The US Is ‘Close To Getting Its Hands on Julian Assange’. An Interview With John Pilger
In an interview with Oscar Grenfell of the World Socialist Website, John Pilger explains the latest manoeuvres by the US and UK authorities to extradite Julian Assange, journalist and publisher, to the US where he faces 175 years in prison for the crime of journalism.
After Home Secretary Priti Patel’s announcement allowing extradition, where is the Assange case up to? Are the dangers he confronts of a greater urgency than previously?
It is a dangerous, unpredictable time. Since the Home Secretary signed the extradition order, a provisional appeal has been filed by Julian’s lawyers. ‘Provisional’ is part of the tortuous process of appeal. The lawyers must submit what are known as ‘perfected grounds of appeal’ in the next few weeks, then the US and the Home Secretary file their responses. Only after that does it go to a judge (not sitting in a court) to decide whether or not he will accept it. It may sound meticulous but, having observed it, it looks to me like a finely spun blanket of obfuscation over a profoundly biased system.
Until the High Court hearing last year, I believed the country’s senior judges would reject the US appeal and reclaim something of the mythologised notion of British justice if only for the system’s survival, which partly depends on ‘face’ within the arcane reaches of the British establishment. This show of ‘independence’ in support of justice has happened in the past. In Julian’s case, the facts are surely too outrageous – no properly constituted court would even consider it – yet I was wrong. The decision by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales last October that the US in effect had the right to fabricate and belatedly introduce ‘assurances’ that had not even been part of previous due process was quite shocking. There was no justice, no process; the guile and ruthlessness of US power was on show. Might is right.
Today, the US knows it is close to getting its hands on Julian. Unlike previous parliaments at Westminster, there is not a single
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