March 26, 2024 - 3:00pm
Lord Palmerston apparently said of the 19th century diplomatic tangle, the Schleswig-Holstein Question, that only three people had ever understood it — one was dead, another had gone mad, and the third, Palmerston himself, had forgotten it.
So it seems with Julian Assange, who today won his request for an appeal hearing in his US extradition case. Peer dimly back into the mists of time, to 2010, and it is possible to discern a sexual assault allegation in Sweden that was later withdrawn, but which formed sufficient grounds to have him put under house arrest in England.
After time spent in the Ecuadorian embassy and then HMP Belmarsh, there have been years of appeals and counters-appeals, all hinging on whether, finally, Assange will end up in a US court. There he could be charged with spying under the 1917 Espionage Act, for an act that was performed in Britain by an Australian citizen.
Today concerned part of a different counter-appeal by Assange’s legal team. They had set out nine grounds as to why he should stay in Britain and three of these have now been upheld, if only temporarily. A new court date has been set for 20 May, when US authorities will have to provide evidence as to why those three reasons don’t apply. Firstly, that he will be able to use a First Amendment free speech defence; secondly, that there is no chance he will be put to death; and lastly, that he will not be placed in a particularly tough prison environment.
Given that all three seem eminently doable, the way will once again be cleared for Assange to meet his fate in a US courtroom, which could amount to as much as 175 years in prison. American authorities maintain it would be closer to six. Yet, 15 years since he first sparked the State Department’s ire, the question of what justice means, and what Assange even did, seems increasingly lost not only on the public but on the authorities themselves. There is a kind of muscle memory in the system, the locked jaws of a deep state that just will not let go, forever doubling down on the losses it took.
Assange embarrassed the Pentagon and put his head so far above the parapet that he began a blood feud with the CIA. The questions that WikiLeaks threw up relate back to the White House of George W. Bush and the early Obama years. Few can remember many of the specifics, and the world has turned. But in terms of ending this infinite saga, there is no choreography being suggested that would allow for the authorities to save face.
Without that, the show must go on. And the longer it goes on, the more the public gets the sense that the system has its targets. That justice might be blind in the courtroom, sure, but outside of it the US security apparatus is behaving as capriciously as Assange always suggested it did.
Our touchingly Nineties faith in the decency of our legal system is being tested. There have been other dots along the road that have given credence to this mood. The January 6 riots, for instance, illustrated quite how much book there is to throw at people if desired: 22-year sentences for someone who wasn’t even at the Capitol.
See also: the many legal troubles of Donald Trump. In New York, the former president is charged with exaggerating his asset base when taking out a loan that he long since paid back without issue. As with Britain’s novel hate speech codes, what gets to court — and how intent the authorities are to follow through — is what counts.
In hindsight, Assange was an early case in this modern phenomenon. At the time, he was a crowd-splitter. But the longer this has dragged on, the more the anti-Assange types have melted away.
Increasingly, his case is a cause célèbre that isn’t even about “free speech” or “journalistic integrity”, as his supporters loftily claim. It’s about sticking sand in the gears of a power system whose slip is showing. The question becomes not the Schleswig-Holstein version: “Does anyone remember what he did?” These days, it’s resolving into a crisper, more emotive thing: “Why are they so obsessed with him?”
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SubscribeAssange and Trump are twin sides of the same coin and object lessons in what happens when one flies too close to the sun that shines on the powerful. One key difference is their respective wealth and how it allows them to face the attacks, but the mechanics are largely the same and as others have said, the process is the punishment.
In our unfortunate world of tribal partisanship, the default reaction is for people to take sides rather than bother with facts. That also makes it easy to overlook how what’s happening with these two can happen with anyone else.
Your last sentence resonated with me. I can’t get my head around the fact that those who would happily shut down other’s speech and use the legal system to target their enemies are unable to comprehend that one day those same nasty tactics will likely be turned against them.
Being a Commonwealth citizen who is not serving a term of imprisonment in the United Kingdom or in the Republic of Ireland, Julian Assange is eligible to contest the Blackpool South by-election. He should do so, supported at the very least by the Alba Party and by the Workers Party of Britain, led as those are by two of his staunchest supporters, as well as by another such, the Independent MP for Islington North.
What a splendid idea
Let’s do it.
Nope, one anti-Assange person still here. A man desperate to avoid his day in court, apparantly wants the courts to help in that. Nope, nope, nope!
You want the No 1 Bully Boy of the world to determine the fate of someone whose “guilt” is apparently that he published some information that the Bully Boy did not like? It would be a political trial worthy of the Communists
I still do not understand why he is accountable to the American legal system at all. He is not the one who actually stole the data in question: it was already public domain at the time he published it. He is not American, did nothing upon American soil, and has no obligation of duty or loyalty to the USA.
In many cases, yes, he stole and published the data in person. In others, he published date knowing it was stolen. Legally, that makes him as guilty as a fence who sells stolen goods.
Yeah, making information available to the public is the same as selling stolen goods! The one has a public interest function, the other a private pecuniary gain. I accept that the information was not Assange’s to publish but if we waited for the State to tell us what is going on we would wait in vain. I don’t like Assange much but I distrust the State much, much more.
The extraterritoriality of US law. Apparently Irish law claims the same status but we don’t have the USD, Aircraft Carriers and a propensity to invade every other country in the world!
The slow torture continues. Our Establishment keeping him for another 3 months in solitary confinement in Belmarsh so that the US can give assurances that they have already had 5 years to give already. Meanwhile they’re refusing the Assange team the right to add the evidence exposed since the original appeal that the US explored plans to kidnap or even murder him and that they were spying on him – including discussions with his lawyers – whilst he was in the embassy – a fair trial is impossible given that fact alone.
Mean while the Guardian is obsessed with whether or not the sex of the people who make these decisions matters if they want to join the Garrick Club.
“all three seem eminently doable”…
Whilst the quality of judges has undoubtedly declined, the level of this lot must surely be a record low.
The USA is a sovereign nation which doesn’t enter into ANY commitment which it cannot resile from as and when it chooses. It is entirely unclear which American authorities the judges consider are able to bind the USA to comply with any assurances given by any “authority” or how such assurances could ever be enforced.
Any assurance given is, quite simply, not worth the paper on which it is written…if it is written at all.
The correct phrase must surely be “all three seem eminently delusional”…
Seriously. The U.S never binds its hands on international affairs. It is, disgustingly, the only UN country not to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Which of course means there is no child abuse anywhere in the world, except for the United States.
It’s not what you promise, it’s what you do.
I don’t have any problem with the USA exercising its own sovereignty.
However I object to it infringing the sovereignty of other countries when it would not itself tolerate such acts.
I’m embarrassed to call myself an American at this point. The government is wrong to do this. It’s a disgusting use of geopolitical power by the US government to bully people into submission and silence perpetrated well beyond America’s borders. It’s not about Assange or what he did. It’s about sending a message that if you cross us we will hunt you and hurt you wherever you run. It’s the absolute worst use of governmental authority, one the founding fathers would surely condemn as tyranny of the sort they rebelled against. I suspect most Americans would agree, and its a sentiment shared to a significant extent by both sides, at least in Assange’s case. If a plebiscite was held I’m near certain the people would overwhelmingly reject further pursuing the matter. If he ever gets before an American jury, there’s a decent chance he can win on jury nullification because the government, particularly the CIA, is held in such low regard. Of course, he needs to get a fair judge and jury, which the powers that be will try their damnedest to prevent happening.
‘It’s not about Assange or what he did. It’s about sending a message that if you cross us we will hunt you and hurt you wherever you run.’
Strange how the MSM have fits of hysteria at Putin sending the exact same message (Litvinenko, Skripal, Navalny) yet not a peep from them about the long, slow, excruciating torture of Assange.
It’s not strange at all. I lost what little trust and respect I had for the media after witnessing the hyperbolic reaction to Trump’s election in 2016. I don’t even like Trump but they were basically making stuff up out of thin air and reporting ridiculous rumors that sounded like they came from some Internet troll trying to get a rise out of people. Then there was the two years of investigating Russian election interference when it was pretty clear to me all the Russians did was circulate a few fake news posts on social media to influence people, which can be done (and is) by basically anyone with very little effort. I used to scoff at my father when he talked about the MSM being left biased. I thought he was just parroting Rush Limbaugh. I can admit that I was wrong. Now I just assume everyone is biased, everyone has an agenda, and I don’t completely trust any media source.
Note that one of the rejected grounds for appeal was that the 2003 extradition act does not provide an exemption for political offences. The press summary of the judgement goes out of its way to point out, rather tartly, that its predecessor did.
It was pointed out to the Government at the time that the act should make such an exception and the minister responsible insisted that it did.
And yet, alas, here we are, grinding up a journalist pour encourager les autres.
Give him a break….he deserves one!