Assange’s bail-jumping sentence & may 2 extradition hearing

Submitted by wendy davis on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 10:24am


‘Julian Assange jailed for 50 weeks for breaching bail in 2012’, the Guardian, May Day, 2019 (two weeks short of the maximum permitted by law, as I understand it)

“A judge largely rejected the mitigating factors put forward by lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder, who had also written a letter in which he expressed regret for his actions but claimed he had been left with no choice.

In the letter, read out in court by his lawyer, Mark Summers, Assange said: “I apologise unreservedly to those who consider that I have disrespected them by the way I have pursued my case. This is not what I wanted or intended.”  (the rest of his letter is there)

“The 47-year-old was appearing at Southwark crown court, where Judge Deborah Taylor said that he had engaged in a “deliberate attempt to evade justice”.

To gasps from a few dozen Assange supporters in the public gallery, the judge said that a number of factors put his refusal to surrender in the highest tier – category A – of the offence.”

“She also told him that even though he did cooperate initially with the investigation “it was not for you to decide the nature of your cooperation with the Swedish investigation” and his continued residency in the embassy had been an attempt to delay and thwart the process.”

Too galling hypocritical for words:

“The judge also referred to the expenditure of £16m of taxpayers’ money on policing resources outside the embassy for the period in which he was there.

“It is essential that no one is above or beyond the reach of the law,” she concluded, before sentencing Assange to 50 weeks.”

Julian’s extreme rendition hearing at the Westminster Masturbation Court will be tomorrow, and supporters are being urge to gather there at 9:00 a.m.

Popular Resistance seems not to have updated their ‘Julian Assange Arrested, Take Action Now’, April 11 page, but likely will in a newsletter today, but it lists all the UK embassies in the US where support rallies will be held.

On to some of the Tweets on the heart-rending #NoExtradition hashtag:

In comments I'd like to talk a bit more about the DOJ's letter to Daniel Dumbsheit-Borg that snoopy dog had brought to light a couple days ago.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 2:51pm
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my ducks in a row on this subject.../s

via snoopy dawg, april 27: WikiLeaks: The US is indeed investigating Assange for publishing secret (classified) information, DOJ letter suggests.

“Only one day after writing the indictment, the US Attorney’s Office admitted it was also investigating Assange for the „unauthorized receipt and dissemination of secret information“. That is what the Department of Justice wrote in a letter to former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg, which we are publishing in full.

This accusation can be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, a World War I era federal law intended to protect military secrets which has also been used to charge Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Convictions under the Espionage Act can be punished by death. The death penalty is not only inhumane and archaic, it has legal consequences: The United Kingdom is not allowed to extradite Assange if he faces the death penalty.”

i’d remembered that there had been Very Bad Blood between them, and discovered an interview w/ the austrailian, as well as his own book (from his wiki page): Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website (2011).

“In Domscheit-Berg's book he criticizes Julian Assange's leadership style and handling of the Afghan War Diaries.”

Now, as i remember it (file under: O, for a memory), there was some ‘news’ that bin laden had copies of those logs on a laptop in his compound in abbottobad, and that kevin gosztola said that the judge in chelsea manning’s court martial (denise lind?) had not found her guilty of ‘aiding the enemy’, as in which leads to espionage/treaty/potential death penalty sentences. but according to WL talking about the DOJ letter, i must be incorrect; but in any event:

no matter what the caveats and ‘warnings’ in that letter offers, i believe that dumbsheit-borg would flip/testily against assange in a heartbeat. but those additional charges, as well as if josha shulte (the alleged cia vaults leaker, a name added as per CNN) were to flip on him would be added at a later date, once he’s in gitmo or the florence super-max.

p.s. this portion of the borg’s wiki sure left me wondering, although i didn’t look into the footnotes:

‘WikiLeaks and other sources later confirmed the destruction of over 3500 unpublished whistleblower communications with some communications containing hundreds of documents,[3][16][18] including the US government's No Fly List,[19] 5 GB of Bank of America leaks,[20] insider information from 20 neo nazi organizations[19][21] and proof of torture and government abuse of a Latin American country.[22]’

oh, and julian's mama is sick again, and has been taking a well-deserved a break: @AssangeMrs · Apr 25 'Sick again. Post flu chest infection

i know we all wish her the best, but just imagine the insane level of emotional toll that all of this takes on the health of julian and his family. well, no, check that: i can't really and truly imagine it.

on edit: ping! a third duck in a row: kevin goztola (shadowproof) and oscar grenfell (wsws) had also clearly demonstrated that the original indictment against assange (computer fraud, hacking an anonymizing password for manning) used a lot of language from the 1917 espionage law, meaning to both of them, that it was indeed a place-holder to add further charges. i believe they are, and were, right as rain.

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Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 12:20pm
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Julian Assange: WikiLeaks co-founder's 50-week jail term for bail breach ‘an outrage’ (1.5 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgx0dXPDz6g]

RT UK piece...Peter Tatchell on Julian Assange 50 week sentence: "This is excessive, extreme and unjustified"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkHILmTvXi4 (5 min)

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by wendy davis on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 12:46pm
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@Lookout

videos, the euro news one i'd seen on jen robinson't twitter account, and had almost brought it as it was so much clearer than the fuzz one in the anon sweden tweet. but when kristinn (sp) was about to say: the sentence was closer to someone who'd been (something)...manslaughter was cut out, but is in the fuzzy one.

can't say i agree with the RT human rights activist about his extradition or not being 'about the law' on bit, but i do reckon it's likely there will be more court dates to come for 'further evidence'. his opinion that assange should be sentenced for jumping bail i found ludicrous, partially because the UN had decided that he's been 'arbitrarily detained' in the embassy. but what a hoot the sentencing judge had smacked him for causing the UK po-po to spend '£16m of taxpayers’ money on policing resources outside the embassy for the period in which he was there'. ye gods and little fishes and all that rot...

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Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 1:00pm
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@wendy davis

can't say i agree with the RT human rights activist about his extradition or not being 'about the law' on bit, but i do reckon it's likely there will be more court dates to come for 'further evidence'. his opinion that assange should be sentenced for jumping bail i found ludicrous, partially because the UN had decided that he's been 'arbitrarily detained' in the embassy. but what a hoot the sentencing judge had smacked him for causing the UK po-po to spend '£16m of taxpayers’ money on policing resources outside the embassy for the period in which he was there'. ye gods and little fishes and all that rot...

But I find it helpful to hear what is being said to better understand how people are so misled. Today I also heard Sachs on Venezuela (video or text) which I agreed with for the most part. However no mention of Obummer's role in the sanctions.

All the messes our country is perpetrating. I fiddled with the verses and have been singing "Eve of Destruction". Kind of a release. Keep a good thought amid the disasters!

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Submitted by wendy davis on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 1:29pm
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@Lookout

to hear what different 'experts' are saying, i do hope you hadn't thought i was rapping your knuckles or anything. ; ) and it was short enough i could actually sit until the end! now i'd included sachs and weisbrot in a recent VZ diatribe, but it was all text by CEPR (iirc) featured at telesur and VZ analysis. but good catch on not mentioning O's part of the squeeze on VZ economy. i'd add it was he who'd first declared VZ as a direct threat to amerikan national security, as well. (the truth of that was hiding in plain site i think: "socialism is a threat to capitalist non-democracy".)

light-bulb: come to think of it, i'll listen again to what jen robinson had said in the euro video about wanting folks to 'read the submissions' and make up their own minds or something. did she mean they'd be publishing their objections to his extreme rendition to the district (?)court in eastern virgina or wherever the hell it is? ach, i'm too lazy to look it up, but kiriakou had called it 'the espionage court'.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 1:49pm
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@wendy davis

‘i’d encourage all of you to take the time to read those submissions that will be made public and come to your own conclusions about that evidence’.

and in the fuzzy video kristinn the interview had *started* with...manslaughter', so...i dunno.

oh, and i'm so envious that you have rose-breasted grosbeaks as regular visitors. once upon a time two popped in here, and as good joss would have it, i was at the window and snapped a couple photos. not great photos, mind you, but framed one nonetheless. ; )

we have both black-headed (carusos) and evenings (peeps) here, and they're back, too, plus the little finches who sing soooo purdy.

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Submitted by Lookout on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 3:43pm
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@wendy davis

but they have yet to arrive. And we've only seen one indigo bunting this year...unusual. Bird populations are the canary in the mine so to speak.

Happy spring birding. There's a gathering near you which I bet you know about
https://cortezculturalcenter.org/events/birding-festival/

All the best.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 5:57pm
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@Lookout

and here i'd even forgotten there were blue grosbeaks! how wonderful it must be when they drop by! we get such a boot of what sincerely rude eaters they are; spittin' seed husks everywhere as they snap their beaks open and closed. i like it, too, that when the fly in, they drop into the trees almost like pelicans: just close their wings and...plop down. good aim, too. ; )

we've only had buntings here one day: and they were the gorgeous lazuli ones. never got a photo, though, dagnabbit. guess i'd gotten so excited i was using the wrong settings; rats!

i do in fact know of the cortez birding festival, and thank you.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 6:06pm
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jen had mentioned were for his sentencing hearing at the crown court. 50 weeks' gob-smackingly punitive.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Wed, 05/01/2019 - 7:56pm
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50 weeks for jumping bail even though Julian had a legitimate reason to fear being extradited. Of course there is no reason for such a long sentence except to send a message to anyone who thinks of revealing the PTBs war crimes. And to give this country time to get its ducks in a row to bring him here. F'ck the judge!

The way the letter is written should keep the U.K. from extraditing him here because of the potential death penalty. This case gives me a tiny bit of hope. Just a wee bit...

Lauri Love: Julian Assange has been put on sacrificial altar

Lauri Love, 34, was accused by the US of belonging to the international Anonymous collective and involvement in hacks in 2012 and 2013 targeting the FBI, NASA, US Army, Missile Defense Agency and the Federal Reserve. He faced 99 years in prison in the US, but last year won his appeal against extradition in a landmark case.

Love won his appeal in February 2018 as court judges ruled extradition would be "oppressive by reason of his physical and mental condition".

The case was significant because it was the first successful use of the "forum bar" - a legal provision which UK judges can use to stop extradition.

The forum bar was introduced in 2013 by Theresa May, then-home secretary, after she had successfully blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon. Eleven days before it was introduced, however, Talha Ahsan was extradited and went on to spend eight years in US prisons, including two in solitary confinement.

Love also won on the grounds that prosecution should take place in the country where the alleged offences took place.

Grietje Baars, lecturer at London's The City Law School, told Al Jazeera: "This [argument] would be challenging for Assange to argue as he is accused of conspiring with US citizen, Chelsea Manning.

"Love also had complex mental health conditions, which weighed on the decision.

"If the courts grant the extradition, I would expect Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson to appeal on the basis that he's unlikely to face a fair trial, because this is arguably, a political trial, or that he shouldn't be extradited on the basis of his health."

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Submitted by wendy davis on Thu, 05/02/2019 - 9:52am
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@snoopydawg

the DoJ will keep the original indictment as the prima facie evidence that w/ a maximum sentence of five years...it's okey dokey to rendite him to the the US, then add other charges later. it's only my opinion, but it's what i see, what i believe.

as to laurie loves case and possible parallels, as i recall it, the current home secretary, sajid javid was of the opinion that should the swedish prosecution re-open the 'rape charges' against him at the behest of the attorney for one of the 'alleged' victims, he was cool with it. to me, this is highly relevant:

now andre damon at wsws.org in his ‘The sentencing of Julian Assange: A legal travesty’ today seems to narrate some of the items in the scribd document above:

"The judge made no serious effort to refute the arguments of Assange’s defense, documented in a nine-page note of mitigation, that surrendering to British authorities would open him to the type of illegal persecution that led the government of Ecuador to grant him asylum.
Assange sought and received political asylum because of his “fear that he would be surrendered to the USA by Sweden, and be subjected to treatment there, including persecution and indefinite solitary confinement, relating to his involvement in WikiLeaks’ publication of sensitive US military and diplomatic materials (such as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture had concluded happened to Chelsea Manning).”

Ecuador granted the persecuted journalist asylum, “based upon its assessment of a well-founded risk of him being refouled [extradited] by Sweden to the USA and there being subjected to persecution, inhuman treatment and physical harm.”
Ecuador’s decision took into consideration the fact that “Sweden also had, at the material time, a long and unfortunate history of illicit co-operation with the USA in the mistreatment of detainees and their rendition.”

The document referenced a pair of rulings by the UN’s Committee Against Torture, describing Sweden’s “total surrender of power” to US authorities carrying out illegal rendition and torture. These judgements found, in the words of Assange’s lawyers, that “Sweden had passively allowed US military personnel to mistreat detainees on Swedish soil (including stripping, blindfolding, hooding, manacling, forcible sedation by forced anal suppository, handcuffing into specially designed stress position harnesses etc.) and in delivering them to torture in third states.”

Despite the lying arguments made by the New York Times and Washington Post that Assange is facing extradition for a minor computer hacking charge and faces no danger to his life, the Justice Department has made clear that it is investigating him for “obtaining and disseminating secret information,” a charge that could lead to prosecution under the Espionage Act and be punishable by death."

now the last bolds are because gosztola and wsws journalists had noted the language of the present charges contained language use in the 1917 espionage law.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Thu, 05/02/2019 - 7:51am
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‘Assange to Extradition Court: ‘I Won’t Surrender to the US for Doing Journalism’, May 2, 2019, consortium news

"Dressed in jeans, a dark jacket and a T-shirt, Assange appeared on a video screen inside a cramped courtroom in Westminster Magistrates Court in London. “I won’t surrender to the U.S. for doing journalism that has won many awards and protected lives,” Assange told the court, according to a tweet from a USAToday correspondent."

"A large group of Assange supporters gathered outside the courthouse as well as inside Court Three, where many sat on the floor for the ten-minute hearing, the Daily Express in London reported. Many reporters and supporters were unable to gain entry after the hearing was moved to a smaller courtroom.

A further procedural hearing was scheduled for May 30, and a substantive court date was set for June 12. On that day the U.S. faces a deadline to reveal any further charges against Assange for which the British courts must base their extradition decision. The court was told resolution of the case was still months away, the Express reported.

The U.S. is weighing charging Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act for unauthorized possession and dissemination of classified material. It would be the first time the Act would be used to prosecute a journalist for receiving and publishing secret information."

Kim's USA today story is here; i'll add anything useful after some toast. the site's flippin' out my laptop.

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Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Thu, 05/02/2019 - 8:04am
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@wendy davis

for Assange was AT MOST a receiver of stolen goods, and had little or nothing to do with the actual "theft" of documents.

That will not stop the liars and abusers, some of which sit in judgment upon him.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Thu, 05/02/2019 - 10:11am
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@TheOtherMaven

misdirecting are what they do best, isn't it? on the computer fraud, password hacking, yada, yada charge: it was never said, only implied that assange helped manning find an anonymizing password, or was successful at it.

but here are some portions from the USA today 'journalism' that joe lauria had featured, although he'd mentioned The Express w/o a link. so i dunno what lauria had written on his own v. what others had written, but a few bits:

“Assange was not handcuffed during his brief appearance.”

"The charges relates to one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the U.S.," said Ben Brandon, a lawyer representing the U.S. government.
Brandon said that the documents Assange downloaded from the Pentagon computer included 90,000 war reports related to Afghanistan, 400,000 from the Iraq War, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessments and 250,000 State Department cables.”

“Assange was arrested last month inside the Ecuadorian embassy after the South American country revoked his political asylum. He sought asylum in the embassy in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations. At the time, Assange's legal team believed that if he were extradited to Sweden he would subsequently be extradited to the U.S.

Assange denies the rape and sexual assault allegations, which were dropped because his residence in Ecuador's embassy stymied the investigation, and because the statute of limitations expired. Swedish prosecutors have indicated that they are considering a request from one of Assange's alleged victims to re-open the rape probe.

[again with incorrect and yellow journalism in my bolds]

If that happens, Assange could face a competing new claim for extradition to Sweden.
Anand Doobay, a London-based lawyer who specializes in extradition law, said that Assange's case is now further complicated by his 50-week sentence. He said that extradition cases can take "a very long time" and that the decision may ultimately reside with Britain's secretary of state, who will need to be satisfied that Assange would not face the death penalty in the U.S. or be charged with additional crimes.

He said that if Sweden decided to renew its request for extradition based on the rape probe the secretary of state [home secretary] would also need to decide which request to favor.

"There are significant legal obstacles for the U.S. case," said Daniela Nadj, a professor of law at Queen Mary, University of London, adding that "many questions need to be answered." Among them: if Sweden decides to renew its extradition claim whether a rape allegation should take precedence over a hacking one.

"Right now Julian will be fighting a battle against despair and despondency," Lauri Love, a British activist who won a U.S. extradition appeal in 2018 for allegedly hacking into the computer systems of the FBI, U.S. Federal Reserve and NASA, told USA TODAY outside the court in London where he showed up to support Assange.”

but again, if sajid javid favors extreme rendition for assange, extraditing him to sweden might be the fastest way to air mail him to...gitmo. *If* the us doj knows this, what pressure might they be willing to put on stockholm? and yes, i am both cynical and on the coincidence theory side of all of this.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Thu, 05/02/2019 - 10:13am
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Submitted by wendy davis on Thu, 05/02/2019 - 8:46pm
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for contributing.

rather than a closing song, i'll provided some words akin to: it didn't have to be this way', from the late santee sioux alchemist AIM leader john trudell from his talking poetry 'rich man's war':

Some ones are crazy or
Maybe we take turns
Dreaming about some kind of life
We say it could have been different
But it wasn't because we weren't

Some things start good and go bad
Some things get bad and stay bad
Are we caught in between
Living a lie or not living at all?

Eliminated choices
Lost in dreams we let go
Memories we never got to have
Something else to think about

g' night.

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