https://youtu.be/OQXdnS-JmkI

By Neenah Payne

Will This Revelation Free Julian Assange? shows why the case of the United States against Australian publisher Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, suddenly fell apart.

Key Witness In Julian Assange Case ADMITS TO LYING provides a quick overview of the case against Assange whose “crime” was reporting the war crimes of the United States revealed to him by former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (then Bradley Manning) in 2010 which showed that the US military was targeting and killing civilians 66,000 unarmed civilians in Iraq. Assange is awaiting an extradition hearing from Britain by the United Sates where he faces 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one of conspiracy to commit computer instruction for leaking classified documents. All charges relate to 700,000 classified documents handed to WikiLeaks.

The hearings on the Assange extradition in January 2020 didn’t go well for the US government. The arguments that political extradition is banned by the UK/US extradition treaty and that the publisher was not responsible for Chelsea Manning’s whistleblowing on war crimes, appeared to be strong. The US Justice Department decided it therefore needed to discover some “crimes” by Assange that seemed less noble than the Manning revelations.

So, the FBI turned to an informant in Iceland, Sigi Thordarson, who testified that Assange had been involved with him in hacking private banking information and tracking Icelandic police vehicles. This was much easier to portray as crime, as opposed to journalism, so the second superseding indictment was produced based on Thordarson’s story. However, the case against Assange fell apart when Thordarson (a convicted criminal) recently admitted that his testimony against Assange was entirely false.
US Extradition Appeal Granted

Yet UK High Court Grants US Permission for Appeal in Assange Extradition Case shows that Assange’s legal team said the UK’s High Court granted permission to the US government to appeal the decision that blocked Assange’s extradition.

While the British court’s original decision barred extradition on the grounds of Assange’s health and US inhumane prison conditions, the second superseding indictment and Thordarson’s accusations were accepted as a valid basis for extradition. If extradited, Assange will be tried in a Virginia court where he will probably be found guilty and would face 175 years in prison. The court reportedly granted the appeal “on a limited basis” and on “narrow, technical grounds,” and did not set a date for a future court hearing.

The ruling led to intensified calls by Assange’s supporters for his release from Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh where he has been held for more than two years following seven years in isolation at the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he claimed asylum. Stella Moris, Assange’s fiancée, said the High Court’s decision “means he is still at risk of extradition where he faces a 175-year prison sentence and…is certain to lose his life if he is extradited.”

Assange UPDATE: Appeal Granted After NO TORTURE Vow (For Now) Katie Halper Calls Out RESISTANCE LIBS On July 8, Katie Halper, host of The Katie Halper Show Podcast, explained that this case is not just about Julian Assange. It is about our First Amendment rights and freedom of the press which is the foundation of democracy. She says this story should be all over the media. Halper points out that Americans who believe The New York Times should be free to publish should remember that it published stories it received from WikiLeaks. The Obama administration dropped its pursuit of the Assange case because of what is called “the NYTimes’ problem”. If Assange is guilty of publishing the information, so is The New York Times. Halper calls on Biden to drop the case now.