Julian Assange has been imprisoned for 1,656 days.
Message from Stella Assange
Julian is reaching the end of the road in the British courts. He is now into his fifth year of imprisonment without conviction in Britain’s notorious Belmarsh prison. On 3 July, he spent his fiftieth birthday in a small isolated cell.
On 6 June, a single high court judge rejected Julian’s application for permission to appeal. That means that the British appeal court will not have the opportunity to argue why he should not be extradited to the senior judiciary of the UK, and if that decision is confirmed in coming weeks or months by a panel of two separate high court judges, Julian will not be able to appeal to the supreme court either and the Home Office will initiate his extradition.
Julian will attempt to apply to the European Court of a Human Rights, but that avenue is neither automatic nor assured.
The British courts still have the opportunity to reverse course and do the right thing. The case is clear cut – this is a political persecution, and Julian is the victim of a vengeful prosecution instigated by the same authorities that were plotting to kidnap and murder him.
The charges are a fit-up, because he cannot invoke a public interest defence. He is being used as a deterrent to bully reporters and citizens not to challenge corruption and abuse.
Those who wish to silence and imprison Julian for the rest of his life have contempt for what he stands for – our right to speak and know the truth, and the agency of well-informed people to achieve reform and accountability.
Julian needs each and every one of us to stand by him and push back. If you are a British resident, come to the courts on the day of the public hearing, sign this public petition to the House of Commons to call on the current home secretary to take all measures and block the extradition to the United States. (Petition to the House of Commons: Don’t extradite Assange!)
If the USA and Britain want to hold the moral and political high ground on freedom of expression, dropping the case and letting Julian come home is the only way to achieve it.
Join the fight and stand up for Julian. Don’t stop until he is free and back home with us.
This show of solidarity keeps Julian’s spirits strong as he fights an epic battle for his life and for the future of our freedoms.
If you wish to donate to Julian’s defence: Assange Appeal crowdfunder.
You can donate to the campaign for his freedom: Free Assange crowdfunder.
You can also set up a regular donation.
Thank you!
Stella Assange
Get ready for day X
Julian Assange is facing his last chance to stop extradition in a British court. The Royal Courts of Justice have not released a date yet, but we have to be ready to protest when they do.
Place: Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, London WC2A 2LL
Time: 9.00am
A poem for Julian: Jericho
By Pete Godfrey
On a scraggy patch of land we stake our claim –
this country’s ours, not terrain of the owners –
and string up banners, raise placards that name
a wrong so grievous it has shown us
that the courts of justice are courts of disgrace
with judges so corrupt they take their cue
from whispered briefings designed to erase
all sense of fairness – take a bow, yes you,
Emma Arbuthnot, Vanessa Baraitser,
bewigged and wooden, reeling off your lines,
automatons, the bosses’ howitzer
without a flicker of what’s warm or kind
for the man, distressed, who’s in the dock,
ten times superior to you, fighter for peace
who dared reveal just how the trigger’s cocked
to take out inconvenient souls as they may please –
those troops in thrall to Washington’s command
who’ve trashed Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq,
caused conflagrations, massacres – Assange
alone has cast a light on that:
how in the middle east (and elsewhere) lives
have been deemed worthless, mere impediments
to looting land, oil, treasure, and the cries
of those who wish to blossom meet indifference
which is why we’re here, Julian, outside the walls,
concrete and drab, that hold you in
and try to imprison the ideas that call
out to humanity, look beneath the skin
of warmongers whose murderous strategy
lies grotesque and exposed, arrayed in blood.
The lights turn red – we leaflet, dash to see
if motorists will share in our disgust
at the outrage perpetrated yards from where they pass.
They sound their horns; the criminals’ names we shout –
Blair, Cameron, Patel and Johnson for a start.
And look: the walls are cardboard – push them now!
