The 'case' against Julian Assange has raged in multiple jurisdictions since 2010, with no end yet in sight. Here are some of those involved in exposing & opposing this ongoing persecution.
Craig Murray, Yanis Varoufakis, Vivienne Westwood, Kristinn Hrafnsson,.John Shipton, Roger Waters, with a crowd of thousands on the eve of the first part of the extradition hearing, 22 Feb 2020. Julian Assange was alone in his cell. CREDITS: Image collage using Sputnik and Stella Moris tweet.photos.
Julian Assange is currently in HMP Belmarsh just outside of London - often referred to as UK’s Guantánamo. He has been there for more than 1,000 days (as at date of publication), mostly held in virtual solitary confinement. Before that, he was confined, from June 2012 to 11 April 2019 (nearly 7 years), to a small portion of a small apartment used by Ecuador as their London embassy - at first in supportive asylum, but gagged for the last year (from 27 March 2018) in what Ecuador’s new President Moreno turned into a virtual prison.
While Julian Assange has been increasingly bereft of support on the inside of his various confinements, a growing support system has developed outside - one which you could be part of (if you aren’t already).
♦ This series
This is the sixth in a series of lengthy pieces that explore the history of Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks community via different themes:
The third was another compendium “The Persecution of WikiLeaks: Counting the Cost” covering a wide range of costs incurred by those associated, in almost any way, with WikiLeaks. In particular, it looks at the rollcall of the dead, and lists some of the many whistleblowers and truthtellers who have suffered under this regime of persecution. Read it here.
The fifth documents what was mostly a happy hiatus in this litany of abuse: “The Assange Wedding”. But even on that special day, the apparatus of the state managed to intrude with its petty (and not so petty) cruelties. Read here.
These reports, while interesting to read for those new to this topic, are mainly intended as ongoing resources: documents to bookmark, dip into, refer back to, and share with those needing sources and perspective, rather than pieces to read at one sitting. The compendia are updated as events progress.
This compendium “A Chorus of Courage: Speaking Up for Assange”, provides a roll call of many of those who have spoken up for Julian Assange - using their professional &/or personal voices - and provides a little information about their role, together with links to some key statements. This list represents only the tip of the enormous mass of support for Julian that exists - especially at the grass roots level.
For those only nowthinking about joining this chorus of courage - please speak up. Your efforts will be appreciated, and you will find yourself on the right side of history.
♦ A Note re Censored Sources
YouTube (and other social media) have drastically stepped up their levels of censorship recently. This has meant that many of the entries in my extensive archives cannot now be seen - YouTube annotates such videos with “This video is not available in your country” when what they really mean is that YouTube has ensured thatthe video can’t be viewed in ANY country. Some other sites have “memory-holed” various videos and articles. Despite this, I have left in links to some of these sources in the hope that this will not remain a permanent state of affairs. Where possible, I also provide an alternate link.
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— Rafael Correa - President of Ecuador (Jan 2007 - May 2017) — Ricardo Patiño - Minister of Foreign Affairs (Jan 2010 - Mar 2016) — Guillaume Long - Minister of Foreign Affairs (Mar 2016 - May 2017) — Ana Alban - Ecuador's Ambassador to the UK (2010-2013) — Fidel Narváez - Consul at Ecuador’s London embassy (2010 - July 2018) — Gina Benavides - Defensora del Pueblo Ecuador [Ombudsman]
The United Nations Human Rights Council
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights — Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein - (Sept 2014 - Aug 2018) — Michelle Bachelet - (Sept 2018 - current) Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council — UNWGAD - The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention — MadsAndenas (former chair of UNWGAD) The UN Special Rapporteurs (UN-SR) — Nils Melzer - UN-SR on Torture … (Nov 2016 - 31 Mar 2022). — Frank La Rue - UN-SR on Freedom of Expression (Aug 2008 - Aug 2014) — David Kaye - UN-SR on Freedom of Expression (Aug 2014 - July 2020) — Joe Cannataci - UN-SR on Privacy (July 2015 - June 2021) — Agnes Callamard - UN-SR on … Extrajudicial Killings (Aug 2016 - March 2021) — Alfred de Zayas - Former UN Independent Expert
— Some of the brave people and media organisations who have made - and continue to make - a sincere effort to truthfully document the life and work of the UK’s most famous political prisoner - journalist, publisher and truthteller Julian Assange, and the abuse he has suffered at the hands of multiple states. Many of these have now had their work and publication channels censored and/or heavily shadowbanned.
International politicians
— Politicians tend to come and go on the Free Assange campaign, as pragmatic politics and the practical aspects of their own political campaigns (successful and not) take their toll. But some elected representatives of the people have stood up for Julian Assange over the long haul. A few of these are listed here.
Rafael Correa was President of Ecuador at the time Julian Assange arrived at their London Embassy (19 June 2012), seeking asylum. Although they had never met in person (before or after that date), they had met in virtual space when Assange interviewed Correa for an episode of his ten-part video series (original RT series now censored by YouTube). [See a list of all episodes in PART 8 of this series.]
ALT-link to "The Julian Assange Show Episode 6: Correa" (2012) [YouTube]
It was Correa’s government that eventually granted that asylum (16 Aug 2012) - honouring it until that government left office (May 2018).
[The killing of Che Guevara] was like the case of Julian Assange. They chase the ones who discovered the #WarCrimes but not the ones who committed them. And these crimes are still unpunished.
UPDATE: 22 Sept 2022Declassified UK “RAFAEL CORREA: ‘They have already destroyed Assange’” [DeclassifiedUK] See also video “Rafael Correa on Assange and resisting the US-UK” [YouTube] “Declassified sits down with the former president of Ecuador who granted Julian Assange asylum in London. He talks about dealing with the British, how the US seeks to control his country and the lawfare campaign against him.”
“The British are used to being obeyed, not to negotiate with a third-world country. They tried to deal with us like a subordinate country.”
“Assange didn’t have any possibility of a fair legal process in the United States.”
“We engaged a special security company in order to protect the London embassy, to protect Julian Assange…They were captured by the CIA.”
“I cancelled the agreement to have an American base in our country in 2009. These are things that the American authorities do not forgive.”
Ricardo Patiño was Ecuador’s Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time Julian Assange sought asylum. He was responsible for processing the asylum application. Patiño was asked to reflect on that period (14 June 2010):
—How did you come to that decision? —Assange applied for asylum in many countries, as he realised that everything that WikiLeaks exposed had bothered and irritated the US. We granted him the status of political refugee on principle. President Correa was well aware of the risks involved, but we also knew that Julian Assange might be prosecuted for his actions, that he might be tortured, that if the US laid hands on him, he might end up in some off-shore facility, such as Guantanamo Bay, set up precisely to have a free hand in cases like this. And I mean a free hand in every sense of the word. So we knew he was in real danger, as will be confirmed now; and that’s why we granted him political asylum. Right then the US obviously decided that Ecuador had crossed a line.
—That decision spelled trouble for Ecuador right off the bat … —The hardest moment of all was precisely when Assange entered our embassy in London. We were examining his asylum application, I believe little over one month had passed, and the British government threatened to break into our embassy. They put it in writing because they had to extradite Assange to Sweden. Our reaction was to convene the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the Union of South American Nations (USAN) and the Organization of American States (OAS). Everyone knows that the USA wields much power within the OAS, but we beat them in all three forums. The US and Canada refrained from voting because our position garnered so much support among the members states that they simply didn’t stand a chance. Once these American institutions had taken a stand on the matter, the British dropped the idea of breaking into our embassy, but they remained totally reluctant to dialogue. They never even agreed to discuss the possibility of a safe-conduct that would have allowed Assange to leave the embassy and fly to Ecuador. At the time I held a number of talks with the Foreign Office and they always made it clear that they had no intention of engaging in a dialogue.
—Ecuador stood up for Assange’s rights, but he was forced to live in very harsh personal circumstances, spending years in a room. —We made it possible for him to work, to meet people … Back then, we were under fire from Ecuador’s conservative opposition, even about the cost of Assange’s meals, as well as the sum we spent on security, even though it was obvious that you couldn’t leave someone like Assange unprotected. Anybody could have [made an attempt] on his life and we just couldn’t tolerate that sort of thing. Granting asylum means offering protection and, therefore, we were duty-bound to do that. The one reason why you offer someone asylum is because, clearly, they are being persecuted. Otherwise, it is pointless.
In a later interview (24 Oct 2019 from 3:37, now censored by YouTube) Patiño stated that he believes Lenin Moreno sold out Julian Assange to the US (via the UK), and alleged that the US "blackmailed" Moreno to achieve that aim.
SCREEN SHOT: Ricardo Patiño interviewed on RT (24 Oct 2019). YouTube 3:37
On the fourth anniversary of Assange seeking asylum, and while still Foreign Minister of Ecuador, Guillaume Long explained (19 June 2016 at 55:21) why Ecuador granted that asylum:
On this day, on a day like this, four years ago, Julian Assange entered our Embassy - the premises of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London - and requested asylum to the government of Ecuador.
He feared for his life, his physical integrity, his liberty, he felt that he was facing persecution for his journalistic work that exposed terrible crimes and grave violations of human rights. The treatment handed out to Chelsea Manning justified these fears.
Two months later, the Ecuadorian government took a bold decision: Julian Assange was granted asylum. Ecuador took this step in order to safeguard his life and his integrity. It was a principled decision that resonated across the whole world.
Despite threats, harassment, and smear campaigns, Ecuador stood firm in the face of all the pressure it faced to revert its decision. We have never regretted it. We've never regretted our decision. We are a country committed to protecting and promoting basic human rights, and to defending those who devote their lives to human rights.
SCREEN SHOT: Guillaume Long, Ecuador’s Foreign Minister (19 June 2016). YouTube at 55:21. Transcript
More recently (24 Feb 2022), Snr Long has made another statement; “The U.K. Wanted to Extradite Assange to the U.S. From the Start” [The Intercept]
One encounter I had with Alan Duncan, the former British minister of state for Europe and the Americas, in October 2016 really let the cat out of the bag. At our meeting in the Dominican Republic, Duncan went on extensively about how loathsome Assange was. While I didn’t anticipate Duncan to profess his love for our asylee, I had expected a more professional diplomatic exchange. But the most important moment of the meeting was when I reiterated that Ecuador’s primary fear was the transfer of Assange to the United States, at which point Duncan turned to his staff and exclaimed something very close to, “Yes, well, good idea. How would we go about extraditing him to the Americans?”
♦ Ana Alban
Ecuador's Ambassador to the UK (2010-2013)
Ana Alban was Ecuador’s Ambassador in London at the time Julian Assange turned up in the embassy, seeking asylum. She later reflected (8 Oct 2018) on the period in which she and her staff shared the London embassy with their asylee. [A shame about the salacious (& ill-informed) interviewer]
[Julian Assange] showed me a world that I wasn't aware that existed ... this 'Big Brother' world that we live in.
Consul at Ecuador’s London embassy (2010 - July 2018)
A diplomat at the Ecuadorian Embassy at the time Julian Assange sought asylum, Fidel Narváez saw Assange daily up until the time he left that employment (July 2018). He regards Julian as a friend. After Julian’s arrest (20 Aug 2019), Narváez debunked 40 of CNN’s smears against Julian Assange, in the course of which Narváez noted: "A political refugee in not an inmate, and an embassy is not a prison."
In a recent online event (2 Jan 2022 from 13:44) “Julian Assange: Can Exposure Bring Justice?”, Fidel Narváez talked about the role of the media in the persecution of Assange, and where the persecution originates:
(15:45) It should be very clear - this is not Julian Assange versus the UK judges or the UK courts. This is Julian Assange against the most powerful economic and military country in history.
After Julian Assange was (ostensibly) stripped of his Ecuadorian citizenship and had his asylum “revoked” (by Moreno’s government), Ecuador’s Defensora del Pueblo Ecuador (the equivalent of an Ombudsman) spoke up, declaring his expulsion illegal.
Video [ES] “Gina Benavides and the withdrawal of diplomatic asylum and Ecuadorian nationality from Julian Assange” [YouTube] Interpretation: "The expulsion of Julián Assange was illegal."
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (Sept 2014 - Aug 2018)
“As the High Commissioner for human rights said several years ago, human rights treaty law is binding law, it is not discretionary law. It is not some passing fancy that a state can apply sometimes and not in the other,” the [UNWGAD] experts recalled (21 Dec 2018).
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (Sept 2018 - current)
On 8 April 2019 Dr Sondra Crosby, a specialist in refugee health care who later testified in the extradition hearing, wrote to the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet (former President of Chile), asking for her intervention in the situation of Julian Assange - at that time still in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The doctor believed that the “cumulative severity of the pain and suffering inflicted on Mr. Assange—both physical and psychological—is in violation of the 1984 Convention Against Torture.”
A few weeks later, after Assange’s rendition from the embassy, Former UN independent expert Alfred De Zayas stated:
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, should speak out. But the silence is deafening. She should demand compliance with the 2016 judgement of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the rehabilitation of Assange and immediate protection of his life and health.
Perhaps Snra Bachelet sent Dr Crosby’s letter on to Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, since he became involved in this same period. (If she did, he has not mentioned it. He says (in his book) that he was alerted to the situation by Assange’s lawyers, who included a report from Dr Crosby.)
To date, it appears that she has never mentioned Assange by name. However, on the date of Assange’s bail application (25 March 2020), Michelle Bachelet, UNHR Chief,urged “governments to act now to prevent COVID19 devastating the health of people in detention and other closed facilities, as part of global efforts to contain the pandemic.” [Tweet]
The UN Working Groups are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council.
Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity. [ochr] [More info]
♦ UNWGAD - The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
In 2015 the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) was asked to consider whether Julian Assange’s need to shelter in asylum provided within the Ecuadorian Embassy, and the UK’s refusal to allow him to leave for Ecuador under diplomatic protection (or even to get medical or dental care) without being subject to arrest and extradition, amounted to “arbitrary detention” and hence was illegal under international law.
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Deems the deprivation of liberty of Mr. Julian Assange as arbitrary
The Working Group considered that Mr. Assange has been subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth prison which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorian Embassy. Having concluded that there was a continuous deprivation of liberty, the Working Group also found that the detention was arbitrary because he was held in isolation during the first stage of detention and because of the lack of diligence by the Swedish Prosecutor in its investigations, which resulted in the lengthy detention of Mr. Assange. The Working Group found that this detention is in violation of Articles 9 and 10 of the UDHR and Articles 7, 9(1), 9(3), 9(4), 10 and 14 of the ICCPR, and falls within category III as defined in its Methods of Work.
The Working Group therefore requested Sweden and the United Kingdom to assess the situation of Mr. Assange to ensure his safety and physical integrity, to facilitate the exercise of his right to freedom of movement in an expedient manner, and to ensure the full enjoyment of his rights guaranteed by the international norms on detention. The Working Group also considered that the detention should be brought to an end and that Mr. Assange should be afforded the right to compensation. [From statement 5 Feb 2016]
The working group’s secretary Christophe Peschoux speaks at a press briefing to discuss the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’s decision in Geneva (5 Feb 2016) YouTube (censored). See also Assange Press conference in London (5 Feb 2016) YouTube and full opinion at Justice4Assange.
The UK chose to ignore this statement from the highest international authority on arbitrary detention - set up by states themselves. The UNWGAD made two further statements: the first when Julian Assange was held incommunicado in the embassy, and fears were growing for his mental and physical health, and the second after the rendition of Julian Assange from the embassy (on 11 April 2019).
UN experts urge UK to honour rights obligations and let Mr. Julian Assange leave Ecuador embassy in London freely
UN human rights experts today repeated a demand that the UK abides by its international obligations and immediately allows Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to walk free from the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been for over 6 years, fearing arrest by British authorities if he leaves, and extradition to the US.
“States that are based upon and promote the rule of law do not like to be confronted with their own violations of the law, that is understandable. But when they honestly admit these violations, they do honour the very spirit of the rule of law, earn enhanced respect for doing so, and set worldwide commendable examples,” the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) said.
In December 2015, the Working Group concluded in its opinion No. 54/2015 that Mr. Assange – who at the time had a European arrest warrant issued against him for an allegation of crimes committed in Sweden ‑ was being arbitrarily deprived of his freedom and demanded that he be released.
“Under international law, pre-trial detention must be only imposed in limited instances. Detention during investigations must be even more limited, especially in the absence of any charge” said the experts. “The Swedish investigations have been closed for over 18 months now, and the only ground remaining for Mr. Assange’s continued deprivation of liberty is a bail violation in the UK, which is, objectively, a minor offense that cannot post facto justify the more than 6 years confinement that he has been subjected to since he sought asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador. Mr. Assange should be able to exercise his right to freedom of movement in an unhindered manner, in accordance with the human rights conventions the UK has ratified,” the experts further said
The WGAD is further concerned that the modalities of the continued arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Mr. Assange is undermining his health, and may possible endanger his life given the disproportionate amount of anxiety and stress that such prolonged deprivation of liberty entails.
“The United Kingdom has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and has a responsibility to honour its commitment, by respecting its provisions in all cases,” the experts said.
“As the High Commissioner for human rights [Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein] said several years ago, human rights treaty law is binding law, it is not discretionary law. It is not some passing fancy that a state can apply sometimes and not in the other,” the experts recalled.
“In addition, the recommendations of the WGAD Opinions are expected to be implemented by all States, including those which have not been a party in the case concerning Mr. Assange,” said the experts.
United Kingdom: Working Group on Arbitrary Detention expresses concern about Assange proceedings
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention takes note of Mr. Julian Assange’s conviction by a UK court on 1 May 2019, and his sentencing to 50 weeks imprisonment. On 4 December 2015, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention adopted Opinion No. 54/2015*, in which it considered that Mr. Assange was arbitrarily detained by the Governments of Sweden and the UK.
The Working Group issues the following statement:
“The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is deeply concerned about this course of action including the disproportionate sentence imposed on Mr. Assange. The Working Group is of the view that violating bail is a minor violation that, in the United Kingdom, carries a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison, even though the bond related to the bail has been lost in favour of the British Government, and that Mr. Assange was still detained after violating the bail which, in any case should not stand after the Opinion was issued. The Working Group regrets that the Government has not complied with its Opinion and has now furthered the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Mr. Assange.
It is worth recalling that the detention and the subsequent bail of Mr. Assange in the UK were connected to preliminary investigations initiated in 2010 by a prosecutor in Sweden. It is equally worth noting that [the] prosecutor did not press any charges against Mr. Assange and that in 2017, after interviewing him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, she discontinued investigations and brought an end to the case.
The Working Group is further concerned that Mr. Assange has been detained since 11 April 2019 in Belmarsh prison, a high-security prison, as if he were convicted for a serious criminal offence. This treatment appears to contravene the principles of necessity and proportionality envisaged by the human rights standards.
The WGAD reiterates its recommendation to the Government of the United Kingdom, as expressed in its Opinion 54/2015, and its 21 December 2018 statement, that the right of Mr Assange to personal liberty should be restored.”
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Nov 2016 - March 2022).
On 5 April 2019 the UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Nils Melzer announced (via a UN press release) his intention to visit Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy. [ochchr]
The UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer is alarmed by reports that Julian Assange may be expelled imminently from the Embassy of Ecuador in London, saying he intended to personally investigate the case.
“In my assessment, if Mr. Assange were to be expelled from the Embassy of Ecuador, he is likely to be arrested by British authorities and extradited to the United States,” said the UN expert. “Such a response could expose him to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
“I therefore urge the Government of Ecuador to abstain from expelling Mr. Assange from its Embassy in London, or from otherwise ceasing or suspending his political asylum until such time as the full protection of his human rights can be guaranteed.
“Should Mr. Assange come under British jurisdiction for any reason, I urge the British Government to refrain from expelling, returning or extraditing Mr. Assange to the United States or any other jurisdiction, until his right to asylum under refugee law or subsidiary protection under international human rights law has been determined in a transparent and impartial proceeding granting all due process and fair trial guarantees, including the right to appeal,” said Melzer.
For many, this was the first time they had heard of Nils Melzer, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, or his UN mandate. But it would certainly not be the last.
UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression (Aug 2008 - Aug 2014)
Fran La Rue monitored and exerted his influence on notable civil liberties controversies of the day, including supporting proposed corporate limits on the number of media licenses in Argentina against the opposition of the country's largest media groups, and by indicating in May 2011 that unrestricted and undisturbed access to the Internet is a fundamental human right.
La Rue later published a report on how state surveillance undermines freedom of expression and illegal monitoring of communication undermines human rights; this report was filed to OHCHR (4 June 2013) two days before Edward Snowden publicized NSA's warrantless surveillance program in June 2013. Several computers and documents belonging to the Special Rapporteur were stolen from his office located at the DEMOS Institute in Guatemala City on July 31 in as-yet unclear circumstances.
In 2014, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave La Rue a Pioneer Award in recognition of his work in support of free expression around the world.
Following his term as Special Rapporteur, La Rue was appointed a member of the International Board of Trustees of ARTICLE 19, the Global Campaign for Free Expression in 2015. [Details courtesy of Wikipedia.]
IMAGE: Frank La Rue, Stockholm Internet Forum 2015 SOURCE: Bengt Oberger CC BY-SA 4.0
At the time of the first arrest of Julian Assange, Frank La Rue, in his capacity of Special Rapporteur, stated (9 Dec 2010) that “Assange shouldn't be prosecuted” and that:
Responsibility for leaking is "exclusively of the person [making] the leak & not the media that publish it. [This is how] corruption has been confronted in many cases."
♦ David Kaye
UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression (Aug 2014 - July 2020)
Frank La Rue’s successor in the role, David Kaye, a US law professor, did not see fit to comment on the situation of Julian Assange, even when he made an official country visit to Ecuador in 2018 after President Moreno cut off Julian’s internet and phones, and looked likely to terminate his asylum.
To the contrary, he commended Ecuador and Moreno for supposedly promoting freedom of speech.
The following year, however, he did see fit to comment on the lawfare being conducted by Ecuador against Julian’s friend Ola Bini, who was arrested on the same day (11 Apr 2019):
“Nothing in this story connects Ola Bini with any crime,” Kaye said in April.
♦ Joe Cannataci
UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy (July 2015 - June 2021)
Joe Cannataci met with Assange 25 Apr 2019 in Belmarsh prison [YouTube], but no report was immediately forthcoming (possibly because the Spanish criminal case is still in process).
A preliminary video was made (16 Apr 2019) before that meeting. [YouTube]
Like Nils Melzer, Special Rapporteur on Torture, Joe Cannataci had already made appointments to meet Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy, but the rendition and jailing of Assange by the UK (in collaboration with Ecuador) occurred before the dates of those appointments.
In the above video, the Special Rapporteur on Privacy also refers (in answer to an inaudible question) to the embarrassing INA Papers, about which President Moreno had made accusations against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks to his mandate. The Ecuadorian Ambassador to London, Jaime Marchán, had even gone so far as to accuse Embassy Cat (long gone) of having been trained to spy on him and any documents lying about in the embassy. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks denied these allegations.
Julian Assange was not only spied on 24/7 in the embassy, but also had his personal possessions (including many legally privileged documents) confiscated by Ecuador and later handed over to representatives of the US in a “cooperation measure”.
In a report from WikiLeaks (20 May 2019) they note:
Ecuador is committing a flagrant violation of the most basic norms of the institution of asylum by handing over all the asylee's personal belongings indiscriminately to the country that he was being protected from--the United States. This is completely unprecedented in the history of asylum. The protecting country cannot cooperate with the agent of persecution against the person to whom it was providing protection.
Ecuador has now also refused a request by the UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy, Joe Cannataci, to monitor and inspect the cooperation measure. Ecuador's refusal to cooperate with the UN Special Rapporteur defies the entire international human rights protection system of the United Nations. Ecuador will from now on be seen as a country that operates outside of the system of safeguards of rights that defines democratic countries.
In his Annual Report to the UN General Assembly (24 March 2020) Joe Cannataci noted:
II-14. The Special Rapporteur has devoted significant time and resources to dealing with individual cases related to surveillance, including those initiated following complaints by Julian Assange and the President of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno. Investigations are ongoing and will be reported on separately, as appropriate.
It is unclear whether such reports were ever made, or ever made public. The 2021 Annual Report from this mandate does not appear to be available (yet) on the OHRC webpage.
Matters related to file ECU 6/2019, in relation to “Information received in relation to restrictions on Mr. Julian Assange's right to privacy during his stay at the Embassy of Ecuador in London” are listed, as at the date of writing, as “Period / Date: Ongoing, from June 2012 until today”.
Oddly, the number of alleged victims of the alleged violation of privacy is noted as only one on the file header, when in fact there were many other alleged victims (including Assange’s lawyers, doctors and all other visitors including politicians, journalists, friends and family) - as noted in the official letters.
Three letters are available in the public file:
The first is dated 18 April 2019 (English version available) outlining the extent of the alleged breach of privacy.
A reply was received (in Spanish) dated 18 June 2019 (misdated 18 June 2018).
A second short reply (in Spanish) was also received dated 6 August 2019. This concerned mainly the dates in the previous correspondence.
There does not appear to be any publicly available file corresponding to the complaints of Lenín Moreno in relation to the INA Papers. Perhaps that complaint was deemed not worthy of investigation.
The United Nations special rapporteur on arbitrary, summary or extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, told AFP that Ecuador's decision "has exposed Mr. Assange to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights."
She noted that those risks stemmedfrom the increased likelihood of Assange being extradited to the US, where he could be tried over the publication of classified US defense material.
After her mandate ended, Agnes Callamard was appointed Secretary General of Amnesty International, from which position she made further comment about the situation of Assange. [See later section re NGOs.]
From 1 May 2012 to 30 April 2018, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas served as the first UN Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order. In 2009 de Zayas was a member of the UN workshop that drafted a report on the human right to peace, which was subsequently discussed and further elaborated by the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council.
On the day of Julian Assange’s arrest (11 April 2019) Alfred de Zayas commented in writing [to Sputnik]:
Alfred de Zayas, an American lawyer, writer, historian, expert in the field of human rights and international law, as well as a former UN official, has portrayed Assange’s arrest as “a juridical aberration and a grave violation of the refugee convention".
He stressed in written commentary to Sputnik that the high commissioner for human rights should make a statement denouncing Ecuador's actions and demanding comprehensive protection of Assange’’s rights under the Geneva Convention.
Later (14 June 2019) he gave this interview to the Geneva International Peace Research Institute (GIPRI) [YouTube Part 1] [YouTube Part 2] [YouTube Part 3]:
In that interview he notes that, not only did Ecuador violate international law and Ecuadorian law, including its constitution, they also defied a specific warning from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights not to renege on Assange’s asylum. [See “Inter-American Court Ruling Benefits Julian Assange” (13 July 2018) and WikiLeaks tweet.]
Julian Assange Amicus filed at Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Intro: https://t.co/aXDWmpoMPG
Full PDF: https://t.co/MDa7cNSAmu
NOTE: All the UN Special Rapporteurs mentioned above have now left office. It remains to be seen how much attention their replacements will pay to the persecution of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
The Lawyers
As previously noted, the 'case' against Julian Assange has raged in multiple guises and multiple jurisdictions since 2010, with no end yet in sight. It has raged without charge for most of those years, with the US uncovering its indictment (twice updated) only after Assange had been renditioned from the Ecuadorian Embassy on a “breach of bail” charge that related to an outdated extradition case which itself was based on no charge (he was wanted in Sweden for questioning only) where that arrest warrant and related extradition request itself would these days be disallowed under UK law. (The UK changed their law as a result of the injustice that became apparent in the Assange ‘case’, but refused to backdate the change to cover Assange himself.)
On 25 Aug 2016 Julian Assange spoke about his legal team after the death of Michael Ratner: [YouTube]
We have 154 lawyers that are on our legal team or staff, or have advised us... All of them are either pro bono or are working at highly reduced rates, or some just for costs. But none-the-less, that’s a big team. The loss of Michael Ratner was a big blow for us. In the US he was our chief counsel. [The need for donations for legal fees was then discussed.]
The tsunami of lawfare against Assange over more than a decade has required him to fight legal battles in many jurisdictions (without even counting the battles WikiLeaks has had to fight - eg against the illegal banking blockade). This section introduces some of the lawyers who have stood up for Julian Assange.
UK
♦ Gareth Peirce - UK solicitor extraordinaire
The extraordinary mind and forensic skills behind the UK defence of Assange has long been the legendary solicitor Gareth Peirce.
Gareth Peirce began her career as a journalist who, in the 1960s, worked in the US following the Martin Luther King Jnr campaign - see the First One Hundred Years article about her [15 July 2014].
Although it is hard to profess to know anything about Gareth as a character, her notoriety has made her one of the most recognisable figures in the legal profession. Her involvement in high profile cases, defending the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and Moazzam Begg to name but a few, has only heightened the sense of intrigue around her, and the growing public desire to understand this figure, whose resolve is so far removed from the perpetual panic of their own in the face of the – Gareth would argue, often hyperbolised – war on terror.
Gareth has caused controversy by representing some of the scapegoats who, the government believe, epitomise those groups most deplored in the war on terror. The common denominator shared by all those whom she represents is their underdog status. What is unique to them, though, is that, unlike in light-hearted competition, the underdog in the UK-government-versus-prosecuted-civilian dynamic plays a much grittier part, not championed by a public who admire their dogged pluck and sportsmanship in the face of an insurmountable adversary. For we have faith in the infallibility of our justice system: after all, its basic conception of right and wrong has provided the basis for our own. Not so Gareth. She even went as far as to write an article for the Guardian arguing that Lockerbie bomber al-Meghari was actually a victim of framing by the US government, questioning the universally accepted untouchability and incontrovertibility of those acting in the name of counter-terrorism on UK soil. They say ‘terrorism’, and our questions, doubts, qualms are silenced instantaneously, quashed by the brandishing of one loaded word, a skeleton key that can fit any lock. And it is this very issue that Gareth diligently, quietly, tirelessly works to change.
Some might see her endeavours as the inexplicable defence of the indefensible, but Gareth sees it differently. She is quoted as saying that ‘the minority has to be protected from what the majority thinks – otherwise the Benthamite thing, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, prevails’. Often she is right; whilst her undertaking of the defence of some of the country’s most notorious, often universally loathed, criminals can lead to the inevitable lambasting of her moral stance, her stoicism is continually vindicated, with the cases of the Guildford Four [where she is portrayed by Emma Thompson in the film “In the Name of the Father”] and the Birmingham Six commonly acknowledged to be among the worst cases of miscarriage of justice in UK history.
The notoriously media-shy Gareth Peirce spoke out about the first Assange extradition case on Democracy Now (1 Nov 2011), but before that she also spoke out (17 April 2011) about the shocking conditions in US prisons in the context of the trial of Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning.
The conditions that Bradley Manning is held in in America is a subject that I have thought about and researched for a long time, not because of Bradley Manning, but what has happened to him in fact is what happens to a huge number of individuals in the United States who were held in prison in conditions of extreme solitary confinement.
So it is important that there is as big a campaign as there can be about Bradley Manning. It's incredibly impressive how many people are coming forward to say the conditions he's held in are utterly intolerable, which indeed they are.
But it will be a tragic waste of a process of learning on the part of the wider world not to appreciate that this is how America deals with its prisoners, and it's simply because of the extraordinary circumstances of Mr Manning's arrest and detention that have provoked public interest at this very moment. […]
Does the protection of the Eighth Amendment of the US constitution offer the same protection as Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights?
Now this question is important. Article 3 of the European Convention prohibits torture or inhuman and degrading treatment. Keeping people in total isolation for enormous periods of time - in the case of many prisoners in America for the whole of their lives without parole - constitutes torture; constitutes inhuman and degrading treatment.
This is something not just said by campaigners or families of people detained. It's said by the UN Rapporteur on Torture[Juan Mendez at the time, and previously Manfred Nowak], by theCouncil of Europe, and by the European Court …
Gareth Peirce is also the author of “Dispatches from the Dark Side” (2011), a collection of essays written between 2017 -2011. I will come back to this book in the final essay in this series.
In a recent comment, Craig Murray said of Gareth Peirce, as she sat quietly in the courtroom as the recent judgment of the High Court on the US appeal in the (second) Assange extradition hearing was announced: [Blog 13 Dec 2021]
My admiration for Gareth is undisguised. In my view she is the greatest UK lawyer of post-war history, a notion I know she would find laughable. I also know she will be a bit cross about my writing about her, as she detests the limelight. If you don’t know of her, do a little research just now. I have been extremely fortunate in life to know many great people, but Gareth is the one of whose regard I am proudest. Anyway, Gareth was really cross about the judgement.
♦ Edward Fitzgerald QC - UK barrister
Gareth Peirce sat in the courtroom to hear the High Court ruling. Meanwhile, Edward Fitzgerald QC was with the person who had most at stake.
Gareth Peirce had advance knowledge of the result, but had been barred from telling anybody. She had been informed lawyers were not to attend court, but had come along to offer moral support, and simply sat with the public. Edward Fitzgerald QC, Julian’s counsel, was simultaneously giving the decision to Julian in the jail.
Edward Fitzgerald QC is Joint Head, Doughty Street Chambers. He was named Human Rights and Public Law Silk of the Year (2013). He represented Lauri Love in his successful fight against extradition to the US.
For obvious legal reasons, he does not comment publicly on the Assange case. Here he is in a slightly more light hearted moment (July 2007), arguing against cuts to the system of legal aid in the UK: [YouTube]
… the principle of access to justice for all, and without that we lose something which is crucial our society. Where there is no access to lawyers there is always abuse.
You could see it in the mental hospitals … when there wasn't Mental Health Review Tribunal lawyers going in - we had the Rampton type of cruelty because there was no access.
You have it in prisons where you didn't have access to lawyers. And lawyers have got to be paid to go in and to investigate these matters, to take instructions.
And you have it in the wider world. There were no legal aid lawyers in Bagram or Abu Ghraib. And there weren’t at the start inGuantánamo. That's what happens when you deny access to lawyers to vulnerable or endangered people.
Unfortunately, there are more ways to deprive a prisoner of lawyers than simply cutting legal aid - as HMP Belmarsh has demonstrated in the case of Julian Assange, where they have limited lawyer visits to almost nil for long periods, blocked legal documents sent in the mail for weeks or months on end, limited phone calls, and made electronic forms of document transmission almost impossible. After a long battle to get him a computer so he could receive information in electronic form, they even glued down the keys so he could not make notes on the documents. [This is, in my humble opinion, a form of torture all by itself.]
♦ Mark Summers QC - UK barrister
Mark Summers QC, from Matrix Chambers, is a specialist in extradition & mutual assistance, international law & criminal EU law. He is the co-author of "Abuse of Process in Criminal Proceedings". Florence Iveson works with him from these chambers.
Among other issues, Mark Summers QC tried to focus the court on the ‘facts’ of the case in Julian’s extraditing hearing.
From Craig Murray’s record of proceedings: [DAY 2]:
For the defence, Mark Summers QC stated that the USA charges were entirely dependent on three factual accusations of Assange behviour:
1) Assange helped Manning to decode a hash key to access classified material. Summers stated this was a provably false allegation from the evidence of the Manning court-martial.
2) Assange solicited the material from Manning Summers stated this was provably wrong from information available to the public
3) Assange knowingly put lives at risk Summers stated this was provably wrong both from publicly available information and from specific involvement of the US government.
In summary, Summers stated the US government knew that the allegations being made were false as to fact, and they were demonstrably made in bad faith. This was therefore an abuse of process which should lead to dismissal of the extradition request. He described the above three counts as “rubbish, rubbish and rubbish”.
Much more followed. and then …
At this point Baraitser could not conceal her contempt ... “Are you suggesting, Mr Summers, that the authorities, the Government, should have to provide context for its charges?” An unfazed Summers replied in the affirmative and then went on to show where the Supreme Court had said so in other extradition cases. Baraitser was showing utter confusion that anybody could claim a significant distinction between the Government and God.
♦ Geoffrey Robertson QC - UK barrister
Geoffrey Robertson QC is founder and joint head of Doughty Street Chambers. He is human rights barrister whose books include Crimes Against Humanity and The Struggle for Global Justice.
Although he has not argued the Assange case in court, he has given occasional interviews on the topic. One was given immediately after Assange’s expulsion from the Ecuadorian Embassy and simultaneous arrest. (13 Apr 2019) [YouTube censored]
In a later interview “Geoffrey Robertson QC: The US is trying to CRUSH Julian Assange to deter future whistleblowers (E911) (1Aug 2020) Robertson estimated that Assange would get 50 years if found guilty in the US, based on the sentence of Chelsea Manning. [RT video archive]
♦ Jennifer Robinson (@suigenerisjen) - AU and UK lawyer & barrister
In London, Jennifer Robinson also works out of Doughty Street Chambers, from which she has argued many Human Rights and Free Press cases.
She is also an adjunct lecturer in Law at the University of Sydney Law School.
Perhaps the best known face from Assange’s legal team, Jennifer Robinson is interviewed below (14 April 2019) [YouTube] soon after his second arrest (within the Ecuadorian Embassy), but she has been one of his lawyers since his initial arrest nearly a decade earlier (3 Dec 2010). [YouTube]
Jennifer Robinson has spoken up for Assange in many venues, including the United Nations when she reported on Julian's health at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva on 8 June 2018 [YouTube], and press conferences about his prison conditions, such as on 18 Feb 2020 [via Tweet video] summarised here:
Jennifer Robinson (41:40) at press conference: “Our access has been delayed or difficult. Whether it’s about - our ability to get prison visits, - the time we get with him when we get the prison visits, often I’ll sit there for half an hour or longer into a 2 hour visit because the guards haven’t brought him down yet, so what should be a 2 hour visit is significantly constricted, - we were not allowed to hand him papers in prison for a very long time. As the result of the work of Gareth Peirce some of those restrictions were lifted. There has also been problems with access for him to a computer in what is an incredibly complex case with a huge amount of evidence. So it has materially affected his ability to prepare his case and properly defend himself.”
She has also spoken on many panels, such as
(15 Feb 2020) “Prosecution of Julian Assange: His Right toPublish is Our Right to Know” at CUNY Law, NYC [YouTube] [NB: This video is slightly out of synch.]
(2 Oct 2020) “The Belmarsh Tribunal”, an online event [YouTube] Watch below.
(20 March 2021) “Julian Assange: Repression, Isolation & Lockdown”, an online event, where she particularly mentions contributions by Suelette Dreyfus (AU), Stefania Maurizi (IT), Felicity Ruby (AU) in defence of Julian. [YouTube]
She gave personal testimony to the court (her affidavit was read into the record 18 Sept 2020) in relation to the visit to Julian Assange in the embassy by (then) US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.
On 28 Sept 2021, along with Michael Isikoff (one of the authors of the Yahoo article) she spoke with Amy Goodman about “The Plot to Kill Julian Assange: Report Reveals CIA’s Plan to Kidnap, Assassinate WikiLeaks Founder” [DemocracyNow from 45:43]
UPDATE On 15 June 2022, from Oscar Grenfell, “Britain admits to spying on Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson” [WSWS]
“On Saturday [11 June 2022], renowned international human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson announced a settlement with the British government over its surveillance of her while she has acted as a legal representative of persecuted WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
The same day, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), where a case by Robinson against the British government was pending, took note of the agreement. As part of the settlement, the ECHR said the British government had admitted to violating Robinson’s article eight and article ten rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, relating to privacy and freedom of expression respectively.” […]
“One mainstream publication, the British Daily Mail, reported the outcome of the Robinson case. In a statement to the paper, Robinson explained: “The UK Government has now admitted that its surveillance and information-sharing arrangements with the US violated my rights. That includes in relation to the protection of confidential journalistic material.
“This follows a pattern of unlawful spying on Julian Assange and his legal team, and it raises grave concerns about government interference with journalistic material and privilege.
“It also raises serious questions about what information the UK and US governments have been sharing about Mr Assange’s case against extradition to the US.”
John Jones QC was part of the presentation at the Assange Press conference in London (5 Feb 2016) of the opinion given by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD), since he was an important part of preparing submissions to that expert working group. [YouTube]
This was only two months before his death (he walked in front of a train). He is one of many listed in ‘The Death Toll’ section of PART 3 in this series: “The Persecution of WikiLeaks: Counting the Cost”.
John Jones was a leader at the Bar in international criminal law who was instrumental in setting up United Nations courts to bring to justice war criminals from the conflicts in former Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda.
His learning lives on in his textbooks, the most recent — Blackstone’s International Criminal Practice — will be published posthumously later this year. He was not only a prolific scholar, but a barrister whose belief that trials can only be fair when unprepossessing defendants are provided with first-rate advocates led him to volunteer his services — often pro bono — so that justice could be seen to be done. The procedural architecture of international criminal courts owes much to his work in drafting their rules and procedure.
Sweden
♦ Per E Samuelsson - SE advokat
Per Samuelsson is a Swedish lawyer who specialises in criminal cases, with a special focus on eco-crime. He handled the Swedish allegations.
On 16 Sept 2016 Samuelsson spoke to a Reuters journalist [Guardian video]
After Julian’s arrest and imprisonment, a new Swedish prosecutor announced her intention to reopen the Swedish case (for the third time). In the second round, prosecutor Marion Nye issued a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) which lead to his first extradition hearing (in 2011). In the meantime, the UK changed the law so that EAWs had to come from a court, rather than just a prosecutor.
The following (now censored) video (3 June 2019) was made less than two months after Julian Assange was renditioned from the Ecuadorian embassy (11 April 2019). The video was taken as the Swedish court denied permission for a new arrest warrant, since they concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support one. [YouTube, now censored]
Per Samuelsson (Google translation): I think it is a big victory for Julian Assange, the first one in a long time. Well deserved that it's also a victory for Sweden, who upheld the rule of law. And it's a defeat for the prosecutors who, once again, was punished because not having conducted the case in a correct way. So it's a step in the right direction.
I visited [Julian Assange, in HMP Belmarsh] on the 24th of May [2019] and I could with my own eyes see that he was in a bad health. He had a hard time to focus and and concentrate on the right things. I'm not a doctor so I don't know how serious it is in the end. I hope he will recover. Perhaps today will be a new start for him.
At this point, the prosecution case had still not moved beyond preliminary investigation - after almost 9 years. Eventually the latest Swedish prosecutor, Eva-Marie Persson, announced (19 Nov 2019) - in an altogether ungracious and unapologetic manner - that she was dropping the case altogether.
Ecuador
♦ Carlos Poveda - EC abogado
Carlos Poveda is an Ecuadorian lawyer. Rather than defending cases against Assange, legal efforts in Ecuador focused on litigation brought by Assange re the Moreno government’s treatment of him as an asylee.
Prior to Julian’s rendition from the embassy, there was litigation related to the unconstitutional gagging and maltreatment of Assange within the embassy. This litigation was frustrated (by Ecuador) at every turn.
After his rendition, arrest, and imprisonment in HMP Belmarsh, Carlos Poveda presented a formal legal complaint over alleged espionage carried out on Assange while in the Ecuadorian embassy, and the illegal appropriation of his personal possessions by Ecuador (later handed over to the US).
In “Assange was subjected to espionage & extortion – WikiLeaks co-founder's lawyer to RT”: [30 Apr 2019]
The legal team of Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint in Ecuador, accusing the staff of its London embassy of spying on the journalist. Assange's lawyer, Carlos Poveda, has shared details of the case with RT.
The complaint against the embassy was submitted to the attorney general's office in Ecuador on behalf of Assange on Monday. The journalist has been targeted with blanket surveillance for about two years – and subjected to an extortion attempt, Poveda said. The compromised data includes legal, medical and personal information on Assange, yet his legal team did not disclose to whom exactly it had been allegedly leaked.
“Julián Assange's lawyer in Ecuador, Carlos Poveda, affirms that among the 10 involved in espionage against his client were Spanish and Ecuadorian citizens, the latter being consular officials and members of the security team.” [Tweet]
Although Ecuador claimed, on the day he was arrested (11 April 2019), that it had revoked Julian Assange’s Ecuadorian citizenship, it was not until the end of July 2021 that Ecuador’s justice system formally notified him that …
… his naturalisation had been nullified after Ecuadorian authorities said the supporting letter had multiple inconsistencies, different signatures, the possible alteration of documents and unpaid fees, among other issues.
Carlos Poveda, Assange’s lawyer, told The Associated Press news agency the decision was made without due process and Assange was not allowed to appear in the case.
“On the date [Assange] was cited, he was deprived of his liberty and with a health crisis inside the deprivation of liberty centre [ie HMP Belmarsh] where he was being held,” Poveda said, adding he would file an appeal.
Nothing but frustration appears to have resulted from each of these legal initiatives. It would appear that the process was politicised but, to be fair, such processes do seem to take forever in Latin American countries. [Simple cases in which this writer has been involved have taken up to seven years to reach anywhere near resolution.]
UPDATE: On 15 May 2023, in an interview with Consortium News, Sr Poveda updated us with information about ongoing Assange legal action in Ecuador, as well as casting new light on some events at earlier dates. [YouTube]
Australia
♦ Jennifer Robinson (@suigenerisjen) AU and UK lawyer & barrister
See UK section
♦ Melinda Taylor (@theMTchair) - AU & International lawyer
Melinda Taylor is an Australian and international criminal lawyer, based in The Hague. She helped set up (2006) the ICC's public defence counsel.
In 2016, Taylor led Assange's case before the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD).
Greg Barns specialises in criminal law and administrative law. He is he national past president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance and current spokesperson on asylum seekers, criminal justice and human rights.
While not part of the team of lawyers fighting against the US extradition in the UK, Barns regularly speaks up on the topic in the Australian media.
(28 Apr 2012) [YouTube] Quote re Julia Gillard from 9:20
Here is his comment shortly before Julian’s arrest (January 2019):
Greg Barns in The Mercury (6 Jan 2019) [Article is paywalled]
♦ Julian Burnside QC
While he doesn’t appear to be a formal member of the Assange legal team, Julian Burnside QC has often spoken out in support of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
16 March 2011: In “Julian Burnside: ‘Bradley Manning might just as well be in Guantanamo Bay’” discussing the event "Breaking Australia's silence: WikiLeaks & freedom”. [GreenLeft] More than 2000 people attended this event at the Sydney Town Hall, staged by the Sydney Peace Foundation, Amnesty, Stop the War Coalition, and supported by the City of Sydney.
12 April 2018: On Julian’s gagging: “John Pilger and Julian Burnside denounce silencing of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange“ [WSWS]
31 July 2018: "The AU Government can save Julian Assange" [JulianBurnside]
♦ Stephen Kenny [UPDATE]
It is not clear when Stephen Kenny became part of Julian’s legal team in Australia, but he was present and vocal at the 24 May 2023 event held at a time when US President Biden was due to be in Australia (although Biden pulled out of te visit at the last minute).
Some speeches and interviews:
24 May 2023 “Assange's lawyer Stephen Kenny rules out [guilty of something] plea deal for his repatriation” [YouTube] Speech at the Rally “Journalism is Not a Crime” Hyde Park, Sydney Australia.
30 May 2023 “Assange's lawyer Stephen Kenny: plea deals, assurances & what Australia should do next to free him” [YouTube] Interview by Consortium News.
Kenny succeeded in rescuing another Australian citizen detained by the US, David Hicks, from Guantanamo Bay. He then cleared his name in 2015, by having the conviction from a dubious charge, "material aid to terrorism", overturned. Vogan & Kenny discuss plea deals, assurances, and what Australia should do next to get Assange out of Belmarsh, one way or the other.
Spain
♦ Baltasar Garzón - ES jurist
Baltasar Garzón is a Spanish former judge. He served on Spain's central criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, and was an examining magistrate of the Juzgado Central de Instrucción No. 5 (which investigates the most important criminal cases). His attempt to extradite Pinochet is legendary. [Discussed by Elizabeth Vos in Consortium News.]
In 2012, the Spanish supreme court decided to ban Judge Baltasar Garzón from judicial office for 11 years for having authorised the wiretapping of communications between detainees and lawyers in the course of an investigation into high-profile crime and political corruption involving members of Spain's ruling party, a decision decried by many international lawyers in high standing. [The Guardian]
However the supreme court declared him not guilty in a case involving his investigation of crimes committed under the Franco dictatorship. [The Guardian]
He eventually took up the role of international coordinator of the Assange legal cases. The film "Hacking Justice" been made about his efforts in that role. At its screening during the 2019 International Documentary Festival, Balthazar Garzón and Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi spoke about “Violations of International Law & Spying”. [Tweet with image, Garzón far left, Maurizi third from left]
The cover image of this preview clip for “Hacking Justice“ shows Sarah Harrison (who, amongst other things, shepherded Edward Snowden to asylum in Russia - he described her as a “ninja“). She is one of the three most famous of the “WikiLeaks Women“ showcased in the book “Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks”. The others are lawyer and digital rights activist Renata Avila and theatre director Angela Richter (see PART 1 of this series).
ES: Abogado, profesor universitario e investigador académico
14 Dec 2019 “Assange lawyer discloses conditions for British justice TO RETHINK his extradition” [RT article]
Martínez was one of the lawyers in Julian Assange's legal team filmed by UC Global inside the Ecuadorian embassy. [La Repubblica]
27 Mar 2022: “Julian Assange's lawyer reveals how the WikiLeaks founder is coping in prison | 60 Minutes Australia”
“Aitor Martinez, Julian Assange's Spanish lawyer, tells 60 Minutes the Australian WikiLeaks founder has been "destroyed" by his time in prison.” He also notes that both UK and US are blocking cooperation with the Spanish investigation of the case related to spying on Assange and his lawyers, doctors, and other visitors - where the evidence points toward the CIA being both the instigators of the spying operation and the end consumers of the surveillance records. [YouTube]
IMAGE: Aitor Martínez, Spanish lawyer for Julian Assange SOURCE Screengrab from the 60 Minutes video (27 March 2022)
European Court of Human Rights
♦ Christophe Marchand
Christophe Marchand is a lawyer at the Brussels Bar specializing in international criminal law. His clients include Julian Assange, Catalan separatist Carles Puidgemont and formerly Edward Snowden.
18 Dec 2021 [FR] “The United States had planned the assassination of Julian Assange" - testimony of Christophe Marchand” [YouTube]
22 April 2022 Event in Brussels “Europe, Justice & Press Freedom: The Case of Julian Assange” [YouTube]
Michael Ratner was Wikileaks chief US counsel (aka lead lawyer) until his death in 2016. He died of cancer. His valuable contributions are discussed in “The death toll” in PART 3 of this series “The Persecution of WikiLeaks: Counting the Cost”, including commentary from Assange himself after Ratner’s death.
♦ Margaret Ratner Kunstler (@granmarga) - US attorney
Specifically named by Assange as a trusted US lawyer [YouTube], civil rights attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler has spent her career providing movement support and protecting the rights of activists.
Here she speaks at “Challenging the powerful with legal means” (30 Mar 2017) [YouTube]
At the NYC book launch for “In Defense of Julian Assange” (held 22 Nov 2019 in Michael Ratner’s old apartment), Margaret Ratner Kunstler began the lineup of speakers: [YouTube]
The Powers That Be are upping the ante - charging a journalist with espionage is eating the First Amendment. It's outrageous. The First Amendment doesn't allow for an espionage charge. The entire indictment violates the First Amendment, and anybody who is a journalist, who is sensitive to this, knows that this is a total threat to news gathering. to giving out information, and to educating people about what's happening. It's a total threat.
And on the other side of it, Julian has been housed in a prison as if he's a terrorist. So this is really upping the ante …
♦ Barry J Pollack - US attorney
Barry J Pollack spoke out on the day of Julian’s arrest: [Tweet]
At the NYC book launch for “In Defense of Julian Assange” (held in Michael Ratner’s old apartment 22 Nov 2019), Barry Pollock spoke again: [YouTube]
"This is not just about Julian Assange's right to publish. It is about our right to know what the government is doing in our name." "These charges are a threat, literally, to journalists all over the world."
These lawyers are NOT part of the legal team, but rather provide public support from the legal profession for Julian Assange, and for all of the rights and freedoms that he represents.
If you are a lawyer, or legal academic, you might like to join them.
14 August 2020 “Open Letter to the UK Prime Minister, Mr Boris Johnson, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Robert Buckland QC, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Dominic Raab and UK Home Secretary Priti Patel” [l4Assange] [Tweet]
24 Jan 2018 Drs Sondra S Crosby, Brock Chisholm and Sean Love authored the Opinion: “We examined Julian Assange, and he badly needs care – but he can’t get it” [The Guardian]
As clinicians with a combined experience of four decades caring for and about refugees and other traumatised populations, we recently spent 20 hours, over three days, performing a comprehensive physical and psychological evaluation of Mr Assange. While the results of the evaluation are protected by doctor-patient confidentiality, it is our professional opinion that his continued confinement is dangerous physically and mentally to him, and a clear infringement of his human right to healthcare. […]
We must ask: why does Mr Assange remain unable to exercise his human right to health services?Are states allowed to choose who is entitled to this fundamental right and who is not?
22 June 2018 “Sean Love: Access to medical care, a human right, must also be guaranteed to Julian Assange” [BMJ]
Over this past year, I’ve met with Assange several times at the embassy in London, and have been privy to his conditions and medical record. Assange suffers both physically and psychologically from his prolonged detention—as was found in another evaluation performed in 2015, the results of which were made available to the public.[5] Assange’s detention continues to cause a precipitous deterioration in his overall condition and amounts to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Oct 2019 Medicine at Brown (University) article “Courage Is Contagious’ [MedatBrown] WARNING: Ironically, the webpage for this article has a virus, so should only be loaded with suitable protection. The virus appears to prevent archiving of the article.
“Much of this information is protected by doctor-patient confidentiality. What I can say is that Assange is resilient, but his suffering and the psychological toll of his circumstances were apparent. Compounding these injuries was that, for nearly seven years, Assange had been unable to receive proper medical care.
Within the embassy, he had difficulty obtaining treatment, as most physicians refused to visit him for fear of associating themselves or their medical practice with him, his political views, or his publishing activities.”
17 Mar 2017 “Boston Medical Center physician Sondra Crosby, M.D. has been honored by her physician peers of the Suffolk District Medical Society as the district's 2017 Community Clinician of the Year.“ [patch]
24 Jan 2018 Drs Sondra S Crosby, Brock Chisholm and Sean Love authored the Opinion: “We examined Julian Assange, and he badly needs care – but he can’t get it” [The Guardian]
8 Apr 2019 Letter to UNHR High Commissioner Bachelet [UNHCHR]
15 April 2019 From Vice: “Doctor Who Evaluated Julian Assange Told UN His Confinement Was Torture” [vice] [letter to Michelle Bachelet]
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nis Melzer, credits the presence of an affidavit from Dr Sondra Crosby in the information provided to him by Assange’s lawyers (in March 2019) with prompting his initial interest in this case. Which accords her evidence a gravity exponentially greater than it holds all by itself, given the magnitude of Nils Melzer’s impact on public awareness about the persecution (he calls it torture) of Assange. (See PART 2 of this series “Nils Melzer on the torture of Julian Assange: A compendium”.)
24 Sept 2020 “Essentially Dead’: Doctor who visited Assange in Ecuador Embassy Testifies at Extradition Trial” [ShadowProof]
As detailed in her December 2019 report provided to the court, Assange seemed severely depressed to her. He talked like he was “essentially dead.” He was “tearful” and pleaded “for help.” […]
By October 2019, “he met all of criteria for major depression,” Crosby testified. “It was profoundly impacting his functioning, and he had thoughts of suicide every day, many times in a day.”
Crosby assessed his physical health and was concerned about what she viewed as symptoms of cardiac disease or anxiety, as well as chronic respiratory infections. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Assange’s defense team raised the issue of chronic respiratory infections in an attempt to bail him out of jail. The judge rejected their request. […]
Crosby told Lewis after her February 2019 visit she was “very alarmed” by Assange’s risk of systemic infection & death. She was afraid he may overdose from narcotics while trying to deal with a dental infection.
Although Dr Crosby was giving evidence at the hearing about Assange’s health issues, she also had evidence pertinent to the issue of the spying in the embassy on his protected conversations: [See also Affidavit on this topic]
It is unclear why Assange’s legal team chose not to have Crosby describe an incident that occurred with embassy surveillance staff when she visited in February 2019, but it is potentially relevant to evidence on the U.S. intelligence-backed espionage operation that was conducted against Assange.
Crosby left the embassy at one point to pick up some food and returned to the room, where she was meeting with Assange to find her confidential medical notes were taken. Her notes were “in a space utilized by embassy surveillance staff,” and she presumed they were read, a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality.
“I was questioned by the security staff and was forced to write a statement as to who I was and the purpose of my visit (which had already been established),” Crosby wrote in a March 2019 affidavit. “I was asked for a copy of my medical license, which was taken and photocopied (my passport and phone had been taken earlier). The embassy security guard then told me he had to ‘make a call’ before I would be allowed back in the embassy to complete my evaluation.”
Crosby added, “I was not informed who he was calling or why. The experience was intimidating.”
23 Nov 2019 “Doctors’ Petition - Open letter to UK Home SecretaryPriti Patel and UK Shadow Home SecretaryDiane Abbott” [Consortium News] [Original letter] [German version] [French version] Originally signed by 67 doctors, there are currently 338 medical signatories from 35 countries.
ADDENDUM
It is noteworthy that three of the medical practitioners, from whose reports we have drawn, are unidentified, their names having been redacted. In this context, a telling passage from the 26 page report of the psychological expert dated 11 December 2015 offers an insight into the climate of fear and intimidation surrounding the provision of medical care to Mr Assange. On page 20 of the report, under the heading ‘Medical Practitioners’ Concerns regarding examining and treating Mr Assange at the Embassy’, the unnamed psychological expert noted:
‘One of Mr Assange’s colleagues commented that there had been many difficulties in finding medical practitioners who were willing to examine Mr Assange in the Embassy. The reasons given were uncertainty over whether medical insurance would cover the Embassy (a foreign jurisdiction); whether the association with Mr Assange could harm their livelihood or draw unwanted attention to them and their families; and discomfort regarding exposing this association when entering the Embassy. One medical practitioner expressed concern to one of the interviewees after the police taking notes of his name and the fact that he was visiting Mr Assange. One medical practitioner wrote that he agreed to produce a medical report only on condition that his name not be made available to the wider public, fearing repercussions.’21
It is likely that the aforementioned climate of fear and intimidation severely compromised the medical care available to Mr Assange, even within the Embassy, and given all the other concerns surrounding the extraordinary treatment of Mr Assange it is difficult to conclude other than that the creation of that climate of fear and intimidation was deliberate. If it was deliberate, we as medical doctors condemn such behaviour as reckless, dangerous and cruel. That all this has been played out in the heart of London for many years is a source of great sadness and shame to many of us.
4 Dec 2019 “Second open letter to the UK government” [Medium] To: the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Robert Buckland QC CC: the Home Secretary, Priti Patel
16 Dec 2019 “Open letter to the Australian Government” [Medium]
21 Jan 2020 “Doctors For Assange” live event [YouTube] Live conference from MEAA Sydney, Jan 22nd 2020, with Dr Jill Stein MD and fellow 'Doctors for Assange' in Australia, UK & Bolivia. Hosted by veteran investigative journalist Wendy Bacon.
17 Feb 2020 “End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange” [The Lancet]
18 Feb 2020 “Australian Government reply to Doctors for Assange” [Doctor4Assange]
18 March 2020 “Doctors for Assange reply to Australian Government” [Doctors4Assange]
22 Dec 2021 “Letter to Barnaby Joyce MP, Deputy PM of Australia” [Doctors4Assange]
8 Nov 2021Dr Lissa Johnson (clinical psychologist), one of the driving forces behind Doctors for Assange, spoke very movingly at the Sydney premiere of the film “Ithaka” [YouTube]
IMAGE: Dr Lissa Johnson, speaking at the Sydney premiere Nov 2021. SOURCE: Screengrab from YouTube.
Before Doctors For Assange even started, Dr Lissa Johnson wrote a series of articles (starting in Feb 2019) about the treatment of Julian Assange by the various authorities, and the press. [New Matilda - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5]
The Family
♦ Christine Assange
Mother of Julian Assange
IMAGE: Christine Assange, during a march on the AU Canberra parliament (2012?) SOURCE: Cathy Vogan, with permission
Christine Assange lives in Australia. For many years she lobbied hard for her son, making some speeches but also via social media posts and giving her support to various Assange activists with bigger platforms. Eventually illness (both her own and her partner’s) caught up with her, requiring her to largely step back from the public arena, but from time to time, her voice is still heard around the world.
[Personally, my heart bleeds for her. Having to watch her son tortured and potentially murdered by the state in full view - I can’t really imagine how painful that must be.]
9 Aug 2018 “Politics in the Pub - The Gagging Of Julian Assange - Christine Assange” [YouTube] [Transcript] This was while Julian was still in the embassy:
After Julian’s 11 Apr 2019 arrest she spoke out about the ‘treasonous’ actions of Lenín Moreno, Ecuador’s new president: [Twitter account since deleted]
♦ John Shipton
Father of Julian Assange
Julian’s mother and father never married and were not together at the time of his birth. Regardless, John Shipton has always been supportive of Julian, and in recent years has devoted his life to the campaign to free his son, giving countless speeches at events large and small across Australia, the UK, Europe and the US.
29 Nov 2019 “Father of Julian Assange: It's about suppressing unwanted truths’’ [RT]
John Shipton spoke to a meeting in Cologne, Germany, alongside German MP Sevim Dağdelen.
IMAGE:German MP Sevim Dağdelen and John Shipton in Cologne {Kóhn}, Germany (29 Nov 2019). SOURCE: [DE].RT & Felicitas Rabe
At the event: Spontaneously, a viewer from Afghanistan expressly thanked Julian Assange's father for the fact that, as a father affected, he would support his son with so much strength and patience. He wanted to thank him and his son Julian on behalf of the people in Afghanistan. Assange had exposed and published the war crimes in his country, what was done to the Afghan people by the Western military in the name of so-called democracy. He had given the people of his country a voice with his leaks.
Note: The associated video of the event is no longer available because YouTube has deleted the German RT channel. However, a short Ruptly video remains. [YouTube]
21 Jan 2022 John Shipton speaks on the steps of the town hall, Sydney, Australia, at one of local Team Assange weekly vigils [YouTube]
23 March 2022 John Shipton was present at the marriage of Stella Moris and Julian Assange in HMP Belmarsh. A few days later he spoke about the wedding in a Randy Credico livestream with journalists Craig Murray and Chris Hedges, and musician Roger Waters. [YouTube].
[This was discussed in PART 5 of this series “The Assange Wedding”.] During the podcast Craig noted that:
"One of the great things for Julian was that he was actually allowed to hug his family ... I was only [in prison] for a few months. Julian's had years and years of it. You yearn for that human contact ... The pain of then being separated must be immense." [Tweet]
IMAGE: John Shipton, Stella Moris and Stella’s mother on the wedding day SOURCE: WISE Up Action.
20 Apr 2022 “S4E9 The Assange Family Struggle” [YouTube] On the eve of the return of the ‘case‘ to the Magistrates Curt for the order to extradite Julian, John Shipton comments further.
Gabriel Shipton came to public attention when he joined his father in a relentless publicity campaign across Australia, Europe and the US. While doing so, and giving speeches, he also produced the documentary film “Ithaka” now showing in cinemas.
7 Apr 2021 “Bitcoiners Should Stand Up For My Brother, Julian Assange [BitcoinMagazine]
An Espionage Act prosecution against Julian Assange isn’t just an attack on the First Amendment. It’s a cruise missile against a free internet, and Bitcoin could be next.
I never thought my older brother Julian Assange would need my help.
I’ve always looked up to him. He is fearless, smart, nurturing and protective. No matter what was going on in his world — whether he was travelling the world for groundbreaking publications, living under house arrest with an ankle bracelet or seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy — he could listen to my problems and offer (sometimes unsolicited) free advice. When I needed him, he found a way to be there for me.
In August 2019, I went to see Julian in HM Prison Belmarsh, and I realized something had changed. After years of what United Nations representatives have formally classified as psychological or “no touch torture,” the effect on him was more visible than ever. I realized that now, it was my turn to help my brother.
We spoke about things like the ubiquitous COVID-19 response, when our father was going to slow down and the distraction and consequences of QAnon. However, a favorite topic of his was Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.” […]
“Bitcoin and WikiLeaks are the utilities of a free internet. They are necessary for it to develop and thrive in a meaningful way. Both born out of the cypherpunk movement, Bitcoin and WikiLeaks have stayed true to their visions of decentralization and transparency. The power of the cryptocurrency community has grown exponentially. With that power comes a responsibility to defend Bitcoin’s core beliefs in the face of looming institutionalization.
My hope is that the rational technologists who made big bets against the establishment come together to see the benefit of defending one of their brothers and their own cypherpunk roots. Like it did in 2011 when it was adopted by WikiLeaks, Bitcoin has another opportunity to show its metal to the world. A win for Julian Assange will demonstrate to the waves of corporate interests and regulators that the cryptocurrency community is willing to use its power to stand up for what it believes in.”
4 Nov 2021 “‘Ithaka’ Julian Assange Documentary Produced by His Brother Launches at Sydney Festival” [Variety]
“Australian film maker Gabriel Shipton wants his new documentary “Ithaka”, which will have its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival on Sunday, to shine a new perspective on his brother, the polarizing Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange.
“It’s a story that’s never been told before,” [Gabriel] Shipton, who produced the film, told Variety. “We’ve learned Julian’s story through media headlines, but I wanted to tell this story through his family. To explore the human side that people haven’t seen.”
“Ithaka” begins in April 2019 when the images of Assange, arrested and dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London were splashed across screens worldwide. From there writer-director Ben Lawrence (“Hearts and Bones”) focuses on Assange’s 76-year-old father John Shipton, and Assange’s former secret fiancée, Stella Moris. They have spent the past two years relentlessly campaigning for Assange’s release, while trying to assemble some normality into the life of Moris and Assange’s two young children
IMAGE: Gabriel Shipton, in kilt, is the tallest member of the wedding party (23 Mar 2022). SOURCE: WISE Up Action.
Q: Congratulations on the great event that Stella with Julian [sic] as well over the past week. As difficult as it will be obviously with Julian still being in prison, that’s got to be very hard. What was it like being across for the wedding? I imagine it would have been very good to be supportive for both John and Stella.
GS: Yeah, it was good to be there. There was there was six of us, five of us plus the two kids. So seven family members who were able to attend the wedding in total including Stella. You know, it was like a moment where Julian wasn’t free, but it felt like we were in control of the jail for a change. Usually you go in there and it’s very, very oppressive and it’s definitely made clear that you’re entering their space. But for an hour or so on that day, it sort of felt as normal as it could, being together.
We haven’t been together like that… his visiting rights in the embassy were really curtailed after 2017. And so I don’t think he’s had a gathering like that – obviously outside of a courtroom – there hasn’t been a gathering like that for a very, very long time. So it was a very, very special moment for everyone, especially Julian and Stella.
8 Nov 2021 “ITHAKA World Premiere - New Julian Assange Documentary” [YouTube]
17 Apr 2020 “Ithaka Producer Gabriel Shipton Talks Fighting for His Brother Julian Assange, Working with Ben Lawrence, and More in This Interview” [The Curb]
20 Apr 2022 “S4E9 The Assange Family Struggle” [YouTube] On the eve of the return of the ‘case‘ to the Magistrates Curt for the order to extradite Julian, Gabriel Shipton comments further.
Lawyer and activist. Speaks English, Swedish and Spanish. [nine.com] Now the wife of Julian Assange & mother of his two youngest children. [The wedding was discussed in PART 5 of this series “The Assange Wedding”.]
Stella Moris joined the Assange legal team in 2011, as a researcher, when they needed help fighting the Swedish case - the combination of her knowledge of Swedish and her legal training made her an ideal team member. Her fluency in Spanish would also be very helpful later, both for working with Baltasar Garzón (the coordinator of the international team) and for what ultimately became known as ‘the Spanish case’.
Her personal relationship with Julian developed over time, with both their close proximity (she worked many days at the embassy) and the seriousness of Julian’s danger likely augmenting the intellectual and physical attraction they both felt.
16 Oct 2021 “Stella Moris on her secret family with Julian Assange: ‘He’s unlike anyone I have ever met’” [The Guardian]
Since she was forced to make her private relationship with Julian public (by the judge, who would not suppress her name on his bail application) Stella has also acted extensively as a spokesperson for the campaign, both in the UK and internationally.
24 Jan 2022 After the High Court appeal decision [YouTube[
Feb 2022 “Marianne Williamson speaks with Stella Moris” [YouTube]
Q: What are the things that you most want people to know not only about Julian. about what's happening to him?
A: Well, the dirty little secret of extradition cases is that they are 90% politics and just 10% law. And that's why it is essential in this case for people really to understand that it is a political persecution, that it is not pursuing any legitimate purpose other than to persecute a man, a publisher, for having published the truth to the public.
That it sets a precedent that is going to be used against the rest of the press. This case was initiated by the Trump Administration after the Obama Administration looked into it and decided there was no criminality to pursue there, and commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence. And then it was under the Trump Administration, in the context of the Trump Administration's war on free speech, on press freedom, that they initiated this case, and it is the Biden Administration which is now furthering, continuing, the Trump Administration's most dangerous legacy.
If this case reaches trial in the United States it is going to reach a Virginia national security court where essentially no person has successfully defended from a nationalsecurity case. He faces a 175 year sentence. There is no public interest defense …
And that will propel the United States into a completely different polity. A country that does not permit an open and free discussion, inquiry into what the government does, is no longer a free and open society.
The WikiLeaks website is the place to find all the WikiLeaks leaked publications, but statements about Julian Assange and ‘the case’ are usually made via its Twitter account, or the Twitter account of the Defend Assange Campaign (run by his legal team). A history of events and important documents is maintained by the Courage Foundation (see below).
You can buy your wearable & personal billboards (ie Teeshirts, stickers, posters, etc) at the WikiLeaks Shop (@WikiLeaksShop).
28 Feb 2022Editor of WikiLeaks “Kristinn Hrafnsson speech at the Austrian Journalists Club (ÖJC) - Journalist Award” [YouTube]
The Defend Assange twitter account was originally the personal account of Julian Assange, but was taken over by his legal team and renamed after Moreno’s Ecuadorian government gagged Julian in their embassy (mid 2018).
This is the UK site for information about events, videos etc related to the campaign. It also contains many suggestions for activities individuals can engage in to support Julian Assange and fight for his freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
While not precisely an official representative, the people behind the London-based JADC have been supporting Julian Assange from outside the embassy for nearly a decade, and the information they provide can be trusted.
NGOs
♦ Free Press & ♦ Human Rights groups
12 April 2019 Shortly after his arrest and expulsion from the Ecuadorian Embassy, the website defend.wikileaks (maintained by the Courage Foundation) reproduced statements from a wide range of NGOs, politicians and other well known individuals who came out in support of Julian Assange. Statements from some politicians were also included.
18 Oct 2021 More recently, a public letter was signed by a range of these NGOs: “Rights groups call on US Attorney General to drop case against Julian Assange” [IFEX]
At the 2020 hearings, the presence of two international NGOs was extremely conspicuous:
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Represented mainly by Rebecca Vincent, but Christian Mihr (@cmihr), executive director of RSF Germany, also put in an appearance. Rebecca Vincent has remained very active, speaking from outside the High Court at the latest iteration of the court circus. [Tweet]
Amnesty International (@Amnesty) Represented by Stefan Simanowitz (@StefSimanowitz). During the September part of the hearing he produced several lengthy Twitter Threads. Julia Hall (@JuliaHall18) also put in an appearance.
Agnès Callamard (@AgnesCallamard), previously the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial summary or arbitrary Executions (to March 2021), became Secretary General of Amnesty International in April 2021.
Speaking in that capacity to Democracy Now about Assange in July 2021: “I think Amnesty’s position is very clear, that the detention is arbitrary and that he should be released. And we are campaigning for the release of Julian Assange. The allegations made against him in — by the U.S. authorities raise a large number of problems and red flags in relation to freedom of the press, in particular. But our position is clear. We’re campaigning for his release.” [Tweet]
After the announcement that the High Court’s accepted the US’s appeal against the decision not to extradite (10 Dec 2021) an Amnesty executive stated: “This is a travesty of justice. By allowing this appeal, the High Court has chosen to accept the deeply flawed diplomatic assurances given by the US that Assange would not be held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison. The fact that the US has reserved the right to change its mind at any time means that these assurances are not worth the paper they are written on.“
This was followed up - after the Supreme Court announced that would NOT hear the Assange appeal by a statement from Amnesty International (14 March 2022): “UK: Refusal by Supreme Court to grant Assange right to appeal is “a blow for justice”
“Today’s decision is a blow to Julian Assange and to justice. The Supreme Court has missed an opportunity to clarify the UK’s acceptance of deeply flawed diplomatic assurances against torture. Such assurances are inherently unreliable and leave people at risk of severe abuse upon extradition or other transfer.
“Prolonged solitary confinement is a key feature of life for many people in US maximum security prisons and amounts to torture or other ill treatment under international law. The ban on torture and other ill-treatment is absolute and empty promises of fair treatment such as those offered by the USA in the Assange case threaten to profoundly undermine that international prohibition.
“The refusal is also bad news for press freedom since it leaves intact the nefarious route the US has employed to attempt to prosecute publishers for espionage. Demanding that states like the UK extradite people for publishing classified information that is in the public interest sets a dangerous precedent and must be rejected. The US should immediately drop the charges against Julian Assange.”
And many, many more 20 Apr 2022 “CN LIVE! S4E9 The Assange Family Struggle” [YouTube] During this video, streamed on the morning of the issue of the extradition order by Judge Barraitser’s replacement, an important summary of organisations supporting the release of Julian Assange was displayed:
IMAGE: Signatures in support of Julian’s release. SOURCE: Screenshot from the film “Ithaka”
♦ Free Assange groups
When Julian Assange was first arrested, in Dec 2011, he had hundreds of thousands of active supporters. But years and years of vicious smears, particularly as part of the “RussiaGate” propaganda that followed the 2016 US election, caused his support to fall away (or at least to fall out of public view). Many years of enforced seclusion due to his asylum in the Ecuador embassy did not help.
The group of dedicated supporters that kept vigil outside the embassy (and which later morphed into JADC) persisted, but elsewhere there appeared to be little visible support - and mainstream media gave his ‘case’ little attention. When it did mention Assange it was mainly to cast him in a negative light.
♦ #Unity4J
In mid 2018, Suzie Dawson (@Suzi3D) decided to do something about that. She called an online vigil for Julian, which was held over 24 hours on 2-3 June 2018. [PINS]
This was so successful that more were held - a 36 hour vigil 7-9 July 2018 [PINS], and a 50 hour vigil 3-5 Aug 2018 [PINS]. Journalists, politicians, peace activists and other well known people were guests on the vigils. Many, many viewers tuned in. When Dawson announced the creation of a Discord site (a program for online communities) for #Unity4J where supporters could help publicise the plight of Julian Assange, thousands applied for membership within 48 hours.
Further vigils, videos, FB posts, tweets and ‘real world’ events followed. #Unity 4J continued on an active basis until June 2019, by which time it had met its key objective - to wake up support for Julian Assange around the world, and to encourage people (especially journalists outside the MSM) to speak outactively about his plight.
By this point many activities had already devolved to independent communities of support for Assange, and independent activities by individuals and groups. There is probably one near you - search online for one. They will have names like @Aus4Assange or @AssangeBoston (or look for one on Candles4Assange).
IMAGE: Current campagn in Australia (Canberra Parliament in the photo) SOURCE: Canberra For Assange Tweet
The online vigil aspect of #Unity4J’s work was handed over to Joe Lauria of Consortium News, who used that support base to help launch CN Live! - which now regularly streams online events related to Assange, as well as other news events.
#Unity4J Archives:
Twitter archive @Unity4J - once #Unity4J wound down its activities, its twitter account was still used to amplify events and statements made by others in support of Assange. This account was suspended by Twitter in early 2022. With luck (and maybe a new Twitter owner) it may return. Some of the foreign language versions are still available: see @FrancaisUnity4, @Unity4S (Spanish),
Video archive [YouTube] - vigils and other events Use the ‘playlists’ tab to find the topic you seek.
Pinterest archive [Boards] [‘How To’ video] The #Unity4J Pinterest account has thousands of pins, sorted into dozens of boards, covering events as far back as 2008. Although no longer maintained (Pinterest became so focused on commercial purposes as to be largely unusable for this purpose) there is an enormous store of historic pins in here. You need to be a member of Pinterest (free sign up) for the boards to display correctly. Some links within pins no longer work - largely due to YouTube censorship.
[Website] Candles4Assange coordinates information about, and amplifies, Free Assange events around the globe. Find a group close to you on their website.
[Alex Hills is the coordinator of this wonderful initiative. You can see her on violin in the song “Let the Light In” in the musician section below.]
Yellow ribbons (with supporter names and countries on them) were smothered around the court entrances during the ‘Show Trial’ hearings, and bedecked the prison fences on the day of the Assange Wedding. People are encouraged to spread yellow ribbons (with “Free Assange” on them) everywhere, so the internet is full of images of them on trees, fences, balconies and people, on many continents.
For years now, Somerset Bean has provided free, downloadable resources to supporters of Julian Assange to help in their vigils and protests. He also provides many of the distinctive quote memes used in tweets and articles (many are used here).
He was repaid for this generosity by having a search warrant applied to all his social media accounts by those seeking to persecute Julian Assange.
Musicians and other artists
There are those who would say our most lasting and truthful histories are written in poetry, literature, music, song, dance and art.
One of the most famous artworks produced so far is Davide Dormino’s sculpture “Anything To Say?” (2015). It has travelled through Europe for many key events, from Berlin to Geneva and more. But when it was sent to London in time for the High Court hearing of the US extradition hearing appeal, it was seen as so threatening that it was held at the border until that event was concluded (Oct 2021). Such is the power of art.
IMAGE:Nils Melzer spoke (in German, 27 Nov 2019) at the Berlin event, “Anything To Say” along with John Shipton, Kristinn Hrafnsson, et al.SOURCE: [DE YouTube] [EN Transcript]
Another artwork that officialdom (??) has found sufficiently challenging as to attempt to obliterate it was the image of Julian Assange integrated into the image of a torture victim at Abu Ghraib.
“The Persecution- Lest we forget” (2019), by the renowned Norwegian street artist AFK, was first seen mounted in Bergen, Oslo on Easter Friday (not long after the arrest of Julian Assange).
From the AFK Street Artwebsite (including image above):
”At 9 o’clock, Easter Sunday the painting was removed by two people who claimed they were from the Cultural Heritage Office in Bergen, writes Bergens Avisen. Cultural heritage authority Johanne E. Gillow has informed the newspaper that they were not involved. A few days later BA.no tracked down the two perpetrators and the damaged artwork was returned to the artist.”
AFK: “It’s not ok that someone has stolen the work, I’m going to continue making art in public places. I wish one would discuss the content and not the vandalism and theft of the images. Two days after the painting was posted, and a ton of articles around the entire country later, I still experience a deafening silence in Norwegian media about the persecution of Assange and the threat this represents to freedom of press.”
The image then reappeared mounted on a wall near the UK court conducting the second part of the extradition hearing later in 2019.
Continuing in the almost inevitable crucifixion theme, with a nod in the title to the WikiLeaks video “Collateral Murder”, the artist duo Captain Borderline has completed “Collateral Crucifixion” (2021), a giant mural in Berlin on a complete house façade directly in front of the Willy Brandt House. This time the focus is on Julian Assange’s role as a representative of the free press. This wall art also went up in Holy Week.
[The artist] concludes that Julian Assange has become the victim of a huge show trial whose sole purpose is to show the media worldwide the limits of investigative journalism. The real issue in this legal case against Assange, then, is freedom of the press. Journalists and whistleblowers are being made to believe, through this witch hunt, that they will suffer the same fate should they report on the illegal machinations of the American or Western establishment and governments.
Some artworks are designed as online images. This one, from Gianluca Constantini and retweeted by world renowned artist Ai Weiwei, as well as speaking of Assange as a surveillance target, speaks to Julian’s lengthy and intensely personal connection to the internet- the severance of which must have felt (and will continue to feel) like the amputation of an essential faculty. [Tweet]
A number of very well known musicians have spoken out in support of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, including: - Patti Smith, who famously quoted that “WikiLeaks was formed as an act of love” - Roger Waters(who sang live outside the UK Home Office 2 Sept 2019 at a demonstration in support of Julian), - M.I.A. (Assange opened her Nov 2013 show, and she performed live in his support 5 Nov 2019) - Calle 13, who included Julian in their “Multi-viral” protest song release, while - Yoko Ono presented her Courage Award to Julian. [YouTube]
Very many musicians have created and shared songs about the value of WikiLeaks and the persecution of both WikiLeaks and its publisher Julian Assange. Here are three great songs:
Dec 2018 - “Let The Light In” – Jude The Obskure for Wikileaks Art with Maria Milewska & Alex Hills” [YouTube] [Alex Hills is the coordinator of the wonderful @Candles4Assange campaign.] [Candle arrangements by Alex Hills (in NZ) & Sabine von Törne (in London).] NB This song has a Creative Commons Attribution licence (ie reuse is allowed).
Nov 2019 - David Rovics sings “Behind These Prison Walls“ (outside HMP Belmarsh, where Julian Assange is still held “locked away in silence“- on remand; not convicted of any crime. [YouTube] NB This song has a Creative Commons Attribution licence (ie reuse is allowed)
Jan 2022 - Cathy Vogan presents “TIME” [YouTube] “The song and video is a tribute to the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher, [Assange] the WikiLeaks source who spent 7 years in prison [Manning], and the activist [Swartz] who was hounded by the law and committed suicide at the age of 26.” [Source] This song has been entered in the John Lennon Song Contest in the “Gospel & Inspirational” section. You will be able to vote for it at some future point. NB This song has a Creative Commons Attribution licence (ie reuse is allowed).
There is now a playlist of songs, collated by Cathy Vogan, in support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. [YouTube] If you know of more, please tweet the link to her.
Support artists and musicians who #SpeakUp4Assange
♦ REAL Journalists & Courageous Publishers
Listed below are some of the brave people and media organisations who have made - and continue to make - a sincere effort to truthfully document the life and work of the UK’s most famous political prisoner - journalist, publisher and truthteller Julian Assange, and the abuse he has suffered at the hands of multiple states.
The subject of journalism and publishers cannot be addressed without also addressing censorship, which has been ramping up for several years but has now reached manic proportions. These journalists address the topic here:
22 Jan 2022 Jonathan Cook “ Is it already too late to say goodbye?” [Blog] [BraveNewsEurope] Associated video (Apr 2021) [PeerTube]
24 Jan 2022Caitlin Johnstone “Censorship By Algorithm Does Far More Damage Than Conventional Censorship” [CJ website]
It doesn't matter that you have free speech if nobody ever hears you speak. Even in the most overtly totalitarian regimes on earth you can say whatever you want alone in a soundproof room.
That's the biggest loophole the so-called free democracies of the western world have found in their quest to regulate online speech. By allowing these monopolistic megacorporations to become the sources everyone goes to for information (and even actively helping them along that path as in for example Google's research grants from the CIA and NSA), it's possible to tweak algorithms in such a way that dissident information exists online, but nobody ever sees it.
27 March 2022Chris Hedges “On Being Disappeared” [substack]
As does this song “How They Rule Ya” [YouTube] (published 3 March 2020), albeit inadvertently:
The issue of propaganda was also addressed in the (above) song “How They Rule Ya” which YouTube saw fit to age restrict as well a hiding it behind a “"viewer discretion” restriction so it can’t be directly tweeted or displayed in other media.
Journalism about Julian Assange, as well as the man himself, is being locked away behind walls erected by the minions of the Deep State.
“Those cracks grow bigger with every journalist and whistleblower imprisoned for exposing government crime.“ SOURCE:[Tweet] ex Politico.
Finally, however, some of the legacy media have joined in the chorus of support for Julian Assange - in various forms, sometimes mealy-mouthed, and all too often in minimalist ways.
Accompanied by a video showing relevant examples, Matt Orfalea comments: [Tweet]
Maddow/Hayes comments were under Trump admin. Haven’t heard them comment on Biden admin doing the exact same thing…Props to Carlson for speaking out under both.
In HappyTown’s “Ballad of an Outlaw” [YouTube] the lyrics (by Brian Estes) say:
Yes, we jailed all the outlaws But here’s a little twist Before we called them "outlaw" We called them "journalist".
On 9 April 2022, Stefan Simanowitz (of Amnesty Int) tweeted: [Tweet]
“This wasn’t a scientific survey but of almost 200 journalists at #IJF22 who responded to the #Assange “eggs-tradition” question, ALL said that his prosecution “poses a grave threat to press freedom”.”
Journalists Stefania Maurizi and Joseph Farrell (the ‘WikiLeaks Ambassador’), as well as Stella Moris, spoke at the 2022 International Journalism festival in Perugia, Italy, to loud acclaim. [Tweet with video]
Stefania Maurizi has run a years-long campaign (in multiple jurisdictions) to get FOIA information about state communications related to Assange and other WikiLeaks personnel made public. She has been continually fobbed off with silence, or sheets of paper almost totally black with redactions - but has unearthed some stunning nuggets of truth.
See also Stefania Maurizi’s book “Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies“ in EN translation, coming out Nov 2022. Pre-order at Pluto Books.
Ironically, some of the contributions with the greatest reach and impact in the Free Julian campaign are from people who don’t think of themselves as journalists at all. This includes those such as US comedians Jimmy Doreand Lee Camp(whose videos have now been pretty much redacted), commentator Russell Brand and mega-podcaster Joe Rogan. They not only speak frequently about the persecution of Assange, but also share their platforms with journalists who have been deplatformed, censored, &/or shadow-banned elsewhere, allowing them to share their information and insights with greater impact. [YouTube]
Some satirical platforms have also had a very helpful impact, such as the (now censored) Babylon Bee and Juice Media. [Tweet[ [YouTube]
After 6 months of being gagged, Julian Assange appointed Kristinn Hrafnsson to be WikiLeaks Editor in Chief, while continuing as publisher himself.
27 Sept 2018 “Statement on Julian Assange's situation” [WikiLeaks]
“Due to the extraordinary circumstances where Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been held incommunicado (except visits by his lawyers) for six months while arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy, Mr Assange has appointed Kristinn Hrafnsson Editor in Chief of WikiLeaks. Mr Assange will continue to be the publisher of WikiLeaks.
Mr Hrafnsson is an Icelandic investigative journalist selected in 2010 as Icelandic journalist of the year (his third award) for his role in the Collateral Murder publishing collaboration with WikiLeaks. That same year, he became spokesperson for the organization and kept that post until 2016. Since then he has overseen certain legal projects for WikiLeaks.”
14 Apr 2019 “Jailed for journalism: WikiLeaks editor Hrafnsson on Assange case | The Listening Post” [YouTube]
"Now Julian Assange's life is in the hands of Priti Patel and Boris Johnson. They need to do the right thing. You need to make sure they do the right thing. They have the power to stop this, to end this -to save a man's life and to stop this attack on freedom of the press."
John Pilger’s earliest interview of Julian Assange took place at the end of 2010.
This gave rise to Julian’s famous comment about a UK Ministry of Defence [MoD) classified document that equated investigative journalists with terrorists (and Russian spies):
“In many sections of the document, investigative journalists are the Number 1 threat to the information security of the MoD. That was a 2,000 page document on “How to stop leaks” - which we leaked.” [Vimeo from 1:07:37]
Not long after, John Pilger spoke at 'Breaking Australia's silence: WikiLeaks and freedom' - a public forum held on 16 March 2011 at the Sydney Town Hall staged by the Sydney Peace Foundation, Amnesty, Stop the War Coalition, and supported by the City of Sydney. The forum was chaired by Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis, and included speeches by Andrew Wilkie MP and Julian Burnside QC. [Vimeo from 7:48]
Perhaps the most famous of John Pilger’s interviews with with Assange occurred on the eve of the US 2016 election: “The Secret World of the US Election”. [Vimeo] [Transcript] [Tweet with trailer]
After his brief gagging during the final days of the 2016 US election campaign, in an AMA session on Reddit (10 Jan 2017), Julian named two people (apart from his lawyers) who supporters could absolutely trust to always tell the truth about what was happening to him. The first was John Pilger, the legendary journalist & film-maker. (The other was Laurie Love.) [YouTube] [Internet archive]
In 2020 John Pilger discussed the ongoing Assange “Show Trial” on ‘Going Underground’ with Afshin Rattansi - a UK journalist who has given a lot of airtime to the persecution of Julian Assange. Since his show is broadcast by RT, all episodes have now been censored by YouTube, but this mirrored episode (with French subtitles) has, so far, survived: [YouTube original, now censored] [YouTube]
More recently, 8 March 2022, John Pilger appeared on Randy Credico’s “Countdown to Freedom” series: “John Pilger: Update analysis of Assange persecution” [YouTube]
Legendary journalist/blogger, former UK ambassador, historian & ex-political prisoner. Staunch friend and advocate for Julian Assange. One of few journalist who can begin to imagine what prison is like for Julian Assange, having been consigned there himself (for four months) for his journalism.
Now at [substack] Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, best-selling author & activist, Also host for 6 years of the series “On Contact”, broadcast on the RT channel, now censored with six years worth of interviews ‘disappeared’.
He has known and supported Julian Assange since very early in the history of this ’case’.
Chris Hedges was an invited witness and guest at the Assange wedding (see some of his comments about that in PART 5 of this series “The Assange Wedding”).
He was blocked from entering the prison to act as witness to the wedding, so while the family were inside he gave this speech: [YouTube]
21 Oct 2019 Called out US fake concern for Human Rights [Tweet]
12 Sept 2020 Glenn Greenwald went on Tucker Carlson to summarise the arguments for Trump pardoning Assange and Snowden (knowing that Trump watched that show). [Fox]
6 Jan 2022 “Video Transcript: The Semi-Inside Story of Why Trump Refused to Pardon Snowden and Assange” [substack] [YouTube]
"A London court on Wednesday ordered the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the U.S., the latest but not last step in a long-running battle in British courtrooms." By far the worst case of journalistic persecution in the West.
In recent years Amy Goodman (and Democracy Now) has been much criticised for ‘going cold’ on Julian Assange, (although very recently she has interviewed Stella Assange and carried some other related items).
But there can be no doubt that she shone a much needed bright spotlight on the Assange story in the early years.
2 July 2011 “Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Zizek moderated by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman” [YouTube] This was the day before Julian’s 40th birthday - his last birthday out of captivity.
31 May 2012 Amy Goodman “Julian Assange and America's vendetta against WikiLeaks” [The Guardian]
25 May 2015 Pre-charge punishment of Assange [Democracy Now]
2010 Provided a home for Assange during his 16 months on bail (before being granted asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy). Also put up (and lost) part of his bail.
15 Nov 2016 “ The Assange Story: Frontline Club Founder on Why 'Julian Should be Free’” [Sputnik]
On UK & Swedish prosecution services: "It's very difficult for our society to address criminal matters with people who are so politically toxic."
From Patrick Cockburn’s affidavit (dated 15 July 2020, point 14) presented DAY 17 of the Assange extradition hearing [TH PDF]
“Wikileaks did what all journalists should do, which is to make important information available to the public, enabling people· to make evidence-based judgments about the world around them and, in particular, about the actions of their governments, and, of those actions more than any other those that reveal the gravest of state crimes.
In my view steps taken against Assange for publishing information of such great importance betrays the true motivation behind the unprecedented steps being taken to criminalise his actions. In 2010 WikiLeaks won a great victory for freedom of expression and against state secrecy and the US government is now making every effort to reverse it.”
6 Oct 2020 “The Assange Extradition Case is an Unprecedented Attack on Press Freedom, So Why’s the Media Largely Ignoring It?” [BraveNewEurope]
17 Sept 2020 “Journalist Andrew Fowler: If Assange is extradited, the same can happen to any of us” [WSWS]
“If I can put it this way: Assange is being prosecuted, not for what he did, but what he stands for. And for what he stands against, the rise of authoritarianism.
The information WikiLeaks revealed might have been shocking, but it was hardly unexpected. This is not to diminish the extraordinary benefits that flowed to all of us from the truths that WikiLeaks revealed. Yet what WikiLeaks and Assange did, more than anything else, was to dare challenge authority, and particularly the authority of the world’s then sole super power. In a world where countries are increasingly moving closer and closer to authoritarianism, those who stand against authority are to be crushed. There will be no dissent. It is why he is in the dock at the Old Bailey.”
◘ WSWS (Australia)
The WSWS journalists, especially Oscar Grenfell,Thomas Scripps and their political colleague James Cogan, have done a sterling job of creating lengthy, factual reports of all key Assange milestones.
29 Sept 2020 “Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis: Assange is a “highly principled individual with enormous courage” [WSWS]
13 June 2021 “John and Gabriel Shipton speak at event in defense of Assange in New York City” [WSWS]
2 Dec 2021 “US seeks to block Spanish investigation into CIA operation against Assange as British ruling on extradition appeal is “imminent”” [WSWS]
22 Jan 2022 “Assange granted leave to appeal to UK Supreme Court against extradition” [WSWS]
James Cogan appeared on the #Unity4J Vigil 17 (15 Feb 2019) to discuss their ‘real world’ efforts to support Julian Assange. [Pin] [YouTube]
He notes that the only mention he got for the rally they were organising (despite an endorsement from Roger Waters) was from RT and Sputnik (both now censored), but that in 2010 things were very different. [Pin] [YouTube] He links the change to the uprisings in the Middle East following the WikiLeaks publication of the Diplomatic Cables.
UK courts have ordered the extradition of an Australian journalist to a third country whose intelligence service plotted to murder him in London, according to 30 former US officials.
If you're not scared, you're not paying attention. This is the face of raw Anglo-American power.[Tweet]
Journalists who covered the ‘Show Trial’ (in person or by video link)
The court made it difficult for journalists to attend the ‘Show Trial’ of Julian Assange, in person or by link. There were few seats made available in the court, and some of them had poor views and sound. It was even worse for those attending via link - audio only the first few day, but later a video link was possible. Arrangements to attend electronically were clumsy and often didn’t work.
Despite all this, some determined journalists attended almost every session. Some tweeted live streams, to great appreciation from around the world. Others wrote articles, tweeted pictures and summaries, or made videos about what they observed. A few did all those things. The ‘alternative’ press mostly excelled themselves. The mainstream press were largely notable for their absence, reusing Reuters or AP summaries, for what coverage they provided.
Here are some of the journalists and commentators in attendance at some or all of the hearing sessions:
Plus RT & Ruptly who provided continuous livestream outside (now censored) and others who provided roving interviews. Our thanks.
And many, many more supportive journalists:
23 Feb 2020 “More than 1300 Journalists Speak Up For Assange” [YouTube]
To find more journalists who have stood up for Assange, visit speak-up-for-assange.org. The list, which now includes almost 1,800 names, is searchable.
If you aren’t seeing relevant reports from these journalists, ask yourself “why not?” Support journalists who #SpeakUp4Assange.
♦ International politicians
Politicians tend to come and go in this campaign, as pragmatic politics and the practical aspects of their political campaigns (successful and not) take their toll. But some elected representatives of the people have stood up for Julian Assange over the long haul. A few of these are listed here.
Ecuador
The enormous assistance given to Julian Assange by the Rafael Correa-led Ecuadorian government was addressed at the top of this article (and in PART 1 of this series “Julian Speaks: Two Voices from behind The Wall”).
IMAGE: President Rafael Correa and Julian’s mother, Christine Assange, in Quito, Ecuador (1 Aug 2012) SOURCE: DailyMaverick
UK
On 14 August 2020 the campaign group Lawyers for Assange organised an open letter to UK PM Boris Johnstone and other key cabinet members, expressing their
“… collective concerns about the violations of Mr. Julian Assange’s fundamental human, civil and political rights and the precedent his persecution is setting.”
UK political figures to have signed onto the letter include former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, ex-Labour MP and Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government Chris Williamson and Scottish National Party Member of Parliament Kenneth MacAskill.
Mr MacAskill, who was a former Justice Secretary of Scotland for seven years, in a statement called the prosecution of Mr Assange a "political crucifixion" which is "about seeking to bury truth and those exposing it". [Sputnik]
“The magistrates’ decision to order the extradition of Julian Assange to the US to face 175 years in prison is disappointing. Priti Patel will now have a choice: to stand up for journalism and democracy, or sentence a man to life for exposing the truth about the War on Terror.”
IMAGE: Jeremy Corbyn outside Westminster Court SOURCE Tweet
4 Feb 2020 John McDonnell MP “British MP John McDonnell & Activist John Rees on Assange & how you can support” [YouTube]
10 June 2021 The quote below is from a debate on the “safety of journalists” hosted in the UK parliament. It lasted less than 60 minutes, with just 14 MPs participating. While WSWS referred to this comment as “mealy-mouthed”, it was a great deal more than most UK MPs were contributing to the cause. [WSWS]
“The extradition of Julian Assange to the US will be a travesty of justice. Journalists should be able to bring us the truth — of war crimes and gross violations of human rights — without punishment. The Home Secretary should uphold press freedom by refusing this extradition.
24 Nov 2020 “Clare Daly: "There are a lot of people here who don't want to hear about Catalonia" [YouTube] This was an issue very close to the heart of Julian Assange and the one that finally got him gagged by Eduador.
23 Oct 2021, ahead of the appeal hearing in Julian Assange's extradition case, events were held across the world to show solidarity with Assange and to renew campaigning efforts for his freedom. This one is with Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. [YouTube]
“Espionage is a *political* charge. #Assange is a journalist, not a spy. His extradition case shouldn't have gone to court. @sajidjavid should have thrown it out. @pritipatel now has a second chance to avert a grave miscarriage of justice. She must use it. @wikileaks #FreeAssange”
Latin America
21 Sept 2020 “Argentinian President Joins 12 Other World Leaders to Denounce Prosecution of Julian Assange” [Sputnik] Includes signatures from Latin American Heads of State: - President Alberto Fernández of Argentina - (Former) President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina - President Evo Morales Ayma of Bolivia - (Former) President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brasil - (Former) President Dilma Roussef of Brasil - (Former) President Ernesto Samper of Colombia - (Former) President Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic - (Former) President Rafael Correa of Ecuador - (Former) President Martín Torrijos of the Republic of Panama - (Former) President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay - (Former) President José (Pepe) Mujica of Uruguay - President Nicolas Maduro Moros of Venezuela
Former President Lula da Silva, himself a former prisoner under what many considered to be a political prosecution, said in a statement reported in Consortium News: “If the democrats of the planet Earth, including all journalists, all lawyers, all unionists and all politicians, have no courage to express themselves in defence of Assange, so that he is not extradited, it means we have a lot democrats out there who are liars".
"Assange should be perceived as a hero of democracy. He does not deserve to be punished. I hope the people of the UK, the people of France, the people of the United States will not allow this atrocity", he added.
21 Sept 2020 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva“The extradition of Julian Assange would undermine freedom of speech” [The Guardian]
2 Oct 2020: Former President Lula da Silva also recorded a statement for The Belmarsh Tribunal which they presented with English subtitles [YouTube at 2:14:23]
Australia
19 Feb 2020 “Australian MPs visit Julian Assange at Belmarsh Prison” [WSWS]
George Christensen, Andrew Wilkie (centre), and John Shipton speaking to the media outside Belmarsh Prison SOURCE: WSWS
“Australian parliamentarians Andrew Wilkie and George Christensen visited WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange yesterday afternoon in London’s Belmarsh Prison. The aim of their visit was to examine the conditions of his detention and express opposition to his threatened extradition to the US.
At a press conference outside the maximum-security facility afterwards, both stated their agreement with the finding of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer that Assange has been the victim of psychological torture. Coming from two elected officials, this is a damning indictment of the arrogant dismissals of Melzer’s assessment by the governments responsible for Assange’s decade-long persecution, including Britain and Australia.
Wilkie, an independent MP, and Christensen, a representative of the Liberal National Party (LNP), which is in a governing coalition, travelled to Britain to see Assange at their own expense. They did so in the lead-up to British extradition hearings beginning February 24 that will determine whether Assange is dispatched to the US, where he faces Espionage Act charges and life imprisonment for exposing American war crimes.”
"Julian Assange is being politically persecuted for publishing information that was in the public interest, including hard evidence of US war crimes. That the perpetrator of those war crimes, America, is now seeking to extradite Mr Assange is unjust in the extreme and arguably illegal under British law.
If it goes ahead, not only would Mr Assange face 175 years in prison, but the precedent would be set for all Australians, and particularly journalists, that they are at risk of being extradited to any country they offend."
April 2016 “Scott Ludlam goes viral” [the monthly]
Unsurprisingly, Ludlam has been an unfailing supporter of Julian Assange. The pair met in 2011 during Assange’s period of house arrest in the English countryside. Ludlam has since visited Assange twice, and spent Christmas 2012 with him at the Embassy of Ecuador in London. Ludlam says Australia’s decision to “selectively disregard” the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which criticised Assange’s treatment, “dramatically lowers the barrier of respect for these institutions”.
On a shelf in Ludlam’s office, near a photo of the Dalai Lama wearing a Fremantle Dockers scarf, sits a signed shot of the WikiLeaks founder:
Scott – thank you for your courage, perseverance and generosity in my long struggle for justice, big and small. As an Australian I am proud of you! Much love, Julian A. 19 Aug 2012
The suited Assange stands with his hands clasped on the embassy’s flag-draped balcony – a stateless statesman. It’s a posture I recognise: Ludlam himself, on YouTube the week before, making fun of Greg Hunt.
Sevim Dağdelen and Heike Hänsel, both German MPs, have been very active in the support of Julian Assange, even visiting him while he was still in the Ecuadorian embassy (20 Dec 2018). They have also facilitated many meetings and parliamentary events back in Germany. [YouTube, now censored] [Transcript]
Sevim Dağdelen had previously visited Julian in the embassy in 2012, after which she made a statement. [Colombo Telegraph]
“I have sent solidarity regards to Julian Assange from the left in Germany and the online community in Germany.”
“We, as peace- and freedom-loving people in Germany and around the world, are greatly indebted to Mr Assange.”
“He helped to uncover the war crimes in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He showed us how dirty and bloody these wars were and are, and how much we have been fooled by our governments.”
Ms Dagdelen, a member of the party Die Linke who sits on the foreign affairs committee in the lower house, wants to help find a solution to the diplomatic standoff around Mr Assange’s asylum request.
“Mr Assange was very pleased about my visit. I am amazed that I am the first MP to visit him.”
“I would like more of my colleagues from other countries to come over to London and seek a humanitarian solution to this crisis. We as parliamentarians should demand that our governments act.”
“Unfortunately, the German government has taken no action to find a solution. I have informed Mr Assange about this deplorable fact.”
Iceland
Ögmundur Jónasson
Former Minister for the Interior.
7 Dec 2016 “Jónasson: The Icelandic Minister who refused cooperation with the FBI” [Kaitoikos]
Before becoming a member of the Althing, the Icelandic Parliament, Ögmundur Jónasson was a journalist engaged in trade union politics. A Left-Green Movement politician, he has held office as minister for health, minister for justice and human rights and minister for transport, communications and local government. The last two ministries were united to form the Ministry of the Interior at the beginning of 2011 and he became the first Icelandic minister for the interior.
He has spoken several times at the ‘Imperialism on Trial’ events. Unfortunately many of the videos of those events have now been caught up in the great YouTube censorship purge of all things RT. This one (12 June 2019) survived as it had been mirrored by #Unity4J. [YouTube]
11:10 “Here comes the most important bit, because I was informed - and I have said this in front of the media, and I have said this at a kind of hearing in the Icelandic parliament - that I had information that they [the FBI] were in Iceland (and I choose my words very carefully) to frame Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, to frame and trap Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
Now what is the proof of this? I am the proof. I know this, and I have testified to this effect in our Parliament.”
15 Aug 2016 “Rand Paul on Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and Hillary Clinton's Emails” [YouTube] Re Benghazi
16 Aug 2013 “Julian Assange: I'm A 'Big Admirer' Of Ron Paul, Rand Paul” [Huff Post] [YouTube]
"[I] am a big admirer of Ron Paul and Rand Paul for their very principled positions in the U.S. Congress on a number of issues," Assange said during a forum hosted by Deakin University and transparency organization OurSay.org. "They have been the strongest supporters of the fight against the U.S. attack on WikiLeaks and on me in the U.S. Congress. Similarly, they have been the strongest opponents of drone warfare and extrajudicial executions."
16 Apr 2019 “Rand Paul Proposes Immunity for Assange in Exchange for Testimony” [New American]
“I think that he should be given immunity from prosecution in exchange for coming to the United States and testifying,” Senator Paul told the Gateway Pundit. “I think he’s been someone who has released a lot of information, and you can debate whether or not any of that has caused harm, but I think really he has information that is probably pertinent to the hacking of the Democratic emails that would be nice to hear.”
Last August, Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Assange in care of the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he was living in asylum. The letter requests that Assange consent to a “closed interview with bipartisan Committee staff at a mutually agreeable time and location.”
The meeting proposed by Burr was for the purpose of ascertaining whether Assange had any pertinent intelligence related to the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. […]
In April 2018, former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul and Doug Stafford, chief strategist for Senator Rand Paul, co-authored an “open letter” petitioning the Ecuadorian government to restore Assange’s access to communication and requesting that the government of the United States “end the Grand Jury investigation into WikiLeaks and drop any charges against the publisher and all other staff members.”
After a recitation of historic and moral defense of the freedom of expression, Paul’s letter ends with a paean to the principle and its dearness to the Founding Fathers: “The Founding Fathers would have protected WikiLeaks at all costs and it is time that we inherit their spirit.”
“If the government can change the designation of @Wikileaks from being a news organisation (Obama’s designation of Wikileaks) to a hostile intelligence agency (Trump Admin’s designation) then any entity - online and offline - is in danger of being designated a ‘hostile intelligence service’ if they carry out investigative reporting that the US government or a particular administration considers to be hostile to itself.
This will have a chilling effect on investigative reporting of powerful government agencies or officials, including the president, intel agencies, etc.
This is a serious breach of our constitutional freedoms and every American – Democrat, Republican or Independent – must stand up against it.”
On Joe Rogan in 2021 “Tulsi Gabbard: I'd Drop Charges Against Julian Assange and Edward Snowden | Joe Rogan” [YouTube]
And YOUR representative?
This was just a selection of supportive parliamentarians. More statements from politicians and MPs can be seen on the DEA website. Feel free to suggest - in the comments - the names of others (preferably with a link to their statement) for inclusion in either place.
What is your elected representative doing about this issue? Phone or write to them to tell them you won’t vote for someone who doesn’t support Julian Assange, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
#SpeakUp4Assange. Every bit counts.
Thank you for reading Full Focus. This post is public so feel free to share it.
The author of this article lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
As a long time supporter of Julian Assange, I have become aware that many of those new to the story of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange find it hard to get a picture of the enormity and multidimensionality of the abuse that has gone on here, and what that says about the current state of the world we live in.
This is the sixth in a series of lengthy pieces that explore the history of Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks community via different themes:
The third was another compendium “The Persecution of WikiLeaks: Counting the Cost” covering a wide range of costs incurred by those associated, in almost any way, with WikiLeaks. In particular, it looks at the rollcall of the dead, and lists some of the many whistleblowers and truthtellers who have suffered under this regime of persecution. Read it here.
The fifth documents what was mostly a happy hiatus in this litany of abuse: “The Assange Wedding”. But even on that special day, the apparatus of the state managed to intrude with its petty (and not so petty) cruelties. Read it here.
This sixth compendium “A Chorus of Courage: Speaking Up for Assange”, provides a roll call of many of those who have spoken up for Julian Assange - using their professional &/or personal voices - and provides a little information about their role, together with links to some key statements. This list represents only the tip of the enormous mass of support for Julian that exists - especially at the grass roots level.
For those only nowthinking about joining this chorus of courage - please speak up. Your efforts will be appreciated, and you will find yourself on the right side of history.
Many of the reports in this series, while interesting to read for those new to this topic, are mainly intended as ongoing resources: documents to bookmark, dip into, refer back to, and share with those needing sources and perspective, rather than pieces to read at one sitting. The compendia are updated regularly, as new events arise, so you might want to check back from time to time.
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"The #AssangeCase is historical and will have implications for journalism and #PressFreedom for many years to come. We call on @JoeBiden admin to close this case once and for all." | @rebecca_vincent
We welcome the fact #Assange can now ask to appeal to the Supreme Court But the High Court today dodged its responsibility to ensure matters of public importance are fully examined & has effectively vetoed consideration of risk of torture & ill treatment
