The Assange case 211


Many thanks indeed to “Me in Us” for this transcript.

00:12 ONN: Hello. We’re here today at the home of Craig Murray, the whistleblower and former ambassador to Uzbekistan. Craig, thank you for being here with us on ON today. On Sunday you spoke out publicly defending Julian Assange in giving a speech in front of the Ecuadorean assembly. What made you want to stand up and be counted as among his supporters?

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, the main reason is that I’ve been a whistleblower myself and active with other whistleblowers, and I’ve seen so many whistleblowers fitted up with false charges, and as soon as anybody blows the whistle, particularly on any aspects of, if you like, neoconservative foreign policy and war, you’re going to get fitted up and you’re going to get defamed with false charges, and if you’re male I think in every case those charges are going to involve sexual allegations. So I could just see, if you like, a miscarriage of justice in the process of being done, and I wanted to do anything I can to help stop it.

01:16 ONN: You said that individual whistleblowers are not charged with political offenses, they are fit up with criminal ones. Would you care to elaborate on that?

CRAIG MURRAY: Yes, certainly, and I’ll give a few examples. James Yee, who was a chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, he blew the whistle on torture and mistreatment of inmates at Guantanamo Bay. He was first of all charged with espionage and acts of espionage benefiting a foreign country. Then those charges were dropped and he was charged with adultery, which apparently under US military law is an offense, and he was charged with having pornography on his government computer at work, and he was convicted of both of those, and then later the conviction was overturned.

Brigadier Janis Karpinski was the lady in charge of all Iraqi prisoners of war in Iraq, not just at Abu Ghraib. She was in charge of all military installations. She wasn’t actually at Abu Ghraib, and actually she’d only ever been to Abu Ghraib once. When the story broke about all the torture at Abu Ghraib, she came forward and she said that she had personally seen a document signed by Donald Rumsfeld detailing forms of torture to be used at Abu Ghraib, including stress positions, including threatening naked prisoners with dogs. She said those techniques were detailed in the document which was signed by Donald Rumsfeld. She was recalled to the United States, and the day after she returned to the United States she was allegedly caught shoplifting and charged with shoplifting.

Scott Ritter was an Iraqi weapons inspector on the same UN team as David Kelly. He was a captain in the US Marines. He stated that there were no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. On his return to the United States he was entrapped in a computer sex honey trap by an FBI agent, and this was admitted in court, that it was an FBI agent who entrapped him.

03:51 ONN: For those who don’t know, what does this term “honey trap” refer to?

CRAIG MURRAY: Honey trap is where you put, if you like, sexual bait in order to catch someone, to entice someone into a sexual act which they otherwise might not have committed had you not put the temptation right in their way. It’s a term frequently used in espionage and diplomatic circles because it’s a well-known technique of the security services. And Scott Ritter fell for this honey trap and he was actually convicted of pedophilia, because although the agent in concern was an adult female, she was using an Internet persona of an underage person. But — and Scott Ritter’s case is the only one where I think there may be any truth at all in the allegations, and in his case it wouldn’t have happened, the whole thing wouldn’t have happened had the FBI not set up the situation and gone out to get him.

And I should say these are all people I knew personally. Two of them are people I knew before they were accused. And it happens to everyone. And the same thing happened to me. I blew the whistle on British complicity in torture, MI6′s complicity with torture in Uzbekistan and on extraordinary rendition. I was immediately charged with sexual allegations, in effect with extorting sex from visa applicants. It took me, you know, 18 months of real hell, to be honest, to clear my name. Because, you know, I know once people throw those kind of allegations at you, it tarnishes your name forever. It’s very easy to destroy someone’s reputation by sexual allegations.

So, for me, the absolutely extraordinary thing is that, you know, after this has happened to James Yee, happened to me, happened to Scott Ritter, happened to Janis Karpinski, they pulled the same trick again and again, and now it’s pulling it with Julian Assange, and anybody taking seriously these accusations astonishes me, because the idea that people just can’t see what is happening in the world and the way that whistleblowers are being persecuted, to me it’s astonishing. And the fact that none of what I’ve just said to you will you find reported in the mainstream media, you know, ought to really, really alarm people about the kind of world we live in.

06:30 ONN: Yes, there does seem to be a rather consistent failure by the mainstream media to address these issues. I mean, in your opinion, are journalists doing their job right?

CRAIG MURRAY: No. I mean, it seems to me there is very little actual journalism in the what you might call the paid media. And part of that, of course, is that, you know, the media is owned by a very small number of people, and really people have to write what their bosses want them to write. It’s very, very difficult to get the truth into the media on any subject at all. On top of which also, of course, newspapers actually employ far less journalists than they used to. There used to be a time when individual newspapers in Fleet Street had 30 or 40 foreign correspondents per newspaper. There aren’t actually now 30 or 40 foreign correspondents between the whole of the British newspaper industry. So just the number of them has gone down, and mostly they spend their time, you know, cutting and pasting government press releases and putting out the story, the story which the people who own the papers want them to hear.

The same goes for broadcast media, which again has precisely the same restricted private ownership, unless it’s owned by the government. Though the government of course is owned by the same people who own the newspapers — it really doesn’t make a great deal of difference.

08:10 ONN: So what do you think about the actual allegations, the actual substance of the allegations made against Julian Assange? I mean, is there any evidence at all that you can see of – ?

CRAIG MURRAY: I mean, to some extent it almost doesn’t matter because, as I say, having been through it myself and having seen all the whistleblowers I know go through it, it was only a matter of time before they did it to Julian Assange. So the question of what they charged him with or what evidence they managed to fake is almost irrelevant.

I would say, I think, you know, choosing rape and sexual allegations is very clever. The CIA do know what they are doing. Firstly, because nothing tarnishes your name in that way. People might forgive you for being a bank robber, they might even eventually forgive you for being a murderer, if you said you did it in the heat of the moment, but nobody will ever forgive you for being a rapist or a pedophile. So the choice of allegation is very clever.

Also, it splits the left. If the Birmingham Six had been charged with rape, they would still be in jail today, because nobody would ever have been allowed in public campaigning to query the evidence against them, because unfortunately, because of the genuine problems with rape, genuine rape, going unpunished in society, the reaction to that has been that many perfectly decent people think the only way to correct that imbalance is by removing essentially all protection to people accused of rape. And that view is deeply held by genuine and decent people who are concerned about the position of women in society. But once you have a social acceptance that you ought not to be allowed in public discourse to challenge people making accusations of rape, that makes it the perfect tool for a security service to use, because everyone has agreed in advance that it’s the one crime that no one’s going in campaigning against miscarriage of justice to challenge the evidence or challenge the accusers.

And, as I say, you have so many people on the left whose primary political concern is feminism, who are being used as useful idiots by the CIA, who have been sidetracked into vitriolic attacks on Julian Assange, who are calling people like me rape apologists, just because the CIA has been very, very careful to choose the one accusation which they will always uphold, be it true or not. That’s the main problem with the allegations.

But, no, I mean, it is well worth studying the detail both of the allegations themselves and of the people making the allegations and of the procedures which have been adopted. Because even if you didn’t know all the background I’ve given you about how whistleblowers are always fitted up with these allegations, even if you didn’t know that, just from a careful close examination of the evidence in this case, which is widely available on the Internet, anybody would conclude this was a fit-up. I don’t see how anyone can seriously study the facts of the case and not think it’s a fit-up.

11:46 ONN: You mentioned the other day, you were giving an interview, and you mentioned one of Assange’s accusers by name, Anna Ardin, and this caused a big uproar. I’ve been doing some digging and I found out that she is in fact a Social Democrat politician. Do you feel that these are facts that need to be made widely available to public? Do you stand by the fact that you named Anna Ardin as one of his accusers?

CRAIG MURRAY: Absolutely. The most important single point in this is that Anna Ardin named herself. She has given a number of interviews to the media under her own name accusing Julian Assange, the first one of which I can find was in August of 2010. But I found at least 30 media interviews that she has given where she is reported as Anna Ardin making these accusations. Now the idea — and saying that she does not work for the CIA. It was interesting that she feels the need to say that. Most of us don’t go around denying we work for the CIA. And also saying that, you know, Assange is a misogynist and a rapist and goodness knows what else.

The idea that you should be able to make such accusations to the media – I don’t mean privately in court – that you should be able under your own name to make such media accusations and nobody should be allowed to reply to you and nobody should be allowed to use your name, even though you put it yourself in the newspapers, is sort of Kafkaesque. I actually cannot understand for the life of me why I ought not be allowed to use it when she openly puts it in the public domain herself.

And there are, you know, over 200,000 Google hits on her name, and she has been named in the mainstream media of every single major country I can find except for the UK She’s been named in the New York Times. She’s been named in the Times of India. She’s been named in Paris Match. She’s been named in La Republica. She’s been named in Der Spiegel. The UK is actually the only country where she has never been named by the mainstream media, which again is very strange.

But, no, she herself is a character with a very, very interesting history and very, very interesting ties, political ties, which don’t relate only to the Social Democrat Party in Sweden but that network of people in the police, the prosecution and Anna Ardin who are all connected, who are all working on this case together, who all have party links, is something which would itself make the case inadmissible in any decent jurisdiction. But she also has a history that relates to work with CIA-funded agencies in Miami and Cuba and Buenos Aries. So the more people study Anna Ardin, the better.

15:04 ONN: You’ll be referring, of course, to the Ladies in White, a feminist organization in Cuba based in Miami as well. Is that –

CRAIG MURRAY: That’s right. Look, she has an interesting and varied history of working in causes which, let’s say where there’s a mutual area of interest in South America with the CIA.

15:33 ONN: It’s also interesting now that it is Ecuador that has come out, that originally granted protection to Assange within the embassy and has now granted him full asylum. So if extradited to Sweden, what do you think would be the fate that would await Julian Assange there?

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, his fear is that he would very quickly be extradited on from Sweden to the United States, either extradited or rendered. And the Swedes actually now have a sort of legal rendition law for speedy temporary rendition to the United States, as it’s called. That’s what is worrying Julian Assange. Though I should say, I mean, my experience of the way they treat whistleblowers and my experience of what we have seen of the process in Sweden, I would say there must be just as big a fear that he will be unjustly convicted of rape, which I’m quite sure he hasn’t done. But if he arrives in Sweden, he will immediately be jailed. There’s no provision for bail. And the thing which most people don’t understand is that rape trials in Sweden are held entirely in secret, so nobody would ever see any of the evidence. The next thing we will hear is the verdict. My own view is the most likely scenario is that it’s been cooked up well in advance and that verdict will be guilty. And it’s very possible to do that because not only is the trial held in secret but there is no jury.

Now I’m not one of those people who believes that only the British system of law is okay. Many countries have different systems and often those systems work very well. But what you do have with the jury system is a situation where ordinary men and women do have that chance to stand up to the authorities and to say what they believe to be true. It may not be a chance that they take very often, but that possibility is there. Where you don’t have a jury, as in Sweden, the chances of the government if it wishes to seriously influencing the result are pretty firm.

18:15 I would look at the Jean Charles de Menezes inquest, for example, in the United Kingdom. In that case, the judge, who’s appointed by the government – and remember that it’s basically a government decision not just which judges get appointed but allocating judges to particular cases. In that case the judge, and sadly his name’s escaped me because he was a complete bloody disgrace, he gave a summing up which was totally tendentious and in which he said that the jury would not be allowed to return a verdict of unlawful killing, and he would only give them the choice of two verdicts, one of which was an open verdict, and the other one was that the killing had been lawful, but he wouldn’t let allow them to bring a verdict of unlawful killing, he would rule that verdict out of order, which again is a complete disgrace. He made absolutely plain that the verdict he wanted was that it was lawful. But it didn’t happen. The jury came back and said no, we’re going to bring back an open verdict. And they did, much to the annoyance of the judge.

19:37 The Clive Ponting case, when he leaked the fact that the Belgrano was actually sailing away from the Falkland Islands at the time it was destroyed with hundreds of people killed, he was charged with that under the Official Secrets Act. There was no doubt he was guilty. He was undoubtedly technically guilty. The judge said so, pretty well, in his summing up of that case. And the jury basically told the judge to get knotted and found him not guilty. So there’s always that possibility with a jury system.

Assange wouldn’t have a jury. He would be judged by a professional judge and two lay assessors. And the lay assessors are actually party political appointments, quite literally. One will be appointed by the Swedish Conservative Party and one by the Swedish Social Democratic party. The Swedish Conservative Party is very strongly aligned to George Bush and the neocons and the Social Democratic Party are precisely the people that Anna Ardin and the prosecutor and the police investigator and Anna Ardin’s lawyer all come from. So, there is every chance that this secret process would result in a complete stitch-up.

And I think although people have focused on the fear of him being extradited from Sweden to the United States, and I think that’s true and I think it’s legitimate, my personal view is an even bigger danger is of a secret trial where nobody ever gets to know what the evidence was and they announce to a complacent media that he’s been found guilty of rape at the end of it.

21:17 ONN: And then it’s a done deal and there can be no preventing it.

CRAIG MURRAY: Exactly. Then it’s a done deal and they shove him in jail for 10 years. Then when at the end of that period he comes out, he’s sent over to the United States and tried on terrorism charges, whatever, and by that stage, of course, he’s a convicted rapist as far as the media is concerned, and anyway 10 years have passed and nobody cares anymore.

21:40 ONN: That would be a terrible outcome. What would you think, do you think would be the result if William Hague carried out his threat to storm the Ecuadorean embassy at this point?

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, it’s an absolutely astonishing threat. I should say that I know for certain from colleagues, ex-colleagues within the Foreign Office, that in issuing that threat, William Hague was very closely pushed by the Americans. He was under a lot of pressure from the United States of America to get Assange to Sweden. Which again, you know, rather contradicts those who say he would be under no fear of extradition if he went to Sweden. Why are the Americans so keen to get him there? Why are they interested?

But it was an astonishing threat, because everyone in the world, except perhaps the heads of government in the United Kingdom and the United States, would view that as a grossly illegal act. It would be an absolute diplomatic outrage and it would be a, you know, a crime of aggression against Ecuador. The diplomatic repercussions would be astonishing for the United Kingdom. First of all, no British embassy would be safe around the world, because everyone would say, “Well, we can do the same as you, we can de-designate your embassy and move in and take it over.” And secondly, our relations with not just Latin America but most of the developing world at least would be very, very seriously set back.

And you must remember that we have enough problems in Latin America already. First of all we’ve got the crazy jingoistic, on both sides, dispute over the Falkland Islands. Then you’ve got the fact we would not extradite Pinochet when we’re so keen on extraditing Assange for offenses which even if they were true wouldn’t add up to a hundred thousandth of what Pinochet did. And then you have, of course, as I said earlier, the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. The idea that the Metropolitan Police, having killed Jean Charles de Menezes, we would let them launch a physical attack on a Latin American embassy, is just astonishing.

So you know the repercussions would be enormous. And I think Hague has absolutely made a fool of himself because he’s made a threat which it would be totally disastrous were he to carry it out.

24:24 ONN: And what about the legality of such a thing? Using the 1987 Diplomatic Consular Premises Act is what Hague said, the legislation he said he’d use?

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, this is just utter nonsense because it can’t trump international law. You can’t have domestic legislation which is in conflict with international law, particularly an international treaty to which we are a party. We were actually I think the second signatory on the 1961 Vienna Convention, and it’s the single most subscribed to international treaty in the world. And interestingly enough, even the 1987 act in itself says that its provisions must be in accordance with international law, and it actually says that even in the 1987 act. Well it would be completely against international law for Hague to do what he’s planned to do. Article 22 of the Vienna Convention, Part 1, states absolutely baldly, without any qualification at all, that diplomatic premises are inviolable. Full stop. And they are. You know, you’re not allowed to enter anybody else’s diplomatic premises.

Even in the chaos of Afghanistan, Britain abandoned its embassy in Afghanistan, withdrew all its diplomats. I’m not sure of that. I don’t think we were chucked out. I think we left voluntarily. But at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Britain withdrew, and our embassy sat there empty for decades, through the Soviet occupation, through the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and the embassy building was only opened up again – although eventually we moved to new premises, it’s not the building we’re in now – but the original embassy building was only opened up again after the invasion in 2001, 2002. But it had been, for 20 years, it had sat there empty, under the Soviets and under the Taliban, and neither the Soviets nor the Taliban had entered the British embassy. Even though there was nobody there except a resident Afghan caretaker, they accepted the inviolability of embassy premises and they didn’t enter it, not the Soviets nor the Taliban. Now William Hague is proposing we should act much, much worse than either the Soviets or the Taliban, and this to me is absolutely astonishing. It beggars belief.

27:18 ONN: Okay, just one more question before we wrap up here, which was, what do you think the actual chances of Julian Assange running the gauntlet, so to speak, and making it to Ecuador safely? Do you see a way that he can manage to leave Britain now and get there to South America in safety?

CRAIG MURRAY: Physically it’s going to be very difficult. The chances of getting to Ecuador from the embassy in the middle of London without the agreement of the British authorities are limited. You can, you know, we can all think of sort of physical escape scenarios, but they’re not easy. There’s going to have to be a diplomatic solution. My guess would be that it will take a long while in coming, I think six months from now. There’s not going to be much public awareness that anything has changed, although talks will have been going on behind the scenes.

The obvious solution is for the Swedes to agree that they won’t extradite him to the United States, but the Swedes absolutely refuse to do that, and the United States refuses to say that it won’t apply for extradition, because frankly there’s no doubt whatsoever that the United States has convened a grand jury to look at prosecuting Assange and Wikileaks and has every intention of extraditing him to the United States. So all of that is very, very difficult.

You can see a kind of Lockerbie solution. The alleged Lockerbie bomber, Mr. Megrahi, was tried in the Hague under Scottish law by Scottish judges because they didn’t want to send him to Scotland and they agreed to hold the trial on mutual premises, and the Dutch agreed that a court in the Hague could actually be in effect under Scottish law for the period of the trial. It’s not the happiest precedent, because I think the trial was itself a stitch-up and a miscarriage of justice, but it does set a precedent for somebody being tried by another state on somebody else’s territory, so there is a precedent in international law if people were looking for that.

Now, as I’ve said myself, my own view is that a condition of any trial should be that it should be public. I think this case is so high-profile that people are entitled to know what evidence has been given, are entitled to know what the defense is, and frankly the defense is so strong that it would make it very, very difficult to do a stitch-up conviction. So something along those lines.

I really do not know at this stage what the end game is. The hope of the British government is that the Ecuadorean government will change. There’s an election coming up in Ecuador in the not so distant future. The British and American governments are relying on President Correa’s opponents — and his opponents are of course backed by the CIA anyway – will manage to win that election and then cancel his diplomatic asylum and hand him over, and that’s the end game as far as the British and Americans are concerned. So my guess is that they will wait for the outcome of the Ecuadorean election. I don’t think they will make any compromise at all until after the Ecuadorean election, in the hope that the government of Ecuador changes and that they will get a, basically a US puppet administration in Ecuador which will just hand him over.

31:49 ONN: Well, thank you very much for speaking with us today, Mr. Murray. It’s been fascinating and very informative. And thank you to our viewers. Thank you for watching this ONN interview. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Okay.

CRAIG MURRAY: Thank you.

* I have added in italics phrases on one particular point where I thought my meaning was obvious in context, but evidently from comments on another thread it was not.


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211 thoughts on “The Assange case

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  • VivaEcuador

    @SS:

    This is the govt’s new tactic. Hague is pretending this is all about the death penalty. “Hey Julian – don’t worry about those lethal injections. We’ll do our best to make sure you get a life sentence.”

  • John Goss

    Komodo, sorry about the slight with the forked-tongue stuff! I forgot about yours.

    “You never know with Blair whether the lie is going to slip off the end of the right fork or the left fork of his duplicitous tongue! But you know it will slip out one way or the other.”

  • Komodo

    Seems to me the Yanks could cook up a much better case against Assange than the Swedes have proved to do. One much less likely to crash on procedural and pre-publicity grounds. And if that is the case (18 U.S.C. § 2315 – receiving stolen goods – looks like a contender) and as the stolen goods are US property, dual criminality applies; he can be extradited without actually making the law look an ass. Could still get him some years in the slammer on its own, and deprive him of the claim that he is seeking political asylum.
    Just saying.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq Association

    Nuid,

    This by Pexton makes little sense to me:

    ‘I don’t think many people fault Israel for having nuclear weapons. If I were a child of the Holocaust, I, too, would want such a deterrent to annihilation.’

    A child of whatever holocaust would find any weapons of mass destruction that debase existence offensive.

    Israel conducted a nuclear bomb test with South Africa in 1979 according to secret cables, satellite observation and Albright’s research.

    Today we know Israel is equipping German built submarines with nuclear tipped cruise missiles according to Der Spiegel, a dangerous proliferation that threatens an already fragile world peace and in the absence of any kind of international supervision (much like the Palestinian land grab).

    “..I’ve broken my silence

    because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy.. Gunter Grass

  • Mary

    I signed that petition to Gove this morning Jon. There were over 98,000 signatures then. Now there are over 125,000 which shows that the people do care about these matters.

    Do you think that these petitions to the ConDems are given any consideration by them or are they a pretence that we are allowed to express ourselves? I think that their plan to flog off our forests and woodlands was foiled because of the level of protest.

    btw has pagination here been cancelled?

    John Goss and Komodo LOL ref Ms Brooks.

  • Jon

    @Mary: I don’t think any one of the main parties in the UK are swayed by petitions more or less than the others, but to all of them a popular petition can make an incremental difference. Even within the limitations of our democratic representation, these – and the “hand-in” stunt for the cameras – can chip away at a party’s valuable poll ratings.

    Pagination still works – I set it at 200 comments/page, so a good number of recent contributions can be found using the browser Find feature. I figured if I set it at 20, we might have 50+ pages to wade through on large discussions – which is a pain if you want to find a specific comment. (I could bring it down to, say, 150 if people still find pages slow to load.)

  • CE

    So if both the UK and Sweden would have to agree to have JA extradited from Sweden, wouldn’t this imaginary extradition have more chance of success when JA is in the UK?

    Also, why did he even bother to admit himself to the British legal process, if as soon as had exhausted(and lost) all options, he was planning on skipping bail and making a mockery of political asylum?

  • Mary

    Agree with Jives. Thanks Jon for your unseen (but not unappreciated) backroom work.

    LOL Komodo. Is this really true about La Mensch’s top up income?

    Dave Cameroon ‏@DaveCamm
    So @loubermensch u earned £75,656.51 from media work on top of your MP’s salary last year meaning u earned as much as me. Go Dutch next date.
    ~~~~~
    The troughers are back in Pugin’s Palace. Cleggover holding forth on that most pressing matter, above all others, namely House of Lords reform which was linked to a boundary review. Both abandoned as the deal has fallen through. £11.9m has been wasted on the boundary review.

  • Jives

    CE,

    1. Its more politically vexatious to do it direct from UK. Check the lengthy process of the Gary McKinnon case. Sweden would more likely to be seen as less partisan to the US than UK – although wrongly so I would argue.

    2. Assange has good reason to feel persecuted and being stitched up without a fair and open trial.This is precisely why diplomatic immunity laws exist. It was Hague, not JA, who made a mockery of the process by, quite staggeringly, threatening the inviolability of diplomatic privilege and protocol.

  • CE

    Jives,

    I agree with you 100% regarding Hague’s ridiculous and offensive threat to storm the embassy, but JA is not a diplomat claiming diplomatic immunity. He is an alleged sex offender claiming and manipulating the political asylum system.

    The idea of Sweden not providing someone a fair trial is laughable. However, I will agree that due to AA’s media interviews she has probably forgone the right to a private hearing she is afforded under Swedish law.

    Pure conjecture, but I think the US has no intention of extraditing JA now. Why bother making a martyr out of him, when this (along with the compromising of dissidents and informants) has done a better job of ruining his reputation than they ever could. But will they commit to not extraditing him in order to make his life easier? I doubt it, they’re probably enjoying watching him squirm.

  • VivaEcuador

    CE:

    You seem to think that repeating yourself somehow makes your argument more valid.

    In fact, it’s about as effective as your attempt to have comments here censored.

  • Dave

    I just read Hague being quoted in the Guardian as having said that Britain and Sweden have the highest standards of human rights.

    This is laughable, and downright dishonest. Talk to any father who has had the misfortune of defending his kids against institutional child abuse in the family courts here. They’ll tell you a lot about human rights in the UK. It took me 18 months to clear myself of false allegations, and restore the shared parenting relationship that my kid enjoyed prior to separation.

    I have no sympathy for those in power who sing the praises of social justice when they know that such things are contaminated through and through by a deeply pathological form of politics.

    Those who deny social injustice are merely those who have an interest in perpetuating it.

  • Dave

    CE – what is it that you stand to gain by trying to cloak these matters in a bag of lies? Really!

  • Jives

    CE,

    I think political asylum comes under the aegis and protocols of diplomatic immunity, certainly in terms of sovereignty.

    Why would it be laughable to fear a fair trial in Sweden? Looking at the highly suspicious and connected actions of Ardin and her cronies in the political,judicial and law enforcement establishment I, for one, sense something deeply sinister going on. Not least her deletion of tweets, and all legal protocols breached when she had her police pal conduct a wholly improper interview, which Ardin should not have attended. The list of strange practice at the Swedish end runs long and I wont go into them here as I’m sure you are aware of them.

    Also, if the US have no plans to extradite or pursue AA but simply want to “see him squirm” as you put it.. well, under any international human rights legislation you like that is most definitely persecution and quite possibly arguable as psychological torture.

    It stinks CE, it stinks very badly indeed.

  • nuid

    “This by Pexton makes little sense to me”

    No, Mark, it doesn’t make sense. But he can now say he’s written about the subject (while genuflecting to the line that “Israel has a right to defend itself”, blah blah.)

    He also neglected to say that by not acknowledging possession of nuclear weapons, Israel avoids a US prohibition on funding countries which proliferate weapons of mass destruction, and that an admission would prevent Israel from receiving over $3 billion each year in military and other aid from Washington.

    And he does say that “Mordechai Vanunu was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Italy, taken home to trial, convicted and served 18 years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement”, but he doesn’t bother to mention that he’s still not free.

    All in all, it’s a tiny little toe-dip into the subject. But I was surprised it was there at all.

    By the way, Nevermind, the article does mention Dimona but in an obscure way. If you click on the name Mordechai Vanunu in the column it brings up this:
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2006/02/16/PH2006021601907.html

  • JimmyGiro

    Steve Cook @3 Sep, 2012 – 12:18 pm

    Thanks for the feedback. I’m often reminded by this quote from Ayn Rand, in Atlas Shrugged:

    “Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against. We’re after power and we mean it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.

  • N_

    Is Foreign Secretary William Hague taking the piss?

    He is quoted as follows in the Guardian today:

    The suggestion that Mr Assange’s human rights would be put at risk by the possibility of onward extradition from Sweden to a third country is also without foundation. Not only would Sweden – as a signatory to the European convention on human rights – be required to refuse extradition in circumstances which would breach his human rights, but the authorities in Sweden would also be legally obliged to seek the United Kingdom’s consent before any extradition to a non-EU member state could proceed.”

    “Our consent may only be given in accordance with the international conventions by which the UK is bound, including the European convention on human rights, and also our domestic law. In practice, this means that the United Kingdom could only consent to Mr Assange’s onward extradition from Sweden to a third country if satisfied that extradition would be compatible with his human rights, and that there was no prospect of a death sentence being imposed or carried out.

    There’s a simple answer to that: what about the unlawful actions that the UK and Sweden have already committed, when they have helped the CIA kidnap and transport people to be tortured?

    Have they apologised? Have they paid compensation? Have they promised not to do it again? Have they offered themselves for prosecution?

    Given the UK and Swedish governments’ clear guilt in this area, no assurance that they will respect their international obligations regarding human rights (such as their obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture) is worth anything whatsoever.

    Their guilt is not hypothetical.

    Nor is the use of torture by the US authorities, who have tortured Bradley Manning in relation to the wonderful work he has done revealing to Wikileaks numerous crimes committed by the US authorities around the world. He remains unlawfully jailed. He remains facing the possibility of a death sentence for his heroic actions.

    The word ‘hero’ is overused, but if it does not apply to people like Bradley Manning and Mordechai Vanunu, who does it apply to?

    In 2008, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said

    As part of our close co-operation [with the US], there has long been a regular exchange with the US authorities, in which we have set out: that we expect them to seek permission to render detainees via UK territory and airspace, including Overseas Territories; that we will grant that permission only if we are satisfied that the rendition would accord with UK law and our international obligations; and how we understand our obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture.

    Does this seem familiar? It’s exactly the same worthless assurance currently being spouted by William Hague.

    Can we have a response from Ecuador please.

  • Jives

    Hague seems most determined to make himsel look a bigger and continuing fool than he was before.

    Thats quite some achievement.

  • N_

    Ha – Green’s article! What a cutting-pasting special pleader for the Foreign Office!

    First, Assange’s supporters often refer to the dreadful 2001 case of Agiza and Al-Zery. Here, in an extra-judicial move, two men were renditioned by Sweden to Egypt at the request of the CIA.”

    “Is this case analogous to the Assange extradition? The first answer is that there is a distinction between judicial and extra-judicial activities – and Assange is wanted for a judicial process.”

    !!!

    “Extra-judicial” is a funny way to spell “unlawful”. How naughty we are for supporting Julian Assange! When we say he’s right to fear extradition to the US, we should say rendition rather than extradition, is that right? Or some other “-ition” that crops up in a few months time?

    The point is that the UK and Sweden unlawfully help the US in its unlawful war effort, including in detaining and torturing people who reveal truths about it that they don’t want revealed. But according to Green no-one must say that in court?

    His stupid arguments just come down to the idea that the UK and Sweden must abide by international law. Well they haven’t been doing very well at that, have they?

  • Jane Glover

    If it’s so well known that whistle blowers are fitted up with non whistleblowing allegations against them, why was Assange having sex with these women in the first place? Seems a remarkably naive move and he only has himself to blame for the fallout.

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