On Thursday, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, prominent Australian publications, reported new information indicating that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is continuing a probe of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. The article reported that the previous week Andrew O’Hagan, a British journalist, had been contacted by the FBI, who asked to interview him about Assange. In 2011, O’Hagan had been[Read More…]
![Stella Assange address National Press Club in Canberra, Australia, May 22, 2023. [Photo: National Press Club]](https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Stella-Assange-200x150.webp "Australian Prime Minister Albanese refuses to meet with Assange’s wife 3")
In a gratuitous display of contempt, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday refused to meet with Stella Assange, the wife of Julian Assange, Australia’s most prominent political prisoner. The snub came even as Stella was inside the federal parliament, having travelled to the country to campaign for her husband’s freedom. Asked by independent MP Andrew Wilkie why he would not meet[Read More…]
April 11 marks four years since WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange was violently dragged from Ecuador’s London embassy and arrested by the British police. Since that time, Assange has been imprisoned, without interruption, in the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, described by some as “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay.” Assange’s ongoing detention, in a facility designed to hold terrorists and violent criminals, is[Read More…]
Doctors for Assange, a group of more than 300 medical experts from around the world, issued an open letter on Monday to British Home Secretary Suella Braveman and US Attorney General Merrick Garland, insisting that they immediately halt the state persecution of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and free him unconditionally. The doctors’ organisation, which has campaigned in defence of Assange[Read More…]
Immediately after British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced on Friday last week that she had approved Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States, the publisher and journalist was stripped naked and placed in a bare cell of London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison. This latest abuse of Assange’s democratic and human rights was reported by his father John Shipton to a rally[Read More…]
On Saturday, renowned international human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson announced a settlement with the British government over its surveillance of her while she has acted as a legal representative of persecuted WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. The same day, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), where a case by Robinson against the British government was pending, took note of the[Read More…]
During its first three weeks in office, Australia’s Labor government has responded with a quiet hostility to demands that it defend Julian Assange. Labor ministers have not mentioned Assange, unless directly questioned. And in response to those inquiries, they have made plain that they will continue the bipartisan complicity of the political establishment and state apparatus in the persecution of[Read More…]
A coalition of over two dozen press freedom and human rights organisations has called on the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange. This is ahead of a US appeal that will be heard next week, challenging a British court decision that blocked the WikiLeaks publisher’s extradition. The statement, delivered last week to Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland,[Read More…]
Today marks fifteen years since WikiLeaks was founded by Australian publisher Julian Assange on October 4, 2006. In the years since, the small media organisation, founded on a shoestring, has become synonymous with the courageous exposure of government and corporate crimes, as well as the ever-more ferocious attempts of state agencies and the ruling elites to censor the internet and[Read More…]
An explosive investigative report by Yahoo News has revealed plans at the highest levels of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Trump administration to illegally kidnap or even assassinate WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange when he was an internationally recognised political refugee in Ecuador’s London embassy. Based on discussions with more than 30 former US officials, the report alleges conduct on[Read More…]
Hundreds of journalists and media workers from every corner of the globe have put their name to an impassioned open letter demanding the unconditional freedom of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and an immediate “end to the legal campaign being waged against him for the crime of revealing war crimes.” The 422 signatories to date include WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, world-renowned investigative journalist[Read More…]
In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday morning, British District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange will remain in prison, despite the fact that his custodial sentence for “absconding” bail expires on September 22. The ruling is the latest in a series of attacks on Assange’s legal and democratic rights by the British judiciary. It means[Read More…]
Last Thursday, lawyers for the courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning issued a legal challenge to punitive fines that were imposed upon her by a federal district court judge last month. Her legal team has warned that the unprecedented financial penalties threaten her with imminent bankruptcy. Manning has been imprisoned by the Trump administration since May 16 for refusing to give perjured testimony[Read More…]
The Washington Post reported today that officials from the US Justice Department issued a formal request to British authorities last Thursday for the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The document has not been made public. The US government had 60 days from Assange’s arrest by British police on April 11 to deliver a complete extradition application to the UK. The first[Read More…]
The Uppsala District Court yesterday ruled against a bid by Swedish state prosecutors for the country to formally detain WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in absentia, which would have set in motion a request for his extradition from Britain. Assange’s lawyers have described the judgement as a legal “victory.” It is a blow to the attempts by Swedish prosecutors to secure[Read More…]
The British and Australian governments have blithely dismissed a May 31 report by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, which established that WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange has been the victim of a protracted campaign of “psychological torture.” The brazen responses demonstrate the criminality of the US-led vendetta against Assange, which is proceeding in violation of due[Read More…]
A Swedish district court this week rejected an application by Julian Assange’s lawyers for a June 3 hearing into bogus sexual misconduct allegations to be delayed. The ruling was made despite the fact that the WikiLeaks founder is reportedly too ill to consult with his lawyers and has not received English-language translations of the arrest warrant or underlying evidence against[Read More…]
In his first publicly-released comments to supporters since his arrest, WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange has detailed the repressive conditions he faces in Britain’s Belmarsh prison and called for a campaign against his threatened extradition to the United States. “I am defenceless and am counting on you and others of good character to save my life,” Assange wrote, adding,[Read More…]
On the nationally-televised “60 minutes” program last night, John Shipton, Julian Assange’s father, issued a powerful call for his son’s freedom. The program was aired on Channel Nine some two weeks after Assange was illegally expelled from Ecuador’s London embassy, where he was granted asylum in 2012, and arrested by British police. Shipton responded to footage of the brutal arrest,[Read More…]
An affidavit unsealed by US prosecutors on Monday has underscored the unlawful character of the Trump administration’s request that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be extradited to the US in the wake of his illegal expulsion from Ecuador’s London embassy and arrest by the British police last Thursday. The affidavit was made by Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) special agent Megan[Read More…]
Following WikiLeaks’ warning yesterday that Julian Assange faced imminent eviction from Ecuador’s London embassy, widespread opposition has emerged to the illegal plans to terminate his political asylum. Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, issued a statement calling upon the Ecuadorian government of President Lenín Moreno to “abstain from expelling Mr. Assange … or from otherwise ceasing or suspending[Read More…]
WikiLeaks today issued a warning that its founder, Julian Assange, faces imminent eviction from Ecuador’s London embassy, where he sought political asylum in 2012. The publishing organisation indicated that he would then be arrested by the British police. A post by the official WikiLeaks Twitter account at around 5:30 p.m., US Eastern Standard Time, stated: “BREAKING: A high level source[Read More…]
In a clear threat to expel Julian Assange from Ecuador’s London embassy, the country’s President Lenín Moreno declared in an interview yesterday that the WikiLeaks founder had “repeatedly violated the conditions of his asylum.” Moreno stated that his government would “take a decision” “in the short term” on Assange’s circumstances. The comments are the latest public indication of an advanced[Read More…]
A number of corporate media outlets have begun the year by publishing scurrilous and derisive attacks against WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. The coverage has the character of a coordinated political campaign, with the most sinister motives. Its aim is to legitimise the stepped-up persecution of Assange by the US and British governments, which are pursuing the journalist and[Read More…]
Local officials and residents have confirmed that US airstrikes on Tuesday night killed at least 30 civilians in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. These tragic deaths are the latest war crime in the 17-year US-NATO occupation, aimed at subjugating the geo-strategically critical nation to the dictates of the US and its allies. The strikes were part of a “surge” of US[Read More…]
A UN fact-finding panel issued a report on Monday calling for the prosecution of six senior Burmese generals on charges of genocide over their role in the state persecution of the country’s Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority. The document is the sharpest rebuke by the international body against the Burmese regime, since it launched wholesale ethnic cleansing last year. The findings[Read More…]
The London-based Times newspaper reported yesterday that the British and Ecuadorian governments have been holding secret discussions on plans to evict WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange from Ecuador’s London embassy, where he sought political asylum six years ago. The article said the talks are “an attempt to remove Assange” from the embassy and are being conducted at the highest levels of government, with[Read More…]
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Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
