Free Julian Assange
After 5years of locking Julian Assange for a case that is arguably the most controversial and scrutinized not only by the worlds media but by the law practitioners and professionals it looks likes the U.S. cannot defends it's charges against Assange and cannot guarantee that his freedom of speech will not be curtailed once the British court extradite him to the USA. What is America's case against Assange really was? The original charge and indictment against Julian Assange by the United States was filed in March 2018 and focused on a conspiracy to commit computer intrusion under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), it alleged that Assange conspired with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Department of Defense computer system to obtain classified information, since the indictment was narrow in scope it added in May 2019 the charges of violations of the Espionage Act in addition to the CFAA charges.
The U.S. government's case against Assange has been controversial and has raised significant concerns about freedom of the press and the prosecution of journalists. Supporters of Assange argue that he is a journalist who was exercising his First Amendment rights by publishing information in the public interest. How Assange was arrested was also controversial, after spending 7 years in the Ecuadorian Embassy where he is seeking asylum, the Ecuadorian government withdrawn his asylum thus paving way for his arrest that has got nothing to do with the espionage case against him by the US government. Now after 5 years in Belmarsh Prison and Assange’s appeal against Britain’s order to extradite him, The High Court of England and Wales is set to free Assange if the US Department of Justice cannot give a First Amendment guarantee equivalent to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights to Assange if he is extradited to the USA to face the courts there and it looks like the US government cannot give that guarantee. Why? aside form Assange being an Australian citizen and he is not covered by the First Amendment law, and there is no guarantee that US courts is obligated to follow whatever guarantee the US Dep't. of Justice gave to the British court regarding Assange's extradition to the US, that's separation of power doctrine of American government that is unknown in British courts.
The US government is under pressure from all sides to release Assange, from the Australian government's request for Assange to be sent home, because he is an Australian citizen after all. Latin-American governments is also pressuring the US to release Assange, International human rights and press freedom groups have called for his release and the Democratic-leaning New York Times joined four other major newspapers in calling for the prosecution to be ended. But the most pressure is coming from the international and domestic outcry over Gaza, and the Democrats are desperately trying to relieve some of the enormous pressure on Joe Biden because it's affecting his candidacy. The Biden administration is hinting that is considering dropping the case against Assange when reports asked the president whether it the Australian government's request to drop the decade-long U.S. push to prosecute Assange for publishing classified American documents and let him return home rather than be sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges and let him plead for a lesser offense.
So is Julian Assange finally walking out of Belmarsh Prison? depends whether the US will drop it's case against Assange and Assange will just plead for a lesser offense, right now nothing is final, if next week's Appeal hearing the US cannot guarantee Assange First Amendment right the equivalent of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights the The High Court of England and Wales would have no choice but to follow the law and free Assange.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/11/how-britain-would-be-obliged-to-free-assange-while-biden-considers-ending-the-case/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=7e22968c-495e-49dd-857e-2dec5c56bfaf
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/julian-assange-biden-says-us-considering-dropping-charges-wikileaks/
Image:
https://independentaustralia.net/
https://global.unitednations.entermediadb.net/
