On 4 January, district judge Vanessa Baraitser, sitting at the central criminal court in London, refused an application for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage.
However, the judge also ruled that Assange would have committed an offence under UK law if the acts complained about by the US had taken place in the UK. Judge Baraitser refused extradition on the grounds that Assange would be a suicide risk if extradited.
Two days…
On 7 November, police arrested four people at the socially-distanced weekly vigil for Julian Assange in Piccadilly Circus, using new COVID-related powers granted on 3 November.
Earlier, on 3 October, police exceeded the powers they possessed at that time by dispersing the vigil. On that occasion, there were 18 people expressing solidarity with the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder.
Twice that many police were on hand, and they arrested four demonstrators, presumably to encourage the…
On 7 September, Julian Assange faced a new extradition hearing in London, set to last four weeks.
The US had been demanding his extradition to face charges of conspiracy to receive, obtain and disclose classified US diplomatic and military documents – because of his work with WikiLeaks.
If found guilty on all charges, Julian could face up to 175 years in jail.
Clive Stafford-Smith, founder of the legal charity Reprieve, told the court that documents published by…
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s full extradition hearing is scheduled for 24 February at Woolwich crown court in South London.
The investigative journalist was arrested at the Ecuadorean embassy last April, having spent seven years there after claiming asylum to avoid possible extradition to the US via Sweden.
Sexual assault charges Julian was facing in Sweden have since been dropped, but he has been kept in Belmarsh high security prison because of an extradition request…
1 December is Prisoners for Peace Day, when activists are encouraged to write to people imprisoned around the world for refusing to fight or for campaigning against war.
This year, we have highlighted the imprisonment of US military whistleblower Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
At risk
As we went to press, there were reports that Julian Assange’s health was deteriorating rapidly.
More than 60 doctors wrote an open letter expressing their fear…
There are strict rules, but you can write letters (not cards) to these two political prisoners.
Please write (using white paper only!) to the US whistleblower:
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning, A0181426, William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center, 2001 Mill Road Alexandria, VA 22314, USA.
(No cards, postcards, photocopies, books, magazines or cash, and no decorations on the – white – envelope!) More info: www.xychelsea.is.
Please…
Julian Assange is facing 175 years in prison for his investigative journalism if he is extradited to the US and convicted of the 18 charges filed against him by the US government.
Meanwhile, US whistleblower Chelsea Manning was jailed on 16 May for refusing (for a second time) to give evidence against the WikiLeaks founder.
Assange is being charged under the US Espionage Act 1917, mainly for obtaining…
Taken out of context, some of the revelations drawn from the US diplomatic cables leaked to Wikileaks sound improbable and even a bit like a conspiracy theory. Meanwhile, many of the issues highlighted in this book, – human rights abuses for instance – have already been widely reported on in the press.
So at first I was a bit doubtful about the value of this book. But in fact its purpose is not to publish secrets. Rather, it is to show what we can learn from these cables as…
The internet has been transformed from a tool of emancipation ‘into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen’. Thus wrote Julian Assange* in his 2012 introduction to Cypherpunks, an eye-opening annotated transcript of a conversation between the Wikileaks founder and three other prominent internet activists.
At that time, such a claim might have appeared hyperbolic. However, in the wake of Edward Snowden’s 2013 exposure of the global surveillance…
