by RICHARD PHILLIPS
Christine Assange
Christine Assange, the mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, spoke with the World Socialist Web Site last week during US President Barack Obama’s visit to Australia. Early this month, Britain’s High Court dismissed an appeal by Julian Assange against his extradition to Sweden on frame-up charges of rape and sexual assault.
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Last year Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard denounced Assange, declaring that posting US diplomatic cables on WikiLeaks was “grossly irresponsible” and “illegal.” Attorney-General Robert McClelland pledged to “support any law enforcement action that may be taken” against Assange and hinting his passport could be cancelled. Gillard and McClelland in effect pronounced Assange guilty before being even charged or tried.
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Richard Phillips: Can you comment on the recent British High Court decision upholding Julian’s extradition to Sweden?
Christine Assange: Julian has made an appeal application to the British High Court for his case against extradition to be heard in the Supreme Court. The High Court will make its decision on December 4 but it will be heard by the same two people who disallowed his previous appeal, and they’ll decide on “public interest” grounds whether he can appeal to the Supreme Court.
I believe that there are extreme “public interest” grounds, given that the case is entirely political. There’s freedom of speech issues and secondly, the European Arrest Warrant system has been long criticised for its injustices. Various legal safeguards were taken off the European Arrest Warrant after 9/11 for the US to pursue terrorists but it is now being used across the board. Apparently three people a day are being extradited from the UK using this system for all sorts of minor offences. This system plays right into the US attempts to get Julian onto their soil.
RP: What are the dangers if he is extradited?
CA: If Julian goes to Sweden, he’ll be immediately placed in prison. There’s no bail for foreigners so he could be in jail indefinitely before he’s even charged. He will not be allowed to see lawyers or family and kept in solitary confinement in Gothenburg prison, which Fair Trials International has said is the worst prison in Europe.
The idea of Sweden being this nice friendly civilised democracy is not, in fact, true. All the protocols in gathering evidence have been breached and they’ve refused to provide evidence to Julian’s defence team so he can’t be guaranteed a fair trial on the basis of evidence. There are four judges—one is a real judge, the other three are appointed by political parties and have no training whatsoever. This means that Julian doesn’t have the benefit of a jury or people watching that are not involved politically.
Sweden also has a huge arms contract with the US over Iraq, absolutely huge, and it has never refused to not extradite anyone to the US. The US and Sweden have a separate bilateral treaty that allows them to get around the normal safeguards—it’s a tick box straight to the US.
There’s also the danger that he could be illegally rendered via a black-ops scenario. He could be grabbed off the street by SAPO, the Swedish secret police, and either injected or given an anal suppository to sedate him and then put in a nappy and in overalls and whisked off for CIA torture at a black site in Europe. Alternatively, he could be rendered to a third country, like Egypt, where torture is legal and out of the way of the western media.
If he goes via the bilateral treaty it’ll be straight to the US where a Grand Jury is currently being convened. The Grand Jury will be in Virginia and will no doubt be drawn from families of military intelligence personnel and US contractors. American-style justice in this case allows four prosecutors to give evidence but the defence lawyers are not allowed to give evidence.
[US soldier] Bradley Manning is being tortured so that out of desperation and pain, he’ll fabricate claims of involvement with Julian. This, of course, is not true and is why WikiLeaks has an anonymous drop box so that everybody is protected.
Manning has been very courageous but he’s been held in terrible conditions—eight months in solitary confinement, 23 hours a day in a tiny cell and only allowed an hour exercise, walking in circles with four guards present. He wasn’t even allowed to have his glasses or to read anything and has no access to television and radio, and only very, very restricted visitation.
Although the prison psychologist said that Manning was not at risk of harming himself he was put under suicide watch so that they could intensify their torture. He was woken every five minutes, stripped naked at night and put into a very rough smock, which chaffed his skin, and each morning had to present naked in front of everybody else, which is very humiliating. Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, has stated that these are classic CIA methods and called “no touch” torture.
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