A nice round-up of julian A's current preddicament. Does not look very
positive. My hunch is still that Assange has fallen into the purview of
Mueller's investigation.
Original to:
https://www.afr.com/news/world/europe/a-wornout-welcome-ecuadorian-embassy-sours-on-julian-assange-20181202-h18mbh
Ecuadorian embassy sours on Julian Assange as he wears out his welcome
By Michael Sontheimer, 06 Dec 2018 —
Even public attorneys make mistakes. Take, for instance, Kellen Dwyer, a
US prosecutor from Alexandria, Virginia, who suffered a particularly
embarrassing mishap in August. While assembling an official document,
Dwyer copied and pasted blocks of text from another document he had
previously produced – and twice forgot to remove the name Assange. As in
Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks.
The document in question was a government motion to keep a criminal
indictment sealed. Such secrecy, the document notes, is the only way to
"keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged". It goes on
to say that "the complaint, supporting affidavit, and arrest warrant, as
well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed
until Assange is arrested" and can no longer evade arrest and
extradition.
This is something that Assange has always suspected but could never
prove, namely that US prosecutors have already filed or are close to
filing charges against him and will soon issue a warrant for his arrest.
For the past six-and-a-half years, Assange has essentially been stuck in
London, living in the Ecuadorian embassy, a dignified brick building
just a few steps from the world-famous department store Harrods in
Knightsbridge. He doesn't get much sun and his hair has turned white as
snow, as has his skin.
Bump in the night
In early November, the 47-year-old Australian was awoken in the middle
of the night by the sound of a fire extinguisher tipping over. He had
placed the object in front of the open window of his raised-ground-floor
bedroom. Was it just another bout of psychological warfare against
Assange on the part of the Ecuadorian government?
The government in Quito has been providing Assange with political asylum
since August 2012, but the relationship has recently soured and the
Ecuadorian President would now like to see the Australian journalist
leave the embassy sooner rather than later. In late March, Ecuadorian
diplomats cut off Assange's internet connection and installed a jammer
designed to prevent him from communicating with the outside world. Last
month, the government issued new rules for dealing with their famous yet
difficult guest.
When the fire extinguisher fell over that night, Assange bolted upright
in bed and didn't know if the wind had pushed open the window or whether
someone was trying to enter his room from outside. Was it mere paranoia?
Assange has reason to fear intelligence agents kidnapping him and taking
him to the US. In spring 2017, Mike Pompeo – who has since been
appointed Secretary of State by US President Donald Trump – described
WikiLeaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence service".
Even since it has been confirmed that at least a draft of an indictment
against Assange exists, indications have also been mounting that a
secret extradition request may already have been prepared and delivered
to the US Embassy in London. The British authorities, for their part,
would likely arrest him immediately as soon as he set foot outside the
Ecuadorian embassy. Scotland Yard accuses him of having skipped bail, a
violation that carries the possibility of up to a year in prison.
'Don't cross the US government'
Assange has said on multiple occasions that he would turn himself in to
the British police and go to prison if the government in London promised
to allow him to travel to Ecuador afterwards. But such an assurance from
the Brits has not been forthcoming. They would rather hand Assange over
to the US. The British and American intelligence agencies, after all,
are close partners.
In 2010, WikiLeaks published documents in conjunction with The Guardian,
The New York Times and Der Spiegel pertaining to US war crimes committed
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since then, the US government has been after
Assange and a grand jury in Virginia is investigating several people in
connection with WikiLeaks, including Assange himself, the former
WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison of Britain and Jacob Appelbaum, a US
citizen who lives in Berlin. The basis of those investigations could be
the Espionage Act of 1917, which allows for penalties of up to life in
prison. The message is clear: potential copycats should think twice
about taking on the US government and its intelligence services.
Assange's interactions with the judiciary are myriad and complex,
starting with an investigation launched by Swedish prosecutors for a
"minor case of rape". This began in August 2010 after two Swedish women
who had slept with Assange asked police whether it would be possible to
force him to undergo an HIV test.
British police arrested Assange in early December 2010 with the
intention of extraditing him to Sweden. Film director Ken Loach, Jemima
Khan, the former wife of the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, the
journalist John Pilger and others joined forces to pay Assange's
£200,000 bail and he was subsequently released.
Once he had exhausted all legal channels for fighting extradition to
Sweden, Assange cut off the electronic ankle bracelet he had been
required to wear as a condition of his bail, marched into the Ecuadorian
embassy in London and requested asylum on June 19, 2012. Not quite two
months later, then-Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño announced
in Quito that Assange's asylum application had been approved. Assange
could not expect a fair trial in the United States, Patiño said. British
politicians then began publicly discussing whether they could simply
send police into the embassy and kidnap the Australian, even though such
a move would clearly violate international law and the special
protections enjoyed by embassies.
'Unlawful detainment'
For quite some time, British investigators were able to dissuade their
Swedish counterparts from discarding the investigation into Assange.
These efforts were revealed in emails from Britain's "Crown Prosecution
Service" that have since been made public. But in May 2017, the Swedes
closed the case and applied for the international arrest warrant against
Assange to be suspended.
Even prior to that, in February 2016, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention issued a statement in which it argued that Assange's stay in
the embassy was a case of "unlawful detainment". The British government,
reflecting its own unique brand of arrogance, blasted the statement as
"ridiculous".
For years, the Ecuadorian embassy placed very few restrictions on
Assange when it came to receiving guests. They were simply asked to
register with the embassy's security personnel at least one day prior to
their visit, leave their passports at the entrance, enter their names in
a registry and sometimes relinquish their telephones and cameras. But
they were allowed to meet with Assange undisturbed in at least two rooms
inside the building. At the same time, it was clear to everyone involved
that such visits were monitored by the Ecuadorians and, especially, the
British. Agents in London even set up surveillance cameras in the street
in front of the embassy. When discussing sensitive information, Assange
and his visitors would write notes back and forth that were subsequently
destroyed in a shredder.
Vivienne Westwood, Lady Gaga and Pamela Anderson all visited Assange, as
did the left-wing guru Noam Chomsky and well-known journalists such as
John Pilger and Seymour Hersh. The authors of this article have also
visited Assange several times in the Ecuadorian embassy for interviews
and off-the-record discussions. By welcoming a constant stream of
visitors, he hoped to be able to counteract the increasingly noticeable
consequences of his isolation: six-and-a-half years without sunlight,
six-and-a-half years in prison, albeit a rather luxurious one.
Assange also began suffering from chronic shoulder pain. A doctor from
Boston who regularly looks after him has been worried about his mental
health for some time. She is concerned he could sink into a depression
given the rather dim prospects facing him.
Until last December, Assange continued to manage document releases on
WikiLeaks in addition to the platform's Twitter account. The most
consequential publications for Assange were the releases of hacked
emails from Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party leadership, which began
in July 2016. They revealed Clinton's tight relationship with Wall
Street, the fact that she was rooting for Trump to be her opponent
because she thought he didn't stand a chance, as well as the tricks she
used to outmanoeuvre Bernie Sanders, her rival for the Democratic
nomination.
Vault 7
Once Donald Trump was elected to the White House, though, support for
WikiLeaks began to crumble. Left-wing and liberal backers of the
whistleblowing platform accused Assange of having indirectly supported
the populist Trump by lambasting Clinton. And Democrats accused him of
publishing information on WikiLeaks that had been stolen from the
Democratic National Committee by Russian intelligence.
Early on, Assange harboured a vague hope that with Trump in the White
House, he might finally be able to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy. But the
right-wing hardliners that Trump installed in his cabinet wanted to make
an example of the WikiLeaks founder to discourage other possible
whistleblowers.
Then, starting in March 2017, WikiLeaks began publishing the CIA's
arsenal of cyberweapons under the title "Vault 7". Prior to the
publications, the agency had negotiated with Assange in the hopes that
he would refrain from publication in exchange for safe passage out of
the embassy. Ultimately, though, the CIA broke off the discussions after
then-FBI director James Comey intervened and following additional
publication of CIA material by WikiLeaks.
It isn't difficult to understand, of course, that Assange remains eager
to avoid spending decades in a high-security prison in the US. More than
anything, though, that hope now depends on political developments in
Ecuador.
Originally, Assange was granted political asylum by President Rafael
Correa, a leftist who was eager to counter outsized US influence on the
South American continent. But term limitations prevented Correa from
running again by the time new elections rolled around in spring 2017.
Despite this, Assange still thought he had luck on his side. The
neo-liberal candidate who had promised to throw Assange out of the
embassy had lost. Instead, Ecuadorians tapped Correa's vice-president to
run their country, a man named Lenín Moreno.
But President Moreno was no anti-imperialist. Instead, he proved keen to
improve relations with the US – and fast. He assigned Foreign Minister
Fernanda Espinosa to find a solution to the thorny Assange problem.
To that end, Espinosa devised a rather clever trick. In December of last
year, she granted Assange Ecuadorian citizenship, made him a diplomat
and put him on the list of accredited emissaries in Britain, which would
have given him immunity and the freedom to travel.
Would have – if the British Foreign Office had recognised him as an
official representative of Ecuador. But it didn't. Further attempts by
Assange's friends to find a country whose government would accept his
diplomatic status proved difficult as well. Only one government seemed
willing, but Assange did not want to make his fate dependent on that
country's president.
Losing the link to the outside
Upon being removed from Ecuador's list of diplomats, he authored a tweet
that infuriated his hosts. On March 26, 2018, Assange took to Twitter
after Carles Puigdemont was arrested in Germany. He wrote: "In 1940 the
elected president of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, was captured by the
Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to them and executed. Today,
German police have arrested the elected president of Catalonia, Carles
Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to be extradited."
Two days later, the Ecuadorian foreign minister had a jammer installed
in the embassy to disrupt mobile phone reception and Assange's internet
access was cut off. With that, he lost his most important link to the
outside world.
Since then, only Assange's assistant, a legal adviser and his lawyers
have had access to him. Friends and journalists are no longer able to
visit the WikiLeaks founder and his mother can likewise no longer see
him. Assange is almost completely isolated.
Assange believes that an application for his extradition has been
prepared and is sitting in the US Embassy in London. He believes that as
soon as he falls into British hands, he will be locked up pending
extradition or be immediately placed on board a plane to the US.
The suspicion isn't totally unfounded. After the whistleblower Edward
Snowden revealed the mass-surveillance practices of the National
Security Agency (NSA) from Hong Kong, a CIA jet was standing by in
Copenhagen to fly him back to the US upon capture. Instead, partly
thanks to the WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison, Snowden flew to
Moscow, where he continues to live today, having been granted temporary
political asylum. In contrast to Assange, he can move about freely in
Russia. And his girlfriend moved to Moscow to be with him.
The Ecuadorian government cut Assange off from the internet because he
broke his promise to not comment on the political affairs of third
states, though Assange claims that the pledge was contingent on him
being an active envoy for Ecuador. He refuses to be tamed. Everything
he's done for WikiLeaks has been, he believes, in the name of freedom of
expression and transparency. And he refuses to make compromises when he
sees those values at stake. Otherwise, he would no longer be Julian
Assange, the anarchist Australian hippy, computer freak and hacker.
Tantamount to blackmail
The embassy also drafted a new set of rules to regulate everything
pertaining to Assange's asylum. According to those rules, all of
Assange's visitors, including his lawyers, must provide the serial
numbers of their telephones and other electronic devices and list their
social media accounts. The Ecuadorian government reserves the right to
share this information with others.
Furthermore, Assange must now also pay a share of the costs the embassy
incurs by putting him up. Surveillance of Assange alone is said to have
cost the Ecuadorian government more than €5 million ($5.7 million) in
the time the Australian had been living in the embassy. Now, Assange is
to be made to pay for such things as internet, medicine, laundry and
other expenditures.
Fidel Narváez, who worked as a diplomat in the embassy for eight years,
told the US broadcaster ABC that the new set of rules transformed
Ecuador "from a protector into a persecutor" of Assange, adding that
embassy staff "will be forced to act like prison guards." The rules, he
said, are "tantamount to blackmail and clearly part of an ongoing
attempt to force Julian Assange to leave the embassy."
Indeed, Assange has now become a pawn in President Lenín Moreno's
ongoing battle against his predecessor Rafael Correa, who has fled into
exile in Belgium because the Ecuadorian judiciary is pursuing 13
investigations against him. Correa finds his successor's treatment of
Assange appalling.
In comments about the ban on visitors for Assange in late October,
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister José Valencia denied that such a restriction
had been imposed. "Absolutely not," he said. "Not at all. He has not had
a single restriction. It is an invention. Maybe he is confused."
The Foreign Minister is lying. Since April, the journalist Stefania
Maurizio, from the Italian daily La Repubblica, has filed nine
applications for permission to visit Assange without receiving a single
response. On May 14, 2008, German parliamentarian Heike Hänsel of the
Left Party contacted the Ecuadorian embassy by email to inquire whether
she could have a private audience with the WikiLeaks founder. In
September, she finally received a response in which she was referred to
the new rules that had been established for Assange. Since then, she
hasn't heard anything more from the Ecuadorian diplomats.
'They want to destroy him'
Assange refused to sign the new protocols. He and his lawyer are
concerned that if he or a visitor were to violate any of them, it would
give Ecuador an excuse to withdraw his asylum status and throw him out
of the embassy. Assange's lawyer filed a complaint in Quito arguing that
the new rules, which the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry decided would take
effect on November 9, violated Assange's basic asylum rights. A judge
ruled in the government's favour at the end of October.
Some of the protocols also pertain to Assange's behaviour within the
embassy. He was, for example, requested to take responsibility for the
"well-being, food, hygiene and proper care" of his pet. The reference is
to the cat that he refers to as the "embassy cat", which was given to
him by his children. The rules note that if Assange doesn't tend to the
cat properly, it will be given away.
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson was able to visit Assange
last month. The Icelandic journalist brought no electronic devices with
him and described the atmosphere in the embassy as "very hostile". He
also said the new rules for visitors were being enforced arbitrarily and
that evening and weekend visits were no longer permitted. "They want to
break Julian," Hrafnsson said. "They want to destroy him."
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