FEBRUARY
13, 2018
Photo by
Billy Bob Bain | CC
BY 2.0
It now
emerges that the last four years of Julian Assange’s effective imprisonment in
the Ecuadorean embassy in London have been entirely unnecessary. In fact, they
depended on a legal charade.
Behind
the scenes, Sweden wanted
to drop the extradition case against Assange back in 2013. Why was
this not made public? Because Britain persuaded Sweden to pretend that they
still wished to pursue the case.
In other
words, for more than four years Assange has been holed up in a tiny room,
policed at great cost to British taxpayers, not because of any allegations in
Sweden but because the British authorities wanted him to remain there. On what
possible grounds could that be, one has to wonder? Might it have something to
do with his work as the head of Wikileaks, publishing information from
whistleblowers that has severely embarrassed the United States and the UK.
In fact,
Assange should have walked free years ago if this was really about an
investigation – a
sham one at that – into an alleged sexual assault in Sweden. Instead,
as Assange has long warned, there is a very different agenda at work: efforts
to extradite
him onwards to the US, where he could be locked away for good. That
was why UN
experts argued two years ago that he was being “arbitrarily detained”
– for political crimes – not unlike the situation of dissidents in other parts
of the world that win
the support of western liberals and leftists.
According
to a new, limited release of emails between officials, the Swedish director of
public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, wrote to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service
on 18 October 2013, warning that Swedish law would not allow the case for
extradition to be continued. This was, remember, after Sweden had repeatedly
failed to take up an offer from Assange to interview him in London, as had
happened in 44 other extradition cases between Sweden and Britain.
Ny wrote
to the CPS: “We have found us to be obliged to lift the detention order … and
to withdraw the European arrest warrant. If so this should be done in a couple
of weeks. This would affect not only us but you too in a significant way.”
Three
days later, suggesting that legal concerns were far from anyone’s mind, she
emailed the CPS again: “I am sorry this came as a [bad] surprise… I hope I
didn’t ruin your weekend.”
In a
similar vein, proving that this was about politics, not the law, the chief CPS
lawyer handling the case in the UK, had earlier written to the Swedish
prosecutors: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”
In
December 2013, the unnamed CPS lawyer wrote again to Ny: “I do not consider
costs are a relevant factor in this matter.” This was at a time when it had
been revealed that the policing of Assange’s detention in the embassy had at
that point cost Britain £3.8 million. In another email from the CPS, it was
noted: “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another
extradition.”
These
are only fragments of the email correspondence, after most of it was destroyed
by the CPS against its own protocols. The deletions appear to have
been carried out to avoid releasing the electronic files to a tribunal that has
been considering a freedom of information request.
Other
surviving emails, according to a Guardian report last year, have shown that the
CPS “advised the Swedes in 2010 or 2011 not to visit London to interview
Assange. An interview at that time could have prevented the long-running
embassy standoff.”
Assange
is still holed up in the embassy, at great risk to his physical and mental
health, even though last year Sweden formally dropped an investigation that in
reality it had not actually been pursuing for more than four years.
Now the
UK (read US) authorities have a new, even less credible pretext for continuing
to hold Assange: because he “skipped bail”. Apparently the price he should pay
for this relatively minor infraction is more than five years of confinement.
London
magistrates are due to consider on Tuesday the arguments of Assange’s lawyers
that he should be freed and that after so many years the continuing enforcement
of the arrest warrant is disproportionate. Given the blurring of legal and
political considerations in this case, don’t hold your breath that Assange will
finally get a fair hearing.
Remember
too that, according to the UK Foreign Office, Ecuador recently notified it that
Assange had received diplomatic status following his successful application for
Ecuadorean citizenship.
As
former British ambassador Craig Murray has
explained, the UK has no choice but to accept Assange’s diplomatic
immunity. The most it can do is insist that he leave the country – something
that Assange and Ecuador presumably each desire. And yet the UK continues to
ignore its obligation to allow Assange his freedom to leave. So far there has
been zero debate in the British corporate media about this fundamental
violation of his rights.
One has
to wonder at what point will most people realise that this is – and always was
– political persecution masquerading as law enforcement.
More
articles by:JONATHAN
COOK
Jonathan
Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for
Journalism. His latest books are “Israel
and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle
East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing
Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website
is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/
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