The Struggle Against Assange’s Extradition Continue – By Eve Ottenberg (Counterpunch) / June 30, 2023
As Julian Assange’s appeal of his extradition to the United States wends its way through British courts, now is a good time to review what’s at stake. Nothing less than a free press and the rule of law. That’s because Assange is being persecuted for publishing proof of U.S. military criminality, among other war and political matters. The charges may sound technical and focus on “hacking,” but the U.S. has pursued him for over a decade, thanks to his shocking revelations of American war crimes in Iraq. If the U.S. can get him on a technicality, even a fabricated one, it will try to do so. In the process, the empire has perverted the rule of law in the U.K., where Assange was tried in a kangaroo court. I say kangaroo court, because the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, ignored recognized standards of justice and law to reach a predetermined conclusion.
In early June, justice Jonathan Swift dismissed Assange’s appeal of his extradition. Not only that, he also informed the petitioners that “The application to rely on fresh evidence is refused.” The evidence we already have dates from September 2020, when Baraitser heard the case. Not surprisingly, since that time, Assange’s counsel found more evidence, because, frankly, there’s no dearth of it. More to the point, the old evidence was never weighed properly by Baraitser to begin with. It screams to be revisited.
But judge Swift, formerly a lawyer for the British government, dismissed it all rather brusquely. “There are eight proposed grounds of appeal. They are set out at great length (some 100 pages) but the extraordinary length of the pleading serves only to make clear that the proposed appeal comes to no more than an attempt to re-run the extensive arguments made to and rejected by the District Judge.” Never mind that the district judge, Baraitser, adopted the prosecutor’s directives as her legal decisions, and that that prosecutor, John Lewis, got those directives from the U.S. government, according to former diplomat Craig Murray. Baraitser’s ruling made a shambles of the law, from which it will not easily recover.
CONTINUE > https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/06/30/the-struggle-against-assanges-extradition-continue/
