Finally. After greater than 5 years locked inside HMP Belmarsh, Britain’s most safe jail, and 7 years confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange can breathe some recent, free air. It’s actually a day to rejoice, but in addition one to demand solutions. Why – why, for heaven’s sake – has it taken so lengthy? And what about all of the others who languish in crazily overcrowded British jails?
It appears acceptable that Assange’s launch, on the idea of a deal that provides the US authorities the fig leaf of a responsible plea, occurred within the very week earlier than a normal election, within the nation the place he was detained for all these years. Voters appear more likely to get rid of a authorities whose feeble house secretaries, from Priti Patel onwards, bowed the knee to the US on its extradition request after they might have simply adopted the courageous path that Theresa Could took when she was house secretary in 2012, declining to permit the removing to the US of the hacker Gary McKinnon. However what classes have any of our legislators – or our judges – discovered?
Though he has been detained in Britain, shockingly it’s Australian politicians who’ve made probably the most noise concerning the case. Over a yr in the past, the Labour MP Richard Burgon organised a letter to the US legal professional normal that was signed by 35 MPs and members of the Home of Lords from six events. The letter said that “British parliamentarians are increasingly alarmed by the potential extradition of Julian Assange to the United States … Any extradition would, in effect, be putting press freedom on trial. It would set a dangerous precedent for journalists and publishers around the world.” However why had been there so few ready to place their names to it?
Neither Labour nor the Conservatives have primarily challenged the imbalance between the US and the UK over the problem of extradition, or fought brazenly for the precise of Assange and WikiLeaks to show the crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, carried out within the identify of the US. When Patel gave the go-ahead for his extradition in 2022, the house workplace spokesperson justified it saying “the UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust or an abuse of process to extradite Mr Assange. Nor have they found that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression”. What nonsense that was, however why did no senior politicians protest on the time? What had been they so fearful of? Two years in the past, Andrew Neil – no fan of Assange and definitely no lefty – wrote “when democracy is under threat from Ukraine to Hong Kong, far better for Britain to refuse to extradite Assange and send a clear message – a clarion call – to the free world and beyond: we do not jail our dissidents.” However we jailed this “dissident” for 5 years.
These are grim instances for journalists world wide. The wonderful movie State of Silence, concerning the plight of Mexican journalists, premiered this month on the Sheffield documentary competition, and confirmed us that previously twenty years, 162 journalists in Mexico have been murdered and 32 have gone lacking. This week, the Committee to Defend Journalists reported that not less than 108 journalists and media staff – 103 Palestinian, two Israeli and three Lebanese – have been killed because the Israel-Gaza battle escalated in October 2023, making it the deadliest interval for journalists since CPJ started gathering knowledge in 1992. The Guardian documentary, Home No 30 Kabul, now exhibits what has occurred in Afghanistan to journalists making an attempt to report the information there. From Haiti to Hong Kong, from Russia to Saudi Arabia, journalists are confronted with pressures just like these positioned on Assange. That specious argument that Assange was “not really a journalist”, and thus unfit of media help can certainly now be lastly buried.
His launch makes yet another cell accessible to the jail system – a small however notable quantity, consideringthat simply days in the past, Tom Wheatley, the president of the Jail Governors’ Affiliation, warned that prisons in Britain may have no room to take extra prisoners previous July.
Sure, however who cares about prisoners or the scandal of these nonetheless wrongly held underneath the discredited Imprisonment for Public Safety (IPP) legal guidelines? “A tragic ambition” was how the late documentary maker Roger Graef described justice secretary Dominic Raab’s 2022 plan to create 4,000 new jail locations in England and Wales, which might push the jail inhabitants to a document excessive of greater than 100,000. But, earlier this month, Labour pledged extra of the identical: 20,000 new jail locations “to ensure there is always enough space to lock up the most dangerous offenders”. Prisons, together with the entire legal justice system, are in chaos, and the disaster won’t be solved by following the US route of locking up increasingly folks – however the problem has barely featured in election debates.
Now we have not heard the final of the Julian Assange story. He should now be allowed to catch his breath, and we are able to rejoice that he’s not within the dungeon. Let’s hope there are not less than some politicians who will take observe, and have the braveness sooner or later to face as much as bullies fairly than simply mouth platitudes about free speech.
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Duncan Campbell is a contract author who labored for the Guardian as crime correspondent and Los Angeles correspondent. He’s the creator of If It Bleeds, (2009), The Paradise Path, (2008), The Underworld and That Was Enterprise, This Is Private
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