UK/US ‘justice’ – Assange extradition hearing
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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/20/joe-biden-julian-assange-extradition-tribunal
Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for demanding the release of journalists detained around the world while seeking the extradition of Julian Assange from Britain to face American espionage charges.
The charges against Assange were an “ongoing attack on press freedom” because the WikiLeaks founder was not a spy but a journalist and publisher protected by free speech laws.
“This is an attack on press freedom globally – that’s because the United States is advancing what I think is really the extraordinary claim that it can impose its criminal secrecy laws on a foreign publisher who was publishing outside the United States”
“Every country has secrecy laws. Some countries have very draconian secrecy laws. If those countries tried to extradite New York Times reporters and publishers to those countries for publishing their secrets we would cry foul and rightly so. Does this administration want to be the first to establish the global precedent that countries can demand the extradition of foreign reporters and publishers for violating their own laws?”
Jonathan Cook’s text from his address at #FreeTheTruth: Secret Power, Media Freedom and Democracy, at St Pancras Church, London, on Saturday, Jan. 28 January.
Julian Assange expected to be freed in US plea deal
Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with US prosecutors that would end the WikiLeaks founder’s long-running legal saga over leaked documents and ultimately allow him to walk free after years of incarceration and confinement.
According to court filings on Monday, Assange has agreed with the US Department of Justice to plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate classified information linked to US national defence, in connection with what prosecutors have described as one of the biggest compromises of classified material in the country’s history.
He is scheduled to submit his plea on Wednesday morning in federal court in Saipan, which is part of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth north of Guam. Sentencing is set to happen immediately after the plea submission. Assange has already served 62 months in a UK jail and prosecutors are not seeking additional imprisonment.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/julian-assange-wikileaks-freed-us-b2568201.html
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