24 September 2019 — Defend Wikileaks

On 22 September 2019, Julian Assange’s sentence for a bail violation conviction ended, but he was not released from HMP Belmarsh. Beginning today, 23 September, the United Kingdom is detaining Julian solely on behalf of the United States, which requests his extradition and has charged him with 18 counts carrying 175 years in prison for publishing information in the public interest.

Before Assange’s lawyers even had the opportunity to file a bail application, and without giving notice that she would do so, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser preemptively announced that when his sentence ended, she would deny bail and continue to detain him.

Judge Baraitser told Assange, who appeared by video-link,

“You have been produced today because your sentence of imprisonment is about to come to an end. When that happens your remand status changes from a serving prisoner to a person facing extradition.”

This means the UK is now holding Julian only on the basis of the US’ extradition request, and there can be no pretense of UK or Sweden issues keeping him in prison. As former British ambassador Craig Murray wrote, now that Assange’s sentence has ended,

“The sole reason for his incarceration [is now] the publishing of the Afghan and Iraq war logs leaked by Chelsea Manning, with their evidence of wrongdoing and multiple war crimes.”

This also means Assange will continue to be imprisoned for at least five more months, until his extradition hearing currently scheduled for February 2020. Assange has been held in solitary confinement in HMP Belmarsh’s health ward, as his health has deteriorated.

After UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer visited Assange in May (before he was moved to the health ward), he wrote that Assange—who had spent the previous seven years without sunlight in the limited space of Ecuador’s Embassy in London—had suffered psychological torture.

Assange has been so isolated that he can lose track of the date and the day of the week. On his birthday, 3 July, Julian could hear that people had congregated outside of Belmarsh, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Assange didn’t know that it was his birthday and only found out the next day, and then he realized that supporters had come to wish him a happy birthday.

Assange extradition would set terrifying precedent

Judge Baraitser will also preside over Julian Assange’s extradition hearing, scheduled for five days in February. In that trial, the United Kingdom will rule whether or not to send Assange into the hands of Donald Trump, whose Justice Department has charged him with 17 counts under the 1917 Espionage Act (and 1 count of conspiracy to commit a computer crime) for publishing documents detailing the US’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its diplomatic activity in 2010. The charges, the first such charges for a journalist in US history, constitute a grave assault on press freedom around the world.

Furthermore, the proposed extradition poses a serious threat to European sovereignty. If the UK sends an Australian journalist in Europe to the United States for the “crime” of publishing truthful information in the public interest—information which virtually every major news outlets around the world has since published as well, and information which the UK Supreme Court has deemed admissible evidence—it will set a dangerous precedent for the global application of US state secrecy laws. Such an extradition would effectively grant permission for the Trump Administration to dictate what can and cannot be published outside of its borders.

The charges against Assange have been condemned by virtually all press freedom groups, human rights organisations, major news outlets, and leading US and EU politicians, in recognition of the glaring threat they pose to global journalistic freedoms. These unprecedented and manifestly political charges are the basis of the US’ extradition request, which is now the sole reason for which the United Kingdom is imprisoning Assange.