February 20, 2024 - 7:30pm
Royal Courts of Justice, central London
At Temple tube station this morning, a group of four Jeremy Corbyn lookalikes were lost.
“Oh I was marching here just last week,” one of them said, holding up a smashed phone. Stuck to the back was a Palestinian flag — a full-time protestor, it seemed. On the short walk to the Royal Courts of Justice, more of the usual suspects appeared: scruffy 60-somethings in once-practical Oxfam attire with uniform woolly hats. They were here for Julian Assange.
By 8.30am, a hundred or so protestors were gathered outside the building, along with dozens of cameras. Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, made a speech saying that the crowd’s size indicated that “the pressure is growing.”
Today marked the WikiLeaks founder’s final appeal against the High Court’s ruling to extradite him to the United States. There, Assange may face a sentence of 175 years, meaning he would very possibly die in prison. As Murray noted, after years of campaigning, “we have now reached a stage where most people understand what’s at stake here”.
When Jeremy Corbyn took to the stage, a mighty cheer went up. The former Labour leader took aim at Joe Biden, the British media and Belmarsh prison, where Assange is currently incarcerated. “If [Biden] believes in a pluralistic democracy, as he says he does, then let Julian go. Let Julian tell the world the truth about the horrors and inequality that exist on this planet,” Corbyn said. “Whatever the Courts’ decision, we are not going away.” In a tone that managed to mix weariness with triumph, he added: “For the British establishment, the whole question of Julian Assange is just a little bit embarrassing.”
Assange’s supporters seemed resigned outside the court, as if they already knew their cause was futile. Their hero’s absence and his wife Stella’s repeated warnings that Julian “would die” if extradited created the eerie sense of a memorial service. When proceedings began, Assange’s barrister Edward Fitzgerald KC told the court the WikiLeaks founder was too ill to attend the hearing, even via video link from jail.
Matters weren’t helped when Corbyn made a gaffe of his own, wondering “if only Julian were alive today” at one point. He hastily corrected himself: “In reality, in front of us, alive to give reporting rather than being stuck in that horrible cell in Belmarsh, what would he be saying? What would he be saying about the bombardment of Rafah and all the destruction of life all across the Gaza Strip?”
By the time Stella Assange arrived, the crowd had grown. She said just a few words to the protestors: “Julian needs his freedom and we need the truth”. If this week’s hearing is unsuccessful, Assange could apply to the European Court of Human Rights for a Rule 39 order to stop extradition while it considers his case. His supporters will no doubt be there until the bitter end. What that end will be, and when it comes, remains less clear.
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SubscribeGenuine question, as the details are murky – has Assange spent 5 years in Belmarsh because of some kind of ‘miscarriage of procedure’ or is it because his legal team has spent every concievable avenue to delay proceedings at all costs? Just curious.
The second one, and he can’t get bail because he’s a proven flight risk
It’s the former, because the time served is longer than the sentence for failure to appear which is what he was originally prosecuted under.
Extradition cases can lead to horrific long-term pre-trial detention. Assange isn’t the first (eg Gary McKinnon).
A big issue is increasingly there are cases being prosecuted in America where the ‘crime’ takes place in America, but by acts from outside America, by people who weren’t in America at the time, and by people who aren’t American citizens and who aren’t subject to American law. By its nature that makes the extradition arguments extremely complicated involving not just the crime, but also treaty agreements and issues of diplomacy.
The Americans have to show the right to jurisdiction for instance, and then prove the exceptional circumstances mean the case should go to America and not be prosecuted in the locally country, and that going to America is not going to lead to worse punishments or worse trials than in the local country – which is obviously going to be hotly contested.
As a naive observer, a great deal seems to boil down to political power. A lone hacker might get extradited, but if they’d been working for a politically-connected organisation, then the managers of that organisation would be unlikely to face the same charge. To me, it always seems that unless the criminal was in the foreign country, it would be far better if local law was applied in local courts on local timescales. The UK has laws against hacking. The US should make its case in the UK.
@Robbie – this isn’t ‘murky’ at all. See my other comment here – this is persecution.
You might one day regret your callous piece.
But since your byline is hardly your real name, you already know that, and you have compensated for that.
What do you mean ? If you knew his real name you and your friends would take action ? Sounds really scary in a kind of left wing brown shirt sort of way .
Jeremy Corbyn is such a reliable bellwether. If you talk the opposing point of view to his, on any given subject, you won’t go far wrong.
That’s lazy.
A broken, marxist clock is right twice a day.
The only type of Marxist clock is a broken one.
Ok, so on that theory, Corbyn is right about two things. One is Assange, and the other is….?
You do wonder if the “Assange is too ill” claim is going to be investigated. There’s a reek of “he would say that, wouldn’t he” about it. Is there any sanction against a barrister if found to be deliberately misleading a court ? Just asking …
You appear to have made up your mind as to his guilt.
Not true (for Assange). My comment was actually about the barrister and was not a statement of guilt.
He deserves a fair trial. He clearly has charges to answer. I’m talking about the official secrets type charges here. Not totally convinced about the rape allegations.
I do not believe we can allow people to illegally leak confidential information with impunity. Sometimes these offences are so serious that they must be prosecuted (which is why we have these laws in the first place). That applies to government ministers and civil servants just as much as Julian Assange and his accomplices.
A great man, or at least information warrior, but he did rather throw poor Chelsea Manning under the bus.
I doubt his rape victims consider him to be a great man and a warrior.
Unprosecuted, therefore unproven.
People like yourself who swallow an allegation whole without chewing, are precisely why juries have to agree based on legal fact, not personal dislike.
The presumption of innocence is crucial.
If you’d ever found yourself falsely accused, you might appreciate the principle. A family member of mine was and the impact was horrific.
Julian Assange has been subject to ‘procedural irregularities’ from the day he was arrested in Sweden. It started when his situation was immediately leaked to the press and went on from there. Amongst many other things, there’s the fact that the first prosecutor concluded he had no case to answer, but the case was continued by one who was a friend of his only acuser (the second woman did not make any any, but that doesn’t matter in Swedish law apparently). There’s the fact that his legal team had to take the Swedish prosecutors to court to get them to either charge him or let him go as they had strung it all out for so many years – he was never charged with any of the sexual allegations by the way. There’s Kier Starmer’s CPS interfering with their requests to interview him in the Ecuadorian embassy (and then deleting all record of it – including of Starmers visits to the US at the time. There’s the fact that the CIA were spying on him & his legal team throughout (as exposed in a Spanish Court). There’s the evidence of Mike Pompeoo taking steps to have him assassinated. There’s the fact he’s in solitary in Belmarsh for bail violation. There’s the UK courts dragging their heels with everything supervised by Judge (Lady Arbuthnot) who is married to someone exposed in Wikileaked documents. There’s the fact that the US were able to bring in new evidence for his appeal at the last minute – and that much of it came from a convicted nonce and very much more besides.
This is as clear a case of Establishment persecution as you could ever have the misfortune to see. This is a journalist being persecuted (and IMHO tortured) for exposing true things about governments and regimes the world over. His plight exposes the rancid heart of our Establishment in the clearest possible manner – anyone not a ‘fan’ of him – super or otherwise – either hasn’t been paying attention or an idiot.
He is not being tortured.
His liberty is being extinguished, certainly, by the weight of many states and is being enabled by the UK. In light of Navalny’s recent demise, is this case significantly different enough to not be viewed by the same moral lens?
Solitary confinement is as near to torture as I can imagine short of actual physical or psychological violence.
Journalist?
You’re right. It should be multi-country accredited, prize-winning journalist. Google is your friend if you don’t believe it.
I hold no candle for Assange but the UK/US extradition treaty is very one-sided and, frankly, serially abused by the Americans. The NatWest Three are a good case in point. Alleged crime carried out wholly in the UK, UK authorities decided not to prosecute, alleged victim (NatWest) said it didn’t want a prosecution but they were still extradited and imprisoned.
I agree. But at least the NatWest crooks got prosecuted and punished. It was not an “alleged crime”. It was a rreal, proven crime. If there’s one thing the US justice system is good for, it’s putting away financial crooks. And Britain is awful at it.