which has had excellent reviews from mainstream film critics. Chairing the Q&A sessions afterwards I have been struck by the number of tear-stained eyes when the lights go up and the audience mood shifts from sorrow to anger fairly quickly. It is a remarkable film.

Let me give my own insights. As a technical bit of film-making, it is edited down from what must have been thousands of hours of footage. During the various stages of extradition hearings, I was personally miked up every single day for the film for a total of over five weeks. Tens of hours of conversation between John and myself were recorded, not one second of which made it into the film. 

That is absolutely not a complaint, you see more than enough of me. It is merely an illustration of the remarkable editing down on this film. Over a thousand hours were left on the cutting room floor to get down to just two in the film.

That of course gives the director, Ben Lawrence, and his editor massive ability to shape the narrative by selection. Ben has chosen to illustrate the bleakness of Julian’s isolation by emphasising the loneliness of John and Stella’s quest. I am sure that is artistically valid and it presents a real truth – nobody can truly share the despair of the family, and in the long dark night of the soul they are alone. 

But I do wish to assure you that the families are surrounded and supported by a group of really loving and caring people, very much more involved than I am. They are not foregrounded in the film for reasons of narrative selection, but they exist and they know they have the eternal gratitude of Julian and his whole family and many of the rest of us. 

I would further add that John Shipton’s eclectic mind and deeply philosophical nature are brought out wonderfully, but his immense charm and also his great pleasure in social company perhaps do not come across on the screen. Ben has focused on the more angular bits of John’s nature. 

None of that in any way detracts from the experience of a superb film by Ben Lawrence, produced by Julian’s quieter but very talented brother Gabriel. Undoubtedly the public perception has already been turning in Julian’s favour. Don’t just go see the film: take somebody who might have their eyes opened to the truth.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.