Assange's Persecution

[Jacob Appelbaum]

Hello,

On 7/7/21, David Barrett <dbarrett at expensify.com> wrote:
> It wasn't dropped:
>
> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48253343
>

You are mistaken. It is as understandable as it is deniable spreading
of FUD: "the case" has been closed and reopened more times than most
people realize. Your article is dated 13 May 2019. As of Tue 19 Nov
2019 the Guardian reported that the case was indeed dropped yet again:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/19/sweden-drops-julian-assange-investigation

Note that "the case" being reopened wasn't for all of the original
accusations as some had expired due to statue of limitations. As of
the summer of 2020, it is my understanding that the statute of
limitations for all of the Swedish accusations has passed. In any
case, the prosecutor said that memory had faded, and so ended the
case. The "Swedish case" as such is officially closed. The Swedish and
UK authorities are still resisting freedom of information requests
about the case. I highly recommend following the litigation by
investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi:
https://twitter.com/smaurizi/ - she has uncovered some very
interesting documents relating to Julian's situation in the UK,
Sweden, and the United States. An example from three years ago of some
of what she has uncovered:
https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2018/02/13/news/few_documents_many_mysteries_how_our_foia_case_is_unveiling_the_questionable_handling_of_the_julian_assange_case-188758273/

It may be unclear to some readers that Julian sought and received
asylum, a basic and fundamental human right. Later, the UN found in
his favor against the UK several times in an adversarial judicial
process.  The UK lost, part of losing was the finding of their
behavior as persecution and yet, they continue to persecute him. He is
now being held in a maximum security prison without even the pretext
of being convicted of a crime, merely the possible extradition which
was even denied on humanitarian grounds. It is an outrageous injustice
that he is not free.

> They did temporarily while he was hiding in the embassy (again, he was
> hiding from Sweden, not the US -- Obama didn't try to arrest him, Sweden
> did, and Assange ran), but now that he's out of hiding, it's reopened.
>

You describe his residence at the Ecuadorian Embassy as "hiding" when
in fact his residence, like his grant of asylum, was well known. He
was then subjected to illegal surveillance for his stay in the embassy
which is currently being litigated about in Spain. In addition to the
UN rulings in Julian's favor
https://justice4assange.com/UN-Working-Group-Decision.html there is
also the Inter-American court
https://justice4assange.com/IMG/pdf/Inter-American_Court_Advisory_Opinion_OC-25-18-2.pdf
ruling in Julian's favor.

Furthermore, what you're saying about the Obama admin and about the US
government generally over the last decade is highly misleading and
essentially false. I'll tell you about my own situation to give others
a sense of how incorrect you are about your broad assertions.

I was first detained in 2010 regarding WikiLeaks and threatened by the
US military on US soil as a natural born US citizen. I was flagged,
detained, held incommunicado, questioned about my politics,
manhandled, groped, and threatened on a regular, systematic basis. I
left the United States of America after the unending harassment
continued well into 2013, so I went to continue my journalistic work
in Europe. All of that was done under the Obama administration and it
always centered around Julian. I have met many Obama and Trump admin
bureaucrats or elected politicians in Europe during the last decade
working as a journalist and I have challenged as many of them about
the WikiLeaks issue as often as was possible.

A couple of years ago (
https://netzpolitik.org/2019/wikileaks-the-us-is-indeed-investigating-assange-for-publishing-secret-information-doj-letter-suggests/
), my lawyers were contacted by the prosecutors from the Alexandria,
Virginia office of the Department of Justice leading the prosecution
against Julian. This is the same kind of overly political, outrageous
threat that many people have faced since 2010, and in 2021, it is
still continuing! They made an offer of immunity from prosecution,
similar to the others they've offered over the last ten years to
nearly everyone near Julian. They did offer me so-called "full
immunity" rather than the normal "qualified immunity" offer they seem
to normally toss on the table which was noteworthy. Ultimately such an
offer is not very compelling to anyone who cares about anything other
than themselves.

The DoJ made it clear that in exchange for testimony against my
journalistic colleague Julian, I could return home from exile and live
a "happy" life. They also expressed that they knew I'd like to return
to the country of my birth, and tried to pull on my emotional strings.
They characterized the offer as the "easy way" and implied that the
"hard way" was inevitable: They threatened to extradite me from Europe
without immunity from prosecution if I refused their "easy way" offer.
I refused their offer and informed them that I would rather die on
foreign soil than allow them to get their hands on me. They have
attempted to follow up on the "hard way" but lucky for the world, the
European authorities actually care about national and international
law, by comparison to the UK and the US. The US DoJ attempts to
pressure me into testifying have so far been thwarted and I am not
alone in my political grand jury resistance. Manning and Hammond also
successfully resisted, and I am extremely inspired by their political
actions.

It's really striking at first that the UK declined to send him to
America on humanitarian grounds. It seems like a brutal condemnation
of American justice: even the British object! The problem is that
they're part of the entire ruse as has been remarked in the recent
book by former UK minister Alan Duncan. The UK is simply dragging out
his situation as long as is possible. Mexico has now offered Julian
asylum https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/mexico-julian-assange-asylum-us-b1782229.html
to settle the matter, and we can be fairly certain of the course that
will be chosen by the UK: whatever drags out the situation longer,
whatever makes Julian's situation more intolerable.

I suggest all readers who are interested in the details visit
https://justice4assange.com/ and consider picking up the book "The
Trial of Julian Assange" by Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on
Torture, when it is released:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697240/the-trial-of-julian-assange-by-nils-melzer/
This interview with Nils Melzer is worth reading even though it misses
the developments of 2021:
https://www.exberliner.com/features/julian-assange-trial-2020/nils-melzer-assange/

This is and has always been a political persecution by governments
against regular people working to uncover truths about our world. To
attempt or to force alleged sources or journalists to testify against
Julian for matters concerning journalistic work is an outrageous
attack on press freedom. This is a fact that nearly all major news
paper editors in the US and the world agree with when consulted - the
attack on Julian and on WikiLeaks is an attack on the free press of
the entire world, the United States included.

The politically motivated surveillance, targeting, harassment, and
threats are a bipartisan issue in the US among authoritarian-leaning
warmongers. Obama's DoJ did not *charge* Julian, and rather they built
the groundwork of the case with the obviously unconstitutional charges
that the Trump administration brought to the UK. Without Obama's DoJ
going after my twitter
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/technology/twitter-ordered-to-yield-data-in-wikileaks-case.html
account, would Trump's DoJ had the same list of people to target?
Doubtful! It's a rare case of bipartisan agreement that should make
everyone sick, except for the few who wish to be on the side of the
would-be executioner.

The Biden administration should cease spying on, harassing, arresting,
jailing, and exiling people *associated* with WikiLeaks. The Biden
administration should drop the case against Julian Assange and the
case against WikiLeaks.

A luta continua,
Jacob Appelbaum