11 April 2020|Diário do Centro do Mundo|Mohamed Elmaazi
Today is the one year anniversary of the arrest and detention of Julian Assange by the Metropolitan Police Service after the Ecuadorian Embassy illegally rescinded his asylum.
This article was drafted for the Brazilian publication Diário do Centro do Mundo where a version appears in Portuguese.
One year ago, today on 11 April 2019, Julian Assange was carried out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. That infamous moment, when members of the Metropolitan Police Service dragged the weak and sickly-looking WikiLeaks publisher out of his former sanctuary, was broadcast around the world.
Only one week earlier was the 10 year anniversary of WikiLeaks‘ release of the notorious “Collateral Murder” video.
Many suspect that the decision of the Ecuadorian government of Lenin Moreno to renege on the protections granted by his predecessor was the product of backroom deals done with Donald Trump’s administration. This deal, it is suspected, included the authorisation of a $4.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund only one month before Assange was taken from the Embassy.
Assange had spent nearly seven years in the embassy, with the final year or so under conditions which became so severe that his father John Shipton described the situation as one of ‘total surveillance’ – where even his privileged legal communications were being intercepted, including in the women’s toilets.
The UN working group on arbitrary detention found that Assange was being illegally detained and called for him to be freed immediately. Yet despite that decision and despite the international prohibition against rescinding an asylee’s protection (known as non-refoulment) if the danger which resulted in granting that protection still remains, the 48-year-old was stripped of his Ecuadorian citizenship and handed over to British authorities.
Since then the multi-award-winning journalist has spent the past year in Belmarsh the UK’s notorious maximum-security prison. A place reserved, we are told, for the ‘worst of the worst’. The most dangerous and violent offenders. Despite completing his 50-week sentence for violating his bail conditions, when he first sought and obtained asylum all those years ago, Assange remains incarcerated as he challenges his extradition to the United States.
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser refused his application for bail made on 25 March and two weeks later ruled that the substantive extradition hearings will restart on 18 May, as was initially planned. This is despite the fact that she was told by defence lawyers that they can’t consult with their client for the upcoming hearings because all visitation to prisons is barred due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The legal team was already having severe problems accessing their client before then. A matter which the judge showed little interest in and repeatedly refused to intervene on.
Assange has had four separate respiratory tract infections, Baraitser was told, and he was therefore especially vulnerable to becoming severely impacted by the virus. There has already been at least one recorded death from the virus in Belmarsh, over 100 of the prison staff are self-isolating and at least 15 other prisoners are said to be infected. The prison estate in England and Wales, which has been terribly overcrowded for years, is on the verge of the very kind of outbreak that experts have been warning of.
Perhaps it is unsurprising that Baraitser refused both Assange’s application for bail and the motion to adjourn the second part of the hearing to later in the year. After all this is the same judge who was not persuaded by the opinion of the UN special rapporteur on torture, and that of two other medical experts, that the incarcerated journalist shows clear symptoms of someone who has been ‘psychologically tortured’.
So, he remains in prison, even while countries around the world, including Iran, are releasing thousands of prisoners due to the fear of the spread of COVID-19 through their detention facilities. The UK government has finally announced they will release up to 4,000 non-violent prisoners (far less than the 15,000 apparently being called for by the Prison Governors’ Association) who are nearing the end of their sentences. Assange won’t qualify for this early release scheme because, we have been told, he is on remand and therefore has yet to be convicted of an offence. As Kafkaesque an explanation from Britain’s Ministry of Justice as one is ever likely come across.
“Convicted prisoners and persons on remand are among those most vulnerable to viral contagion as they are held in a high-risk environment” Dunja Mijatovic the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner recently said. “[I]n general, detention facilities are not adapted to face large-scale epidemics” she added while calling for detention to be used only as a last resort. This is the message also coming out the World Health Organization, the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee and other expert bodies.
But it’s clear Judge Baraitser wants Assange’s extradition hearing to be completed as soon as possible. She pointed out that the government will be restarting other extradition hearings on 20 April and so she has to assume that the ‘global picture’ will permit the substantive hearings in his case to go ahead as normal. She failed to address the impact on Assange’s right to a fair hearing, who knows, that may end up being grounds for an appeal against her ultimate decision.
Baraitser said she is open to changing her mind if the facts on the ground change though one wonders how bad things must get before she will.
The author is a UK-based journalist and contributor to outlets including Open Democracy, The Canary, The Grayzone, and Sputnik International and editor of The Interregnum.net.
He has attended most of the extradition hearings since they first began and tweets @MElmaazi.