Wikileaks - Julian Assange Discussion


Mexico extend asylum to Assange but I don't think that would be a wise move. Mexico is a basten of CIA activity's and bounty's would perhaps follow him, imho.

4 Jan, 2021 17:13
Mexico’s president has offered asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, hours after a British judge refused to extradite Assange to the US to face espionage charges.

“Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance, I am in favor of pardoning him,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Monday, saying “we'll give him protection.” “Our tradition is protection,” Obrador added.

Earlier on Monday, Judge Vanessa Baraitser refused to extradite Assange to the US, where he has been charged with 18 counts of conspiring to hack US government computers, and with the publication of confidential military records. Baraitser did not take issue with the charges against Assange, but found that extradition would be oppressive, given Assange's mental health, and would leave the publisher at risk of suicide.

The US is expected to appeal the ruling, and Assange is still being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison pending a bail hearing on Wednesday. His supporters have lobbied US President Donald Trump to grant him a pardon, but Trump has not yet indicated that he will.

Assange has already lived much of the past decade in asylum, having been sheltered by Ecuador inside its embassy in London between 2012 and 2019. However, a change in Ecuador’s political leadership saw right-winger Lenin Moreno assume power in 2017 and, shortly after that, claim that Assange had violated the conditions of his asylum. He was dragged out of the embassy by British police in April 2019.

Were Assange to take Lopez Obrador up on his offer, he would likely have to weigh the president’s promise of protection against the fact that Obrador could be voted out of office in 2024, when his six-year term concludes.

Since taking office, Lopez Obrador has pursued an idiosyncratic foreign policy. On one hand, the left-wing president sheltered Bolivian President Evo Morales following a right-wing coup in 2019 and refused to follow the lead of the US and its allies in Latin America and recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president last year.

On the other hand, Lopez Obrador has been largely supportive of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The Mexican leader tightened up security at his southern border when Trump railed against Central American migrant “caravans” entering the US via Mexico, and was repaid by Trump during negotiations with OPEC last year, when the US President intervened to help Mexico avoid cuts to oil production.

 
At 10 am GMT (London time) Julian Assange will submit his application for bail, even as the corrupt DoJ moves to appeal the extradition denial - in a bid to detain him even longer behind bars and inevitably, throw him into a supermax prison where he will be forever silenced for having dared embarrass them.

Let us stand tall beside him on this day, and raise our voices for a person who has spent their life in fearless service to the greater good. Julian exposed war crimes, and protected every source who ever spoke out to his organization; preferring instead to sacrifice himself before those brave men and women who trusted him with information of terrible importance to the Public.
He is a true hero, one of few we have left; with an impeccable record of honesty.
Please, stand with me today in solidarity for our friend.

 
LIVE at the London Court


Craig Murray, ex-diplomat & whistleblower, says he's "very optimistic" Assange will be granted bail because no one who has had their extradition blocked on medical grounds has had the decision reversed upon appeal, so there's no incentive to abscond.
 
The judge starts giving her judgement. She recites the history of Assange being arrested, detained, granted bail, and then absconding whilst on bail despite a significant amount of money put up as security.

"As far as Mr Assange is concerned this case has not yet been won" the judge says. The outcome of the US government's appeal is "not yet known" Judge Baraitser says arguing that Mr Assange "still has an incentive to abscond". The US must be allowed to appeal, she says.

The conditions in Belmarsh prison are nowhere near what they are in the United States that lead to the judge refusing to grant extradition Judge Baraitser says.

**JUDGE REFUSES TO GRANT ASSANGE BAIL**

Police are being very heavy handed and threatening anyone without a press card with arrest if they don't leave the area immediately.
John Rees (of @DEAcampaign) calls judge's denial of bail "extremely disappointing" as the UK is the one country Assange will be safe given her refusal to extradite him & that he could be targeted by the US anywhere else in the world he is less likely to skip bail

 

Mexico extend asylum to Assange but I don't think that would be a wise move. Mexico is a basten of CIA activity's and bounty's would perhaps follow him, imho.

4 Jan, 2021 17:13
Mexico’s president has offered asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, hours after a British judge refused to extradite Assange to the US to face espionage charges.

“Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance, I am in favor of pardoning him,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Monday, saying “we'll give him protection.” “Our tradition is protection,” Obrador added.

Earlier on Monday, Judge Vanessa Baraitser refused to extradite Assange to the US, where he has been charged with 18 counts of conspiring to hack US government computers, and with the publication of confidential military records. Baraitser did not take issue with the charges against Assange, but found that extradition would be oppressive, given Assange's mental health, and would leave the publisher at risk of suicide.

The US is expected to appeal the ruling, and Assange is still being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison pending a bail hearing on Wednesday. His supporters have lobbied US President Donald Trump to grant him a pardon, but Trump has not yet indicated that he will.

Assange has already lived much of the past decade in asylum, having been sheltered by Ecuador inside its embassy in London between 2012 and 2019. However, a change in Ecuador’s political leadership saw right-winger Lenin Moreno assume power in 2017 and, shortly after that, claim that Assange had violated the conditions of his asylum. He was dragged out of the embassy by British police in April 2019.

Were Assange to take Lopez Obrador up on his offer, he would likely have to weigh the president’s promise of protection against the fact that Obrador could be voted out of office in 2024, when his six-year term concludes.

Since taking office, Lopez Obrador has pursued an idiosyncratic foreign policy. On one hand, the left-wing president sheltered Bolivian President Evo Morales following a right-wing coup in 2019 and refused to follow the lead of the US and its allies in Latin America and recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president last year.

On the other hand, Lopez Obrador has been largely supportive of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The Mexican leader tightened up security at his southern border when Trump railed against Central American migrant “caravans” entering the US via Mexico, and was repaid by Trump during negotiations with OPEC last year, when the US President intervened to help Mexico avoid cuts to oil production.

I assume Assange already knows about the level of protection journalists have received in the past in Mexico...
 
**JUDGE REFUSES TO GRANT ASSANGE BAIL**
Kevork Almassian tells it like it is.


Information on the Judge (Vanessa Baraitser of Westminster), presiding over this case, (dated).

By Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis• 31 July 2020 / Records, 11-13 minute read Snip:
The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice is blocking the release of basic information about the judge who is to rule on Julian Assange’s extradition to the US in what appears to be an irregular application of the Freedom of Information Act, it can be revealed.
Declassified has also discovered that the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, has ordered extradition in 96% of the cases she has presided over for which information is publicly available.

Baraitser was appointed a district judge in October 2011 based at the Chief Magistrate’s Office in London, after being admitted as a solicitor in 1994. Next to no other information is available about her in the public domain.

Baraitser has been criticised for a number of her judgments so far concerning Assange, who has been incarcerated in a maximum security prison, HMP Belmarsh in London, since April 2019. These decisions include refusing Assange’s request for emergency bail during the Covid-19 pandemic and making him sit behind a glass screen during the hearing, rather than with his lawyers.

Declassified has also seen evidence that the UK Home Office is blocking the release of information about home secretary Priti Patel’s role in the Assange extradition case.

Request denied

A request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was sent by Declassified to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) on 28 February 2020 requesting a list of all the cases on which Baraitser has ruled since she was appointed in 2011. The MOJ noted in response that it was obliged to send a reply within 20 working days.

Two months later, on 29 April 2020, an information officer at the HM Courts and Tribunals Service responded that it could “confirm” that it held “some of the information that you have requested”.

But the request was rejected since the officer claimed it was not consistent with the Constitutional Reform Act. “The judiciary is not a public body for the purposes of FOIA… and requests asking to disclose all the cases a named judge ruled on are therefore outside the scope of the FOIA,” the officer stated.

The officer added that the “information requested would in any event be exempt from disclosure… because it contains personal data about the cases ruled on by an individual judge”, and that “personal data can only be released if to do so would not contravene any of the data protection principles” in the Data Protection Act.

A British barrister, who wished to remain anonymous, but who is not involved with the Assange case, told Declassified: “The resistance to disclosure here is curious. A court is a public authority for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and a judge is an officer of the court. It is therefore more than surprising that the first refusal argued that, for the purposes of the FOIA, there is no public body here subject to disclosure.”

The barrister added: “The alternative argument on data doesn’t stack up. A court acts in public. There is no default anonymity of the names of cases, unless children are involved or other certain limited circumstances, nor the judges who rule on them. Justice has to be seen to be done.”

Despite the HM Courts and Tribunals Service invoking a data protection clause, Declassified was able to view a host of cases with full names and details in Westlaw, a paid-for legal database. The press has also reported on a number of extradition cases involving Baraitser.

An internal review into the rejection of Declassified’s freedom of information (FOI) request upheld the rejection.

One of three documents.

Declassified-AssangeJudge-inset-3.jpg


Lady Arbuthnot attends the Queen’s garden party at Buckingham Palace in May 2017 with her husband Lord Arbuthnot, a former Conservative defence minister with links to the British military and intelligence establishment. Anonymisation by Declassified. (Photo: Instagram)
 
Trump is going to issue another round of pardons soon, perhaps we will see Julian Assange among them?

 
Does the US Want Julian Assange Dead? | Interview with Yanis Varoufakis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlCGxne3UsQ

Monday a British judge ruled that Julian Assange should not be extradited to the United States on charges of espionage and computer hacking. Yet despite that verdict the judgment arguably represented a blow to freedom of the press - with the judge accepting the substance of the case made by the US state department.

Tonight on Downstream Aaron Bastani is joined by Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister and prominent supporter of Julian Assange during his time in prison, as they discuss the meaning of the outcome and what next for the founder of Wikileaks.

Polish version (text)
Warufakis: Assange ma umrzeć. Ameryce tylko o to chodzi
krytykapolityczna.pl/swiat/ue/warufakis-assange-ekstradycja-do-usa/
 
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