(Photo by Mohamed Elmaazi, NUJ Member)
Kevin Gosztola reports: “High Court rules in favor of U.S. government and overturns the district judge decision that blocked Julian Assange’s extradition. Case is remitted to Westminster Magistrates Court and instructed to send case to Secretary of State for extradition.”
Famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said: “How dare Biden lecture at the State Department Summit for Democracy” while refusing to pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, “thereby killing freedom of the press for ‘national security.'” Ellsberg has called the prosecution of Assange a “nuclear option” against the First Amendment. Assange is being prosecuted for publishing material that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq, including the killing of Reuters journalists there exposed in the Collateral Murder video.
KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin@shadowproof.
Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola has extensively covered legal proceedings Against WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange. See his Twitter thread on the ruling and a video he made this morning.
Said Gosztola: “President Biden’s administration cannot reasonably claim to support principles of democracy and human rights while at same time seeking the extradition of a publisher, Julian Assange, which is opposed by global press freedom organizations. …
“Lord Chief Justice Burnett is on the High Court. As @declassifiedUK reported, ‘Assange’s fate lies in the hands of an appeal judge who is a close friend of Sir Alan Duncan — former foreign minister who called Assange ‘miserable little worm’ in parliament.'”
