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.
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