After the U.K. Supreme Court rejected his petition to appeal, hope seems to be running out for Julian Assange. We discuss the court’s ruling and the way forward. Watch the replay.
Guests:
Julian Assange, the imprisoned publisher of WikiLeaks, is running out of options to avoid extradition to the United States. The UK Supreme Court this week refused his petition to appeal a High Court ruling that cleared the way to send him to stand trial in Alexandria, Virginia.
Assange is accused of committing espionage by publishing accurate information that revealed U.S. crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He faces up to 175 years in a U.S. dungeon.
Assange had won his case to bar extradition in a magistrate’s court in London in January 2021. The judge, who sided with the U.S. on every point of law, said however that he was too suicidal and U.S. prisons were too harsh to send him to the U.S. After losing its case, the U.S. made diplomatic assurances to Britain that Assange would receive adequate health care and would not be put under draconian Special Administrative Measures or SAMS in a U.S. prison.
Based on those assurances, the U.S. appealed the district judge’s decision not to extradite, to the High Court of England Wales. The High did not dispute the lower court ruling at all, that Assange was too sick to extradite. But it wiped that all away exclusively on the strength of the U.S. promises and allowed the extradition to go ahead. The High Court didn’t doubt that U.S. prisons were horrible. It didn’t doubt that Assange was too suicidal to be sent there. It just believed that the DOJ, the BOP and the CIA, which has a say in national security cases, would treat Assange humanely.
His lawyers protested that those assurances should have been presented during the lower court hearing so that they could have challenged them. Instead the High Court accepted the promises, unchallenged.
The petition for appeal that Assange filed with the Supreme Court did not challenge the credibility of the U.S. promises, which a British court would very unlikely question. But rather the law on the timing of when those assurances should have been submitted, in other words during the lower court hearing and not afterwards. Even on those narrow grounds the Supreme Court rejected the petition saying it did not rise to a point of law of sufficient public interest.
The case was sent to Home Secretary Priti Patel. Assange has four weeks to make submissions to Patel to persuade her not to send him to Alexandria.
If Patel rejects Assange’s arguments, and there is every indication that she will, she will send the case back to magistrate’s court where it began, to execute the extradition. It is at that point that Assange’s team can launch a cross appeal to the High Court, to challenge all of the points of law that the lower court judge agreed with when she decided not to extradite Assange solely on the basis of his health and the condition of U.S. prisons.
If the High Court rejects the cross appeal, Assange’s last stand is the European Court of Human Rights, but even if that court rules in his favor, Britain might well ignore its decision as it is up to members states of the Council of Europe to enforce rulings themselves.
The perspective of pure human rights law has not much practical effect on the judicial system of what’s purportedly held to be an international pillar of democratic principles? That, among other troubling signs, shows a steepened trajectory of downward spirals of both justice and democracy in today’s world.
Without getting too fluttery about what’s actually left of those principles, I’d only like also to point to the ongoing transcontinental deception & shiftless authority used to undermine them.
It seems to me Julian Assange continues to reveal far more about the so-called legitimacy of these legal & media & political institutions, while clamped in a prison cell, than people give him credit for. It’s more than regrettable that it comes at such a steep price. And more regrettable still that those with eyes to see, ears to hear and mouths to speak prefer to turn away in silence.
But really, given these past decades’ events, who could be surprised to see halls of justice flung open to admit the depraved scampering of Ameircan monkeyshines?
Julian is still exposing the truth even behind bars!
The UK tried to get Sweden to their dirty work but now the cat is out of the bag!
The UK Court is clearly a sham.
The persecution of Assange on trumped charges of bad behavior brings to mind the un-persecution of those involved in the pedophilic operation run by Epstein/Mega Group/Mossad in the UES of Manhattan and on the so-called Rape Island.
Why has the American government never investigated Bill Clinton, Dershowitz, Wexner, Lauder, and the whole Mega Group and punished them for their lude criminal behavior?
Anna is your comment intended as a distraction from a corrupt court system?
I’m sorry if you have been abused! So many have been! But you can’t get justice out of a corrupt system. That is my point!
It’s bad enough seeing one individual picked out by the American state for endless persecution and what is essentially torture for the rest of his life because he participated in outing the many illegal actions of that state in the killing, maiming and displacement of millions of innocent civilians in multiple foreign lands with no real capacity to harm the United States but nevertheless targeted with massive lethal force. That surely in itself is an outrage that requires redress by the larger whole of human civilisation. But for that American government to so viciously persist in flouting yet more laws and bullying yet more people and governmental institutions along the way to Mr Assange’s persecution makes this a truly historical display of unbounded arrogance, sadism and deliberate oppression of not just one man, but of every individual he protected through his actions and who would now save him if they could. What other story, first published approximately two millennia ago does this now remind you of, aside from the fact that the first one played out on a hill in the Middle East and this one will probably end in an American supermax? Well, America surely is the new Rome. It too will fall, and deservedly so.
Excellent comment.
Well said and I agree with your words!
I find the thought, of this family, who have been forced apart for so long, is heartbreaking!
Two little boys have been deprived of their Daddy, for all of their lives and that should be a point,
against sending Assange to the US, which will take away the rights of these children, to have their Daddy, with them as they grow up!
Surely the crime here is depriving these boys and their Mum, the right to a family life….and that, is the crime here!
British government continues its brutish lout behavior. The kingdom went to chit about 1400.
Yes.
Sadly, Julian’s position is beyond hope.
Hell no its NOT!!!
I m still hoping, that Boris, could be shunned, if he gives Julian Assange, to the US Government.
not renowned for its decent care of prisoners!
The land of ‘The Dissenters’ cannot tolerate dissent. With the collusion of the British government and judiciary, they have spent 12 years destroying Julian Assange in body and spirit, telling all in the world, not just journalists, that resistance is pointless and that anyone who causes problems can and will be brought down.
Thank Goodness, there are millions around the world who will not end their support for him and his work.