The High Court in London has ruled that WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has the right to appeal an extradition request by the US.
Washington is seeking to put the Australian publisher on trial for espionage for disclosing alleged war crimes committed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What Monday’s hearing was about
The UK High Court considered Washington’s assurances that Assange would be given a fair trial if extradited to the US. The court had previously requested two sets of written guarantees from the US stating that the WikiLeaks founder would not be discriminated against due to his Australian citizenship, and would not be held in a maximum security prison or receive the death penalty.
If the court had ruled that these guarantees were adequate, Assange would likely have been extradited to the US in a matter of days.
US assurances
While the US had provided the assurances, it did so with a number of conditions. The American side promised not to immediately place Assange in a maximum security prison, but reserved the right to do so based on his conduct.
US prosecutors also stated that the WikiLeaks founder would be able to rely on the First Amendment right to free speech during the trial, but noted that its applicability would be “exclusively within the purview of the US courts.”
Public support and criticism of US guarantees
Assange’s supporters slammed Washington’s diplomatic assurances, with Amnesty International’s criminal justice expert Juli Hall calling them “inherently unreliable because the US government gives itself an out.”
The publisher’s wife, Stella Assange, had also described the US guarantees as “blatant weasel words.”
Ahead of Monday’s ruling, hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the High Court in London calling for Assange’s immediate release.
Assange’s defense
During the hearing, Assange’s lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told the judges that the assurances of a fair trial given by US prosecutors could not be relied upon as American courts would not be bound by them.
“We say this is a blatantly inadequate assurance,” Fitzgerald told the court.
The verdict
In a short ruling, the two senior judges of London’s High Court stated that the assurances provided by the US were not sufficient, and gave Assange’s legal team the right to a full appeal hearing.
While the legal battle continues, Assange himself will remain in London’s top-security Belmarsh Prison, where he has been held for the past five years since his arrest in 2019 when his asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London was revoked.
Response to the ruling
The legal victory was immediately celebrated by Assange’s supporters, with Amnesty International’s Simon Crowther calling it a “rare piece of positive news for Julian Assange and all defenders of press freedom.”
“We spent a long time hearing the United States putting lipstick on a pig but the judges did not buy it” – @Stella_Assange reacting to the breaking news of the courts granting #JulianAssange the right to appeal his extradition
Livestream: https://t.co/tOe9QXtAdC
Donate here:… pic.twitter.com/lc0siJjYyS
— Free Assange – #FreeAssange (@FreeAssangeNews) May 20, 2024
Stella Assange applauded the court’s verdict, claiming it had made the “right decision.” She criticized the US for the ongoing persecution of her husband, and demanded that Washington “read the situation” and drop the case against him.
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn also celebrated Monday’s verdict, but stressed that there was still a lot to be done to secure Assange’s freedom.
The whole thing is a revolting travesty of justice but then the UK and US are both terrorist states….no hiding that fact anymore…….
For the most part, the people know exactly who and how the world is controlling governments worldwide. Are they untouchable? I’ll answer that question at the end. You see social media, that is to say open and uncensored social media is spreading around the world the information identifying and disclosing these people and their activities. The underlings, like judge Juan Manuel Merchan in New York who has made nonsensible gag orders against Trump to protect his corruption and money he receives. Closer to home is her dishonourable judge Janey who convicted our beloved Liz Gunn for touching someone on the shoulder. Bill Gates, who gets carried away and blurts out his knowledge and involvement in the nano bots embedded inside the jabs. The puppet lieutenants inside the WHO and WEF who identify themselves by pushing along the message to create world control and cashless transactions. The media giants like CNN, BBC, movie industry and just so many others warming up each nation to accept and teach gender reassignment to our children, mass immigration of wreckless fighting aged men into civilised nations. Frankly, any government including NZ who has repeatedly ignored the jab data and the mass murders by these repugnant nasty ruthless people. The voting system controllers and false popularity of politicians like Trudeau, Biden and clearly false post in votes counts. We know the 13 bloodlines and descendants of the families that control everything from wars to politics and terrorism. These are families that have a hold in almost every sphere of life, be it politics, business or entertainment. Read the book “Seeds of destruction” by William Engdahl.
The puppet masters are,
1. The Astor Bloodline
2. The Bundy Bloodline
3. The Collins Bloodline
4. The DuPont Bloodline
5. The Freeman Bloodline
6. The Kennedy Bloodline
7. The Li Bloodline
8. The Onassis Bloodline
9. The Rockefeller Bloodline
10. The Russell Bloodline
11. The Van Duyn Bloodline
12. The Merovingian Bloodline
13. The Rothschild Bloodline
Whist they are human, they are not humane. Are they untouchable? Nope.
There is no law, and even if there was to stop the nations of the world to start their own secure paper voting system with formal id.
https://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/these-are-the-13-families-in-the-world-that-apparently-control-everything-from-politics-to-terrorism-257642.html