New court ruling is no "victory" for Julian Assange

The WikiLeaks founder remains in a potentially never-ending legal limbo. Assange himself spoke of “punishment as process”: subjecting enemies of the state to lengthy detentions without trial

I’ve written about the latest Assange ruling and why it’s a bitter victory: Julian has avoided extradition (for now). For Assange’s supporters, this is obviously good news. There’s little doubt that, if extradited, he would almost certainly be sentenced to life imprisonment in extremely punitive conditions which would push his already critical physical and psychological conditions over the brink. “If he’s extradited, he will die”, his wife Stella has said.

Yet the ruling falls short of what Assange’s supporters have been demanding for years: his immediate and unconditional release. After five years, he continues to remain imprisoned (literally) in a never-ending legal limbo with the active complicity of the UK state.

It’s worth recalling that Assange has been held without trial in the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison — and subjected to “prolonged psychological torture”, according to a UN report — for more than five years, despite being technically innocent before British law. Before that, he spent seven years in self-exile in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy to avoid being extradited to America, where he had good reason to believe he wouldn’t be given a fair trial — a fear subsequent events would prove justified.

Assange has now been subjected to relentless legal persecution by some of the world’s most powerful governments, primarily the US and UK, for 14 years. These state authorities, including their judicial branches, have had no qualms about disregarding fundamental principles of due process in their effort to crush Assange (including “proactive manipulation of evidence”).

The truth is that there is no plausible case against Assange. The Biden administration knows that it would have to bend the law to breaking point to get him convicted — and the optics would not be good. White House officials understand that convicting a journalist would set a terrible precedent, especially in the run-up to the election. But at the same time, they can’t allow Assange to walk free — not yet at least. This is why keeping him in a never-ending legal limbo, with the active complicity of the British state, is the ideal solution from their perspective: it achieves the aim of punishing Assange while maintaining the pretence of the rule of law. Assange himself described this technique as “punishment as process”: subjecting enemies of the state to lengthy detentions without trial — almost 2,000 days in Assange’s case — only to be slapped with minor charges after years.

The latest ruling, which further kicks the can down the road — potentially for years — perfectly fits this modus operandi.

Read the full article here.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope 

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