Assange Lawyers Say US Extradition Case Political Vendetta
Lawyers for jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, fighting attempts by the US to extradite him from London to face espionage charges for releasing classified military documents showing the killing of civilians, argued at his trial the case was “purely political.”
Comparing him to the Iraq war whistleblower Katharine Gun and the 19th-century French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus, attorney Edward Fitzgerald said the extradition is prohibited as he tried to make the case for his release.
In the third day of the long-awaited hearings, Fitzgerald said the extradition treaty between the countries bars returns for political offenses, with Assange facing a possible 175-year jail sentence in an American court if convicted.
Gun, who worked for the United Kingdom’s General Communication Headquarters (GCHG,) leaked details to the British paper The Observer about a secret US campaign to spy on the UN before the Iraq war.
“Had she fled to another country she would have been able to say this is a purely political offense,” said Fitzgerald, who cited Dreyfus, an officer of Jewish descent wrongly convicted of spying in 1894 during intense anti-semitism.
Prosecutors though said Assange’s case is covered only by the Extradition Act 2003, which makes no exception for political offenses. But Fitzgerald said: “If it’s not a terrorist case, not a violent offence, then the principle you should not be extradited for a political offence is of virtually universal application,” The Guardian reported.
She said the case was a bellwether for journalism. “From the criticisms given by the prosecution, clearly the Trump administration would like to shrink those freedoms,” she told the Australian Associated Press.
“So the court proceeding has got a big public interest component. But I’m also concerned extradition may be used for political purposes of retaliation against whistleblowers, publishers and journalists,” she said.
“It could become a tool of oppression, rather than the tool of justice that was originally envisaged,” she added.
More than 1200 journalists signed an open letter of support for Assange, whose backers argue was doing the work of an investigative reporter in revealing wrongdoing, and fearing his conviction could lead governments going after the media more, with journalism under siege.
Hugo Rifkind, a columnist for the British paper The Times, in a piece entitled We Should Try to Care About Assange’s Fate, said even if his detractors think he’s unlikeable that it doesn’t excuse what he called an American assault on free speech.
Rifkind noted Assange faces 18 charges, including offering to help Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley and a former military serviceman who became a whistleblower, crack a password to leak the classified documents.
“If Assange committed a crime in publishing those US documents, then why is the same not true of the many newspapers worldwide which subsequently reported upon them?” wrote Rifkind, with Assange being singled out.
“Criminalizing those who report on the whistles blown, though, sets a dangerous precedent,” he added.
Photo/Wikimedia Commons/Sydney WikiLeaks