Julian Assange is being held in such strict isolation in a London prison that corridors are cleared of other prisoners before he walks from his cell to conferences with lawyers, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, who is in Australia lobbying for his support, has said.

He said Mr Assange had been prevented from accessing therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder he developed during nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London without proper access to medical care, sunlight and exercise. Instead he was allowed to play an occasional game of Monopoly with a guard.

Last week 60 doctors from around the world signed a letter to UK authorities saying Mr Assange was in such poor health he might not survive his incarceration. Mr Hrafnsson would not give details about Mr Assange's condition in order to protect his privacy.

Mr Hrafnsson said the consular assistance offered by the Australian government had so far been tokenistic and designed to “secure the interest of the state to find out how they can minimise their PR humiliation”, rather than aid Mr Assange.

"The trial is at the end of February, there is no time," Mr Hrafnsson said. "I really would like to see some more push from this side, to see politicians here see the gravity of the situation."

Mr Assange is being held on remand in the maximum security Belmarsh Prison as the United States seeks his extradition on charges under the Espionage Act relating to WikiLeaks’ soliciting, obtaining and publishing secret military, government and diplomatic documents. In September he finished a 50-week sentence for breaching bail conditions when he sought asylum in the embassy.

Mr Hrafnsson said Mr Assange’s lawyers would argue that espionage was a political act and that a treaty between the United Kingdom and the US precluded extradition for political cases. He said if the US was allowed to extradite an Australian citizen from the UK over charges relating to publishing material in Europe, no journalists would be safe in conducting their work.

He said criticism that Mr Assange had encouraged a right-wing conspiracy theory - that US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was involved in the murder of a Democratic Party staffer who police said had been killed in a mugging - was “overblown”. He also said it was coincidence that  WikiLeaks released documents damaging to the Clinton campaign just minutes after news broke that then Republican candidate Donald Trump had been recorded boasting that he was able to indecently assault women due to his fame.

Mr Hrafnsson said WikiLeaks had released a stream of documents that damaged Mrs Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 election because it had a responsibility to inform the public about a political candidate before, rather than after, the election.

 

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/wikileaks-editor-in-chief-urges-...

 

 

from Tommy Sheridan

 

I invite you to compare and contrast the cases of Julian Assange and Anne Sacoolas. I can guarantee you will have heard of Assange and been invited to form an opinion of him which is wholly warped by a tirade of misinformation and coordinated smears designed to dehumanise the individual and make you believe he is a ‘weirdo’ and an accused ‘rapist’.

Don’t let facts get in the way of such smears as all the allegations of rape have been thoroughly investigated by the Swedish authorities and consequently dropped but you wouldn’t know that unless you are paying attention to what amounts to the most heinous and dangerous persecution of a journalist by the most powerful forces on the planet.

Wrong Side of Justice

Anne Sacoolas on the other hand is an American citizen who drove a vehicle on the wrong side of the road near to an RAF Base in Northamptonshire on 27th August this year and collided with a motorcycle on the right side of the road. The young man riding the motorcycle was 19 years of age. He was knocked to the ground and writhed in pain and anguish. The driver of the motor car fled the scene. The young man was left in agony and fear. He subsequently died of his injuries. His name was Harry Dunn.

The parents of Harry Dunn are unable to properly grieve the tragic death of their son because they are being lied to and denied justice concerning the circumstances of his death. The woman driving the car is married to a US Government official of some sort. Originally the media and family were informed he was a US diplomat and as such his wife was allowed to leave the UK despite being the only suspect in the unlawful killing of a 19 year old man.

Indeed the family were denied the information that she had fled for several days as the local police were instructed by the British Foreign Office not to tell them. Only after vigorous and painful investigations were the family able to discover that the woman at the centre of the unlawful death of their son was allowed to leave the UK under the blanket of Diplomatic Immunity when in fact no such Diplomatic Immunity existed as the husband of the woman was not a US Diplomat at all. It is all a murky and stinking mess.

The family of Harry Dunn subsequently travelled to America seeking extradition of Anne Sacoolas to face charges of at least dangerous driving in connection with their son’s death. In an attempt to shut them up and silence the whole embarrassing story they were ushered into a hurriedly arranged meeting with Donald Trump who tried to get them to meet with Sacoolas without any legal representation. The mother and father bravely resisted that attempt and insisted Sacoolas be ordered to return to the UK to face proper investigation and probable charges. The US subterfuge backfired and Trump then made a stupid and pathetic statement implying everyone drives on the wrong side of the road in foreign countries and completely trivialised the tragic death with a “it happens” blurb. My contempt for him sunk even lower.

...

Now think about Julian Assange. He hasn’t been accused of causing someone’s death. His only ‘crime’ is exposing the dirty deeds and unlawful actions of powerful governments and their security forces across the globe. Julian Assange formed WikilLeaks to facilitate the exposure of documents, videos, emails and other materials which expose war crimes, torture, mass murder and the conscious attempts of governments and officials to cover up those crimes against humanity. Julian Assange is not a criminal in any shape or form. He is a modern day hero who attempts to hold the powerful to account through the exposure of their misdeeds and criminality across the world. Assange is an enemy of lies, hypocrisy and war crimes not of ordinary human beings.

Assange now languishes in Britain’s Guantanamo Bay in the shape of Belmarsh Prisonawaiting an unprecedented and pathetic extradition hearing to the US where he will face World War One charges under the archaic Espionage Act. A charge which carries a sentence of 175 years in prison if found guilty. In other words Assange faces a death sentence if he is extradited to the US yet the British Government is considering the US request.

For seven years Assange has been trying to avoid US persecution and the wrath of a rigged justice system enraged at his exposure of American wrong doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and all over the world. Abuses of power take place in darkness. The public are deliberately uninformed. Assange shone light on those abuses and now faces severe punishment for doing so. He is to face an extradition hearing in February next year which threatens the very existence of journalism. He is to face charges under the Espionage Act for publishing the truth. The truth about US war crimes, state assassinations, government lies to justify wars and the coordinated attempts to cover up these crimes. If Assange is a criminal for telling the truth then freedom and democracy itself is on trial.

Stand up for Truth

Julian Assange is very unlucky. If he was married to a US Government official he could have irresponsibly and recklessly killed another human being and been allowed to flee from being held responsible for the consequences of his actions and then been protected from justice. That is the reality of Anne Sacoolas and the injustice being committed against Harry Dunn’s family and the memory of their son. Julian Assange has had an entirely different experience to Anne Sacoolas. For daring to expose the dark and murky practices of the rich and powerful in Governments across the world, but particularly in the US, he has been effectively tortured according to the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and ill treatment, Nils Melzer:

“Wherever I delved into the case, I found a lot of dirty stuff,” … In 20 years of working with victims of war, violence and political persecution, Mr. Melzer added in his statement, he had “never seen a group of democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonize and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law… the cumulative effects of Mr. Mr. Assange’s punishment can only be described as “psychological torture”.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201912031077476584-assange-exposed-us...

 

Read from top.

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33845

Here, one should read “The Napalm Bugle”... written by Ed Lacy and .... One Gus can see the hands of a CIA double-cross a mile away. 

...

But CIVICUS said “the most alarming deterioration in civic space [across the Pacific] is occurring in Australia, which has been downgraded from ‘open’ to ‘narrowed’”.

Australia has seen the recent criminal justice examples of the prosecution of whistleblower Witness K, who exposed Australian bugging of ally East Timor’s cabinet room under the guise of a benevolent aid project, and the secret trial of Witness J, who was tried, convicted, and sentenced on national security charges in complete secrecy.

Victoria police have also been condemned for using violence against protesters at a series of anti-mining demonstrations in Melbourne in October. A report from legal observers Melbourne Activist Legal Support said police were antagonistic and “set a tone of violence” during three days of protests. Police sprayed demonstrators with capsicum spray excessively, were overzealous in using batons and drove police horses into protest lines to break them up, endangering animals and people. Victoria police has consistently denied the allegations, maintaining officers responded appropriately to the situation.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/07/australias-civil-rights-ra...

 

 

Read from top.

 

And this without mentioning Assange...