2023-07-21 17:49:33
The proceedings for the extradition to the United States of America of Julian Assange, the founding journalist of Wikileaks, born in Australia, have already been underway since 2019 in England. Overseas he is accused of 18 crimes charged against him largely on the basis of the provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917 which punishes, in particular, interference with international and commercial relations of the United States and espionage activities: if convicted, Assange risks a sentence of up to 175 years in prison.
Now a group of 119 jurists has issued an appeal for the co-founder of Wikileaks. “As specified in his reports Nils Melzer, United Nations special rapporteur on torture from 2016 to 2022, Assange was subjected to a long and very harsh mainly psychological torture for which in his opinion 4 countries are responsible – the jurists say – The United States, which is prosecuting him for non-existent crimes, after having kept the investigations secret for a long time; Great Britain, which has detained him since 11 April 2019 in the maximum security prison of Belmarsh, known as the ‘British Guantanamo’, after having militarily ‘besieged’ the Ecuadorian Embassy in which he had first taken refuge; Sweden, which favored the arrest of Assange in the UK, requesting his extradition -but in order to favor the subsequent one to the USA- for an investigation into sexual violence, kept open for a long time and finally shelved due to lack of evidence; Ecuador, which on 16 August 2012 granted asylum and citizenship to Assange by decision of President Correa, hosting him in the London Embassy from 19 June 2012, but revoking them both on 11 April 2019, by choice of the new president Moreno, and allowing the British police to break in and arrest him”.
In particular, Assange was subjected to psychological torture, at least since the end of 2017 – when he was still in the Ecuadorian embassy – “with confinement in small spaces, permanent video surveillance even in the bathroom, a ban for a certain period on the use of cell phones and web connections, control of his every movement, including the few authorized meetings with friends and lawyers, to the point of not even being able to organize his defense before the British authorities in order not to be extradited first to Sweden and then to the United States. Transferred after the arrested in the Belmarsh penitentiary, he is held there in a minimally sized cell, with even more accentuated restrictions and controls, to the point that specialized doctors have detected, even in the clinic, typical symptoms of prolonged exposure to psychological torture with the risk of suicide or in any case of death”.
US interests never harmed through revelations of already widely known names
The accusation against Assange of having violated American state secrets “damages the freedom of the press – the document recalls – a right-duty proper to every true democracy, also envisaged in the first amendment of the American Constitution and in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: in the ‘digital encyclopedia’ that he founded, news found and of public interest were disclosed, even if secret and from anonymous sources (so-called ‘whistleblowers’). Assange and WikiLeaks, in fact, they decided in April 2010 to make known to the whole world a secret video called ‘Collateral murder’, which documented the extermination of civilians, including two journalists from the international news agency Reuters and two seriously injured children, in Baghdad in 2007 by American troops, and then other films and documents which, such as the ‘Afghan war logs’ taken from the Pentagon and State Department databases and supplied to them by soldier Bradley, now Chelsea Manning, allowed to reveal other crimes against humanity committed by the United States in Afghanistan, as well as in the concentration camp of Guantanamo and in other parts of the world”.
Among other things, contrary to the accusations, Assange “did not harm the fundamental interests of the United States, since – before making known through Wikileaks some of the names of the perpetrators of such serious crimes against humanity (because this is what it is about) – he had ascertained that they were already widely known names, working with a team of international journalists to protect the unknown ones. In fact, thirteen years after the publication of those documents, the American administration has never provided a single name of a person killed, injured, imprisoned because of those revelations”.
Wikileaks, as it is known and as it has also been recognized by the English jurisprudence itself, “is a journalistic organization operating in the world with the declared aim of protecting internal dissidents, sources of information and bloggers from legal or other risks connected with the publication of documents certifying the commission by exponents of individual states of criminal facts otherwise hidden from public knowledge”. Since its inception in 2006, for example, Wikileaks has also published other important documents concerning espionage activities against the European Commission and interference in the French presidential elections.
The prisoner detained for over 4 years awaiting extradition to the USA
Assange, therefore, is today, and for over 4 years, detained in the aforementioned English maximum security prison of Belmarsh awaiting a definitive ruling by the High Court on the extradition request formulated by the US government. The request has already been accepted with a provision implemented by the English government, now the subject of a complaint before a different panel of the High Court. Just at the beginning of June 2023, the same High Court, in monocratic formation, rejected a previous complaint against the extradition order.
Therefore, the jurists announce – “on the eve of the final decision on the fate of Julian Assange. The arguments spent up to now by his defense appear of the utmost importance because they relate to fundamental issues in democratic-based legal systems. It is a question of establishing whether the publicity activity proper to investigative journalism which, put in place by Assange, has allowed the revelation of serious crimes committed by individual states even in times of war, returns (as was affirmed in the authoritative depositions given in the previous stages of the English extradition, of Professor Paul Rogers, distinguished author of studies on peace, and of Professor Noam Chomsky, prestigious linguist and philosopher) in the principle of freedom of expression and opinion, recognized by the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950, and should also be considered of a political nature: these circumstances are decisive since, if ascertained by the English judges, they would prevent, pursuant to the British Extradition Act of 2003, extradition”
But there is “a further and basic topic of investigation, faced with mixed results in the previous stages: that of the existence or otherwise of dangers to the life and safety of the Australian journalist in the case of detention, following a conviction, in US penitentiary facilities. Nor can Assange’s condition of serious psychological prostration due to the prolonged deprivation of liberty escape a careful judicial evaluation: a condition so serious as to have led the English judge, Vanessa Baraitser, called to rule first degree on extradition to the United States in January 2021, to deny extradition for fear that the journalist might give in to suicidal impulses.This decision was reformed in the next degree of judgment by a panel which believed that extradition could be granted on the simple basis of the assurances provided by the US government regarding possible detention in establishments equipped with adequate health facilities, also specialized in psychological treatments. Precisely on the basis of this pronouncement, the English minister of the interior issued the extradition order which, after a first summary rejection of the appeal proposed by Assange, will be examined again by the High Court”.
The relevance of the affair, for its implications of principle and for its very serious repercussions on the person of Assange, is of such dramatic evidence “as to commit public opinion in general and the community of jurists in particular to contribute to an open and constructive debate for the reaffirmation of the principle of transparency which every form of exercise of public power must be inspired by”.
In fact, it cannot be denied that “the extradition of Julian Assange, in addition to elementary humanitarian reasons imposed by his extremely proven psycho-physical conditions and by reasonable fears about the future prison regime, would constitute a terrible example of the suffocation of free information oriented towards the disclosure of abuses of power and would ultimately result in the definitive drying up of the sources of knowledge which the community must continue to be able to enjoy. These are the reasons which lead the signatories of this document, in their qualities of jurists and citizens sensitive to the maintenance of information democracy, to spread it and, trusting in the future ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, to hope that it will be shared by public opinion”.
Among the 119 signatories who have signed up to the appeal so far there are many well-known names including constitutionalists, magistrates, lawyers: from Azzariti, to Borgna, from Carofiglio and Paciotti to Pisapia; from Nello Rossi to Spataro and Turone.
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