Category: Liberties

Open letter calling for the release of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange

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3 July 2020 — Defend Wikileaks

Rt Hon Robert Buckland QC MP
Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor
Ministry of Justice
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ

3 July 2020

RE: Open letter calling for the release of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange
CC: Rt Hon Dominic Raab, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

Download PDF here

Dear Rt Hon Robert Buckland QC MP,

On 8 June 2020, responding to a question in the House of Lords about the United Kingdom’s stance regarding the protection of journalists and press freedoms, Minister of State Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon said, “Media freedom is vital to open societies. Journalists must be able to investigate and report without undue interference”.

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40+ Rights Groups Call on UK to Free Julian Assange

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3 July 2020 — Defend Wikileaks

WikiLeaks publisher turns 49 in prison, facing U.S. extradition

Dozens of press freedom, human rights, and privacy rights organizations across five continents have co-signed an open letter to the U.K. government, calling for the immediate release of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The publisher, who turns 49 years old today in HMP Belmarsh, is facing extradition to the United States where he has been indicted under the Espionage Act for WikiLeaks’ 2010-11 publications of the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Diaries, and State Department cables. If convicted, Mr Assange would face up to 175 years in prison, “tantamount to a death sentence.”

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‘The American friends’: New court files expose Sheldon Adelson’s security team in US spy operation against Julian Assange

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14 May 2020 — Grayzone

An exclusive investigation by The Grayzone reveals new details on the critical role Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands played in an apparent CIA spying operation targeting Julian Assange, and exposes the Sands security staff who helped coordinate the malicious campaign.

By Max Blumenthal

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We now know far more about Covid19 – the Lockdown should end

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8 May 2020 — OffGuardian

Taped up park bench 1800x900

This is the largest interference with personal liberty in our history”
Lord Sumption

Virtually overnight our world has turned into a wasteland of closed towns, deserted streets and a few people scuttling along with masks and stricken faces. It’s a place bereft of imagination, the light sucked out; a padded cell in Psych Ward B.

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COVID-19 and the Left: an Ignored Civil Rights Crisis; a Missed Opportunity

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7 May 2020 — Znet

Photo by Tatiana Chekryzhova/Shutterstock.com

Reading op-eds these days about the grim progress of COVID-19 through the United States, I sometimes have the eerie feeling that I’ve traveled backward in time and landed in some sort of Cold War-like, hyper-conformist dystopia — but with one disquieting difference.

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Watch: World Press Freedom Day: The Prosecution of Julian Assange

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3 May 2020 — Defend Wikileaks

Sunday, May 3rd, is World Press Freedom Day, an international celebration of fundamental journalistic principles and an assessment of attacks on reporters’ right to hold the powerful to account. This panel, convened by the Courage Foundation, features two journalists whose reporting on the Snowden documents earned a Pulitzer Prize as well as the UK Bureau Director for Reporters without Borders, which tracks threats to journalism around the world. Their discussion focuses on the Trump administration’s indictment of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and its unprecedented charges of Espionage for the publication of truthful information in the public interest.

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Pandemic Delays: Postponing the Assange Extradition Hearing

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28 April 2020 — Counter Currents

by

“Mr Assange will be facing a David and Goliath battle with his hands tied behind his back.”

Edward Fitzgerald QC, lawyer for Julian Assange, April 27, 2020

Julian Assange must have had time amidst cramped and hostile surrounds, paper work, pleas and applications, to ponder what circle of Dante’s Hell he finds himself in.  Ailing but still battling, the WikiLeaks publisher, through his lawyers, made another vicarious appearance at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday to delay the next stage of extradition proceedings slated for May 18.  He would have appeared via video link, but medical advice suggested it would be unsafe for him to do so at Belmarsh prison.

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How It Starts

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1 April 2020 — Craig Murray

The brevity of this post is out of proportion to the enormous importance of the subject. But I want to let you know I am thinking and working on it.

It is a recognised pattern for dictatorship to commence with emergency measures designed to combat a threat. Those emergency measures then become normalised and people exercising arbitrary power find it addictive. A new threat is then found to justify the continuation.

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Assange Bail Application Today

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25 March 2020 — Craig Murray

Unfortunately I am in lockdown at home in Edinburgh and cannot get down to Westminster Magistrates Court for Julian Assange’s urgent bail application today. Several hearings ago, Magistrate Baraitser stated pre-emptively that she would not grant bail, before any application had been made. Today’s application will argue that Assange’s ill health puts him at extreme danger from COVID-19, and that prison conditions make it impossible to avoid infection.

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Reject Using My Unjust Conviction Against Julian Assange

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15 March 2020 — LA Progressive

 

Julian AssangeIn 2015 I was wrongfully convicted of, and imprisoned for, violating the U.S. Espionage Act. Now, while there is no question that I stand in solidarity with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in a British court as he fights extradition, little did I know that my presence is also there as fodder to support extradition. If I am going to be used in such a way, there should at least be a modicum of truth to my inclusion. I found nothing reasonable about being persecuted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act.

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