JULIAN ASSANGE IS A FREE MAN

JULIAN ASSANGE IS A FREE MAN

June 24, 2024

Glenn Greenwald - System Update

The Australian's legal battles began in 2010, and he subsequently spent seven years holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London before he was dragged out and jailed in 2019 for breaching bail conditions.

He has been held in a maximum-security jail in London ever since, even getting married there, while Britain finally approved his extradition to the U.S. in 2022.

His legal team is trying to overturn that approval at a two-day hearing. Their argument is that previous judges failed to address their case that the extradition was politically-motivated and a deliberate attempt to punish and silence him for exposing U.S. "state-level crimes."

"Mr Assange is being prosecuted for engaging in ordinary journalistic practices of obtaining and publishing classified information which is true and of public interest," Edward Fitzgerald, Assange's lead lawyer, told the court.

He said, if convicted, Assange could be given a sentence as long as 175 years, but likely to be at least 30 to 40 years.

His colleague Mark Summers said there was evidence there had been a "truly breathtaking plan" to kidnap or murder Assange while he was in the Ecuadorean embassy, and former U.S. President Trump had asked for "detailed options" to kill him.

After spending the last 12 years being either holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy or held in a 2x3m cell in Belmarsh Prison, Julian Assange yesterday strutted along the tarmac at Stansted Airport as the sun beamed down to board a private jet a 'free man.'

Julian Assange is free. As of this writing he is en route to the Northern Mariana Islands, a remote US territory in the western Pacific, to finalize a plea deal with the US government which will see him sentenced to time served in Belmarsh Prison. Barring any shady shenanigans from the empire in the process, he will then return to his home country of Australia a free man.

Importantly, according to experts I’ve seen commenting on this astonishing new development it doesn’t appear that his plea deal will set any new legal precedents that will be harmful to journalists going forward. Joe Lauria reports the following for Consortium News:

“Bruce Afran, a U.S. constitutional lawyer, told Consortium News that a plea deal does not create a legal precedent. Therefore Assange’s deal would not jeopardize journalists in the future of being prosecuted for accepting and publishing classified information from a source because of Assange’s agreeing to such a charge.”

None of this undoes the unforgivable evils the empire inflicted in its persecution of Julian Assange however, or reverses the worldwide damage that has been done by making a public example of him to show what happens to a journalist who tells inconvenient truths about the world’s most powerful government.

So while Assange may be free, we cannot rightly say that justice has been done.

Justice would look like Assange being granted a full and unconditional pardon and receiving millions of dollars in compensation from the US government for the torment they put him through by his imprisonment in Belmarsh beginning in 2019, his de facto imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy beginning in 2012, and his jailing and house arrest beginning in 2010.

https://www.reuters.com/world/wikileaks-assange-last-ditch-battle-stop-us-extradition-2024-02-20/

https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/assange-is-free-but-justice-has-not-been-done-3e409aa37c6c

Original: https://youtu.be/rcJ3M86eAvQ

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