patrick.net

What were the terms of his plea "deal"?

Assange, the only known survivor of Sudden Clinton Death Syndrome, agreed to plead guilty to a single count of espionage yesterday, in exchange for credit for his five years of time served in solitary confinement in a high-security British prison.

Now, suddenly, inexplicably, Julian is free. Assange, now 52 and quite pale, requested sentencing at a remote U.S. outpost in the Marianas Islands, a U.S. Pacific island commonwealth where it turns out we have a United States Federal Courthouse attached to a Tiki bar.

After that, Julian hopes to return to his native Australia, as far from anybody named ‘Clinton’ as he can get.

The deal seems to have developed last month after a British High Court appallingly denied Assange’s extradition to the U.S., ironically and embarrassingly holding that U.S. officials had not satisfied them that America could protect Mr. Assange’s Constitutional rights. At that time, just a couple months ago, the U.S. sought to lock Assange up for 170 years.

Cynics speculated the Assange deal was a news nugget tossed out to distract everyone from what is going on in the Proxy War.

Oct 01, 2024

“CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me”- Julian Assange breaks his silence.
Full transcript of Council of Europe statement

Julian Assange says he was freed after years of incarceration because he “pled guilty to journalism.” “I am not free today because the system worked,” the Australian WikiLeaks founder said during an address to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday — his first public remarks since he was released from prison. ...

None of the statements, resolutions, reports, films, articles, events, fundraisers, protests, and letters, over the last fourteen years should have been necessary. But all of them were necessary because without them I never would have seen the light of day.

This unprecedented global effort was needed because of the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper, were not effective in any remotely reasonable time. I eventually chose freedom over unrealisable justice after being detained for years and facing a 175-year sentence, with no effective remedy. ...

Justice for me is now precluded as the US government insisted in writing into its plea agreement that I cannot file a case at the European Court of Human rights, or even a freedom of information act request over what it did to me as a result of its extradition request.

I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism. I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source, and I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else.

I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weaknesses of the existing safeguards and to help those whose cases are less visible but who are equally vulnerable.

As I emerged from the dungeon of Belmarsh, the truth now seems less discernible, and I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period. How expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened, and diminished. I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self-censorship. ...

When I founded WikiLeaks it was driven by a simple dream. To educate people about how the world works, so that through understanding we might bring about something better. Carrying a map of where we are lets us understand where we might go. Knowledge empowers us to hold power to account and to demand justice where there is none.

We obtained and published truth about tens of thousands of hidden casualties of war and other unseen horrors, about programs of assassination, rendition, torture, and mass surveillance. We revealed not just when and where these things happened, but frequently the policies, the agreements, and the structures behind them.

When we published Collateral Murder, the infamous gun camera footage of a US Apache helicopter crew eagerly blowing to pieces Iraqi journalists and their rescuers, the visual reality of modern warfare shocked the world. ...

CIA director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution. It is now a matter of public record that under Pompeo’s explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me, within the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and authorised going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks and the planting of false information.

My wife and my infant son were also targeted. A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife, and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six-month-old son’s nappy. ...

In February this year, the alleged source of some of our CIA revelations, former CIA officer Joshua Schulte was sentenced to 40 years in prison under conditions of extreme isolation. His windows are blacked out, and a white noise machine plays 24 hours a day over his door so that he cannot even shout through it. These conditions are more severe than those found in Guantanamo Bay. ...

When powerful nations feel entitled to target individuals beyond their borders, those individuals do not stand a chance unless there are strong safeguards in place and a state willing to enforce them.