"Assange, prisoner of liars."

'Who among us is prepared to stand up?'

Among the Ecuadorans. The embassy in London. (James Hobbs, cc by NC 2.0/ Creative Commons.)

Let us look at ourselves, if we have the courage, to see what is happening to us.

 —— Sartre, Preface to The Wretched of the Earth, 1961.

By John Pilger

19 DECEMBER—Jean–Paul Sartre’s words should echo in all our minds following the grotesque decision of Britain’s High Court, on 10 December, to allow the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States, where he faces “a living death.” This is his punishment for the crime of authentic, accurate, courageous, vital journalism.

Miscarriage of justice is an inadequate term in these circumstances. It took the bewigged courtiers of Britain’s ancien régime nine minutes on that fateful Friday to uphold an American appeal against a District Court judge’s acceptance last January of a cataract of evidence that hell on earth awaited Assange across the Atlantic—a hell in that, it was expertly predicted, he would find a way to take his own life.

Volumes of witness were ignored as the January judgment was reversed. These were given by people of distinction who examined and studied Julian and diagnosed his Asperger Syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum, and revealed that he had already come within an ace of killing himself at Belmarsh prison, Britain’s very own hell.

The confession of Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, that he had fabricated his evidence against Julian, was ignored. Thordarson was a crucial FBI informant and prosecution stooge, a fraudster and serial liar. The revelation that Undercover Global was a C.I.A. front was ignored. UC Global was the Spanish-run firm contracted to provide security at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where Julian had been granted political refuge. It spied on Julian’s lawyers and doctors and confidants (myself included).  

The recent journalistic disclosure, repeated graphically by defence counsel before the High Court in October, that the C.I.A. had planned to kidnap or murder Julian in London—even this was ignored.