Saving Julian: Where Virtue Fails, Perhaps British Law Can Succeed

VIRTUE-SIGNALLING WON’T SAVE JULIAN ASSANGE – BRITISH LAW MIGHT

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

April 19, 2019

Moscow - US prosecutors pursuing Julian Assange continue to add evidence for the British courts that they are concealing charges in a dummy indictment they intend to change as soon as Assange is extradited.

This means the Americans are turning the Assange case for freedom of the press into a cause for British freedom from American domination.

Read the legal issues at stake in this report. Listen to today’s Gorilla Radio interview.

The indictment of Assange, presented recently to the UK Government, was signed by Thomas Traxler, Assistant US Attorney in Virginia, and two others, more than a year ago on March 6, 2018.

It was filed in the US federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia. The charge against Assange is of conspiracy to hack into Defense Department computers and to encourage a source, Chelsea Manning, to provide classified records for publication by Wikileaks. Read the indictment in full.

Source: http://cdn.cnn.com/

This Wednesday, April 17, Traxler signed a new filing to the Alexandria court. This reveals that papers dating back to December 2017 may contain evidence of additional charges against Assange. For that reason, Traxler told the court “premature disclosure of the information could jeopardize the investigation”. The investigation, Traxler added, is “ongoing”. Judge Claude Hilton ordered the papers kept secret. The evidence was reported by Court News Service (CNS). Read the documents in full here.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Source: https://www.documentcloud.org/

For discussion of the legal implications when Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot will hear Assange’s lawyers argue the case against Traxler, Hilton and other US judicial officials, click to hear today’s Gorilla Radio interview from Victoria, British Columbia, starting at the 10-second mark:

Also mentioned in the broadcast is the case which former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has made against his successor Lenin Moreno for violations of Ecuador’s law on asylum. “You don’t grant asylum to someone, a human being,” Correa said, “because he’s nice; because he’s disgusting; because he’s handsome; he’s fat. No – because his human rights are in danger. For this reason we granted asylum to Julian Assange. These conditions continue until now.”

Left: Julian Assange in an interview with President Rafael Correa, 

filmed in London on May 22, 2012. Days later, Correa agreed to 

grant Assange asylum at the Ecuador Embassy in London. 

Right: Correa in an interview with France 24 on April 12, following 

the arrest of Assange and his removal from the Embassy to a British prison. Source: https://www.youtube.com/

At the close of the Gorilla broadcast, an Australian prequel to the Wikileaks story is referred to. That was the 1987 case of Peter Wright’s MI5 memoir Spycatcher, a book disclosing secret British Government operations which then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used the British courts to suppress.

The Australian lawyer who successfully defended Wright in a Sydney court and won the worldwide release of Spycatcher was Malcolm Turnbull. Almost thirty years later Turnbull was Australian Prime Minister between 2015 and 2018. Before he became prime minister he claimed Assange’s actions were “morally reprehensible but not legally actionable”; as prime minister he did nothing to defend Assange from US legal action.

Gorilla Radio is broadcast every Thursday by Chris Cook on CFUV 101.9 FM from the University of Victoria. The radio station can be heard here. The Gorilla Radio transcripts are also published by the Pacific Free Press and on the blog. For Chris Cook’s broadcast archive, click to open.