Wikileaks founder’s forced extraction from Ecuadorian embassy linked to US prosecution plan
The government has confirmed that its arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange this morning is in connection with a US extradition request. Assange has always insisted that he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy because the US wanted to try him in relation to US information released by Wikileaks.
There have also been reports that the US was leaning on the Ecuadorian government to withdraw Assange’s asylum – which it has now done even though it has a legal duty under its own laws to protect Assange, who has Ecuadorian citizenship, from extradition.
The move was widely condemned this morning, with renowned journalist John Pilger damning the move as a ‘warning to all journalists‘.
SKWAWKBOX comment:
If extradited, Assange would almost certainly face detention for life in a US ‘supermax’ facility. There is little expectation of a fair hearing.
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Is anyone surprised!
Unsurprisingly there appears to be a concerted campaign to trash Julianne on all BBC news outlets. Hardly a mention of the American war crimes that he exposed.
Ecuador has lurched to the right under Morono and is no longer a friend of freedom or progressive politics. Another of “America’s bitches” who may have sent this man to his death while our govt shamefully collaborates.
Anyone who tries to hold governments to account gets crushed. The Tories proving once again that they are America’s poodle.
Has the Swedish charges relating to sexual assault been dropped ?
yes they were ages ago.
They are looking into whether they can be resumed…..
There appears to be 2 major political parties in GB, one evil & the other without convictions. Time to get up & stand up for people…………people like Julian Assange & Chris Williamson or even the Palestinian people. No? Get back to your beds, wring your hands & say I tried. The Labour Party is impotent! Where are the Labour MPs who are worth a balloon?
I agree,where is our shadow foreign sec,celebrating Netanyahu being re-elected I expect.
Some loathsome woman was on Politics Live earlier calling Assange “narcissistic” for draining police resources when there’s a knife crime epidemic going on! No shit.
Yeah, like he INSISTED on incarcerating himself because he’s an attention-seeker! And he DEMANDED that police stakeout! Of course (smacks forehead)! Coming on the heels of a probable Netanyahu election victory, this is a grim time for humanity.
It seems they rushed this to a conclusion before the govt could fall. Assange would’ve been safe once Corbyn entered No 10…
Another loathsome woman was said to comment on hearing of Assange’s arrest, “No-one is above the law”.
This particular individual presently resides in No. 10 Downing Street and believes she is Prime Minister of the UK. (She is not, in anything but name. The true PM sits directly opposite her in the House of Commons).
More evidence, if any is needed, that Theresa May needs to go, and needs to go NOW!
Now watch the smears and character assisinations step up a notch…
Ecuador’s former president, Rafael Correa, who granted Assange asylum, denounced the decision:
‘The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange. Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget.’
One of history’s little ironies – the Equadorian traitor is named after one of the greatest socialists of all time, the leader of the great October Revolution of 1917.
Almost beyond belief.
In the first months of the Russian Revolution in 1917 before it all eventually went wrong (with top down bourgeois socialist leaders taking the power for themselves and telling working people how to live their lives) the USSR did two great services to the working people of Humanity.
Firstly they leaked papers on how the elite Western Capitalist Imperial powers secretly operated, and then they called for the right of self-determination for all countries which put the elite imperialist powers on the back foot and set an international precedent.
And it could be argued that Wikileaks a few years ago re the secrecy of capitalist powers carried out a similar function for the modern World.
The Right Wing Capitalist Barbarians were exposed in 1917 and the Neo-Liberal Capitalisf Barbarians are similarly exposed today.
The Tories in the UK and Right Wing Govts elsewhere pretend to rule in the National Interest but read Capitalist Interest!
No Wikileaks journalist should be extradited to the USA but Blair and Bush should be extradited to The Hague for Crimes Against Humanity re Iraq.
Tory Ministers should perhaps too if evidence shows the first UK bombings in Syria a few years ago against petrol distilling stations and oil refineries were staffed by civilians?
Some of us posed the question which was never answered but recently we were told that I think the UK flew 5,000 sorties in Syria and nearby and apparently there was one civilian casualty – it’s a miracle I tell you!
We need to hold the Tories and co Right Wing Neo-Liberal Capitalist Global Barbarians to account.
International Solidarity!
Hard to believe sometimes we’re where we are. Tax fraud exposed, WMD lies exposed, MSM bias exposed, Israeli subversion exposed, stealth sale of NHS, denounced by UN rapporteur, election fraud, arms sales to dictatorships and a dozen other good reasons for the Tories and their masters to be under the ground and ‘the people’ just carry on thanking them for the scraps and voting them back in.
Meanwhile the 1% spend fortunes on bunkers and try to figure out how to keep their private armies loyal when the planet’s dying, there’s no money and nothing to buy.
“the Russian Revolution in 1917 before it all eventually went wrong (with top down bourgeois socialist leaders taking the power for themselves”
Oh dear, Bazza. What have you been reading? I’m afraid that the history of the Russian revolution wasn’t about the betrayal of the working class by the bourgeoisie. There was no such simple-minded class-based thread.
You need a fucking great shoe-horn to make that narrative fit, given the impeccable bourgeois + working class + (some) aristocratic roots of the revolution. There is no automatic merit or demerit in a class designation. It describes an economic/cultural fact.
The 7 years of lies about Assange won’t stop now
Jonathan Cook – 11 April 2019
For seven years, from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2019-04-11/julian-assange-lies-arrest/
I don’t know if anyone’s already linked to this but it’s Wikileaks’ own statement on the INA papers and on their own and Assange’s non-existent involvement in the leaking of them, despite the accusations and hype coming from Ecuador to excuse their vile actions.
https://defend.wikileaks.org/2019/04/03/ecuador-twists-embarrassing-ina-papers-into-pretext-to-oust-assange/