Finally. After more than five years locked inside HMP Belmarsh, Britain’s most secure prison, and seven years confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange can breathe some fresh, free air. It is certainly a day to celebrate, but also one to demand answers. Why – why, for heaven’s sake – has it taken so long? And what about all the others who languish in crazily overcrowded British jails?
It seems appropriate that Assange’s release, on the basis of a deal that gives the US government the fig leaf of a guilty plea, occurred in the very week before a general election, in the country where he was detained for all those years. Voters seem likely to dispose of a government whose feeble home secretaries, from Priti Patel onwards, bowed the knee to the US on its extradition request when they could have easily followed the brave path that Theresa May took when she was home secretary in 2012, declining to allow the removal to the US of the hacker Gary McKinnon. But what lessons have any of our politicians – or our judges – learned?
Although he has been detained in Britain, shockingly it is Australian politicians who have made the most noise about the case. Over a year ago, the Labour MP Richard Burgon organised a letter to the US attorney general that was signed by 35 MPs and members of the House of Lords from six parties. The letter stated that “British parliamentarians are increasingly alarmed by the potential extradition of Julian Assange to the United States … Any extradition would, in effect, be putting press freedom on trial. It would set a dangerous precedent for journalists and publishers around the world.” But why were there so few prepared to put their names to it?
Neither Labour nor the Conservatives have essentially challenged the imbalance between the US and the UK over the issue of extradition, or fought openly for the right of Assange and WikiLeaks to expose the crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, carried out in the name of the US. When Patel gave the go-ahead for his extradition in 2022, the home office spokesperson justified it saying “the UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust or an abuse of process to extradite Mr Assange. Nor have they found that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression”. What nonsense that was, but why did no senior politicians protest at the time? What were they so frightened of? Two years ago, Andrew Neil – no fan of Assange and certainly no lefty – wrote “when democracy is under threat from Ukraine to Hong Kong, far better for Britain to refuse to extradite Assange and send a clear message – a clarion call – to the free world and beyond: we do not jail our dissidents.” But we jailed this “dissident” for five years.
These are grim times for journalists around the world. The excellent film State of Silence, about the plight of Mexican journalists, premiered this month at the Sheffield documentary festival, and showed us that in the past two decades, 162 journalists in Mexico have been murdered and 32 have gone missing. This week, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that at least 108 journalists and media workers – 103 Palestinian, two Israeli and three Lebanese – have been killed since the Israel-Gaza war escalated in October 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992. The Guardian documentary, House No 30 Kabul, now shows what has happened in Afghanistan to journalists trying to report the news there. From Haiti to Hong Kong, from Russia to Saudi Arabia, journalists are faced with pressures similar to those placed on Assange. That specious argument that Assange was “not really a journalist”, and thus not worthy of media support can surely now be finally buried.
His release makes one more cell available to the prison system – a small but notable number, consideringthat just days ago, Tom Wheatley, the president of the Prison Governors’ Association, warned that prisons in Britain will have no room to take more prisoners past July.
Yes, but who cares about prisoners or the scandal of those still wrongly held under the discredited Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) laws? “A tragic ambition” was how the late documentary maker Roger Graef described justice secretary Dominic Raab’s 2022 plan to create 4,000 new prison places in England and Wales, which would push the prison population to a record high of more than 100,000. Yet, earlier this month, Labour pledged more of the same: 20,000 new jail places “to ensure there is always enough space to lock up the most dangerous offenders”. Prisons, along with the whole criminal justice system, are in chaos, and the crisis will not be solved by following the US route of locking up more and more people – but the issue has barely featured in election debates.
We have not heard the last of the Julian Assange story. He must now be allowed to catch his breath, and we can celebrate that he is no longer in the dungeon. Let’s hope there are at least some politicians who will take note, and have the courage in the future to stand up to bullies rather than just mouth platitudes about free speech.
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Duncan Campbell is a freelance writer who worked for the Guardian as crime correspondent and Los Angeles correspondent. He is the author of If It Bleeds, (2009), The Paradise Trail, (2008), The Underworld and That Was Business, This Is Personal
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