** Assange Wins Case Against Extradition To US
Infowars, Steve Watson – 04/Jan/2021
- Article - https://www.infowars.com/posts/assange-wins-case-against-extradition-to-us/
-- Judge rules 'risk of suicide' is too great to extradite the Wikileaks founder
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not be extradited to the US after a shock ruling in his favour at London’s Old Bailey courthouse.
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that extradition at this point to the US to face 18 counts of espionage would worsen Assange’s already extremely fragile mental state.
“Faced with conditions of near total isolation … I am satisfied that the procedures (outline by U.S. authorities) will not prevent Mr. Assange from finding a way to commit suicide,” she said.
In September, psychiatrist Michael Kopelman testified that Assange has “begun making preparations to end his own life including confessing to a Catholic priest, drafting farewell letters to his family and drafting a will.”
Since his dramatic arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019, Assange has been languishing in Belmarsh, a notoriously horrid maximum security prison housing murderers and terrorists. For much of the time Assange has been kept heavily medicated in solitary confinement.
Cassandra Fairbanks of http://gatewaypundit.com joins guest host Owen Shroyer on The Alex Jones Show to call for Trump to take action on pardoning Julian Assange.
During the conclusion of today’s hearing, the judge ruled however that freedom of speech rights do not provide “unfettered discretion by Mr Assange to decide what he’s going to publish”.
The judge added Assanges activities went far beyond “encouraging a journalist,” and do constitute ‘conspiracy’ to hack US government computers.
The New York Times described the ruling as “…a major victory against the U.S. authorities who have accused him of conspiring to hack government computers and violating the Espionage Act with the release of confidential communications in 2010 and 2011.”
Assange supporters gathered outside the court celebrated the ruling:
The US now has 15 days to appeal the ruling. Given that the judge did validate the prosecution’s case against Assange, it is expected that the US legal team will now try to argue that Assange’s risk of suicide is not as heightened as the defense has suggested.
** Mexico offers Julian Assange political asylum to avoid extradition to US
- NY Post, Blacklisted News, Lee Brown - 04/Jan/2021
- Article - https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/78941/mexico-offers-julian-assange-political-asylum-to-avoid-extradition-to.html
-- Mexico on Monday offered political asylum to Julian Assange to further protect him from extradition to the US.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said it was his nation’s “responsibility” to offer protection after the US announced it was appealing a UK court decision not to extradite the WikiLeaks founder, who faces up to 175 years in prison for espionage charges.
“Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance. I am in favor of pardoning him,” Lopez Obrador said. “We’ll give him protection.”
Assange remains in custody until at least Wednesday, when his lawyers plan to fight for his release at a bail hearing.
“I’m going to ask the foreign minister to carry out the relevant procedures to request that the UK government releases Mr. Assange and that Mexico offers him political asylum,” Lopez Obrador told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
US prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of leaked military and diplomatic documents a decade ago.
** Julian Assange: “We’re going to fuck them all... crack the world open and let it flower into something new.’
** WikiLeaks exists to help you safely reveal important material to the world. We have an unbroken record in protecting confidential sources.
** I want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public, or maybe I’m just young, naive, and stupid...
** We steal secrets
** This is not the liberal democracy that we had all dreamed of. This is an encroaching, privatized censorship regime.
** Massive leak of secret files exposes true Afghan war.
** Siddhartha: “Three things cannot hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth”