A process begins in London that can seal the fate of Julian Assange, the man who exposed American war crimes to the world. If extradited to the US, he will almost certainly face life in prison.
Out of a dozen prisons in London, the British judiciary chose Belmarsh for Assange. The high-security prison in the east of the capital was actually built for terrorists and serious criminals. The conditions in the prison are terrible - even on Wikipedia it is written that Belmashr is "the British Guantanamo".
One lock will be opened there on Monday (September 7) morning, the one on the cell where Julian Assange (49) is. The founder of the WikiLeaks platform will be taken to the courtroom of the Central London Court. There, in the next three weeks, his fate will be decided: will he be extradited to the United States on an eighteen-count indictment? In America, he is threatened with being sentenced to 175 years in prison.
German Left Member of Parliament Heike Henzel traveled to London to follow the hearing. He says that this is a "political process against an investigative journalist", as he calls Assange. What's worse, Henzel adds, the US is prosecuting Assange extraterritorially, even though he was operating from Europe.
Powerful enemies
Assange, winner of numerous journalistic awards, has powerful enemies. This became especially clear in 2017, when US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service". Pompeo was then newly elected head of the CIA. Then-Justice Secretary Jeff Sessions called arresting Assange a "priority."
In 2010, WikiLeaks published about half a million confidential and secret documents of the US administration on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is evidence of American war crimes. When the video titled "Collateral Murder" was released, WikiLeaks became famous overnight. The video shows civilians, including reporters from the Reuters agency, being shot at from an American military helicopter over Baghdad.
Insight into the American "house of cards" was made possible by WikiLeaks in 2011, when about 250 confidential diplomatic cables were published.
Christian Mir, head of Reporters Without Borders, says Julian Assange "blazed the trail, showing how journalism should handle large amounts of data." Assange, Mir tells DW, initiated the publication of data of enormous importance to the world public. "That's why Reporters Without Borders stands uncompromisingly for Julian Assange."
Less rights than war criminals in The Hague
Mir will also be in a London courtroom. Admittedly, public access is limited there and it is not certain that there will be room for him in the auditorium. It has little to do with social distancing rules during a pandemic. Because, Mir was present during the first round of hearings in February and was, he says, shocked that London showed no interest in allowing international non-governmental organizations or parliamentarians to monitor the process.
"Assange was present there in a glass cabin. He had difficulty contacting his lawyer during the proceedings, which is a legal prerequisite for quality monitoring of the proceedings," Mir tells us.
But, in the case of Julian Assange, the principles of the rule of law do not apply, says Nils Meltzer, UN special envoy for the problem of torture and cruel punishment.
"The things that are taken for granted and enjoyed by even the worst war criminals tried in, say, The Hague, Assange is deprived of: he has no contact with American lawyers, he has very limited contact with British lawyers, and he has almost no access to legal records."
Meltzer, a Swiss lawyer who teaches at the Institute of the University of Glasgow, also told DW: "These are extremely serious procedural violations for which there is no necessity or justification."
Even while Assange was detained in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, his right to communicate confidentially with his lawyer was violated. This is known after the trial in Madrid against David Morales, the owner of the UC Global security firm. That company provided security for the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but actually, for the needs of an American client, it spied on it.
Appeals are not helping for now
Therefore, it is not surprising that in mid-August, 160 lawyers and journalists in an open letter addressed to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded the release of Assange. In the United States, the signatories say, Assange is facing a rigged process.
That letter is just one in a long line of appeals and pleas. In July, forty journalists' associations and the international PEN called on the British Government to release Assange. Previously, the same request was sent by 200 doctors from thirty countries - Assange's health condition was damaged by long-term stay in a cramped room in the Ecuadorian embassy.
At the beginning of February, more than 130 well-known figures from politics and culture in Germany signed a similar appeal. Among them is the Vice President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Kibicki from the ranks of the Liberals, a number of former ministers, including the until recently vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel.
Shaky accusations
The strategy of American prosecutors is based on attacking Assange not as a publicist, but as a hacker - that is, not that he published the data, but that he obtained it illegally. The eighteen counts of the indictment boil down to three things: Assange allegedly provided technical support to Chelsea Manning, who was the source of WikiLeaks, then encouraged her to supply additional material, and finally, by publishing the information, Assange allegedly endangered human lives.
Granted, Manning had access to sensitive materials herself, just like tens of thousands of other people. The accusation that Assange was encouraged to deliver more is based on a single correspondence that can be interpreted differently.
In addition, dispatches whose content could endanger someone were encrypted, and the key was given only to certain journalists and media so that they could investigate with due care. WikiLeaks accuses a British journalist of publishing the code in a book, and thus allowing the whole world access to its material.
USA sets an example for everyone
UN expert Meltzer believes that it is not about Assange personally.
"It is primarily about the crimes of his persecutors, the states. About how they trample on the institution of the rule of law, how they refuse to call their war criminals and torturers to account, and how they show the whole world that anyone who informs the public about state war crimes can be declared a spy ." If they get away with it, Meltzer says, it's a small step from the rule of law to tyranny.
In the XNUMXs, there was another extradition proceeding in London that attracted a lot of attention. Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, responsible for tens of thousands of dead and maimed people, was to be extradited. But he awaited the trial under house arrest, in a house near London. He received visitors whenever he wanted, for Christmas a priest came to him from Chile.
Julian Assange, who has not yet been convicted of any crime, saw his partner and two children for the first time in six years at the end of August. The meeting lasted twenty minutes.
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