Assange Escapes (For Now)
Why the UK's High Court Must Allow The Appeal
UPDATE: Interesting suggestion from a friend on Twitter that the UK should, if the US loses its appeal, which hopefully it will not do, deport Mr. Assange, who committed the criminal offense of skipping bail, to Australia, where they are not so lily-livered about spies and traitors. This solution would keep Assange in custody and deny him the ability to rush off to Sergei and Ivan at the Russian Embassy, the way he wants to.
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Julian Assange and his Russian and Chinese paymasters are rejoicing. Yet again, a British judge has denied a hacker’s extradition to the United States, causing Britain and America’s enemies to take a victory lap around Twitter.
It is to be hoped that the High Court in the UK takes note of this open scorn by the enemies of Britain’s intelligence services. More to the point, it is surely time for Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, to step in if the High Court allows the appeal. In case after case involving hackers - Gary McKinnon, Lauri Love, and now Assange - serious criminals who have attacked the heart of the United States’ defense and security sytems have pled “Aspergers” or “autism”, declared themselves suicide risks, and gotten off scot free. The United States has a harsh penal system, but these are major crimes. Lauri Love has not served any serious punishment for his crimes against the United States, and boosted Julian Assange and Wikileaks throughout their attack on America, instead of being tried in the UK as an alternative.
The fact is the Assange ruling, the third of three, means that British judges are now usurping the place of Parliament to make laws, and the British people elect the MPs (Members of Parliament) who do that. If the High Court allows Baraitser’s wrong-headed ruling to stand, then Britain is declaring “open season” on the United States, her greatest ally. Literally ANY hacker will be able to come to Britain, attack the Pentagon, or the CIA, or any part of the American security apparatus, then state that they have Aspergers, Autism, or are depressed, or otherwise on the spectrum - which, with hackers, is often the case - and then use that as a “get out of jail free” card. The United States has already warranted to the UK that Mr. Assange is not going to be executed, or tried on the most serious offenses.
Mr. Evans is absolutely right. Let us say that a British person is a serial killer (instead of endangering the world by helping to put a deeply compromised Friend of Vlad into the Oval Office through propaganda they got straight from the GRU. Arguably, Assange helped the unneccessary deaths of many thousands of Americans through the sloppy way Trump handled COVID). The United States offers a guarantee of no execution, as the British state can’t extradite without that. But the man faces a life sentence under harsh conditions, “a cage” as Baraitser put it. He would deserve such a sentence. Would he be “depressed”? Well, wouldn’t you? Would he be a suicide risk? Surely every long-term prisoner is a suicide risk, and Assange wasn’t even being extradited for offenses that carry such a sentence. What then? Under the logic of Baraitser’s judgement, that serial killer could not be extradited either. Because judges place themselves above Parliament, they are effectively making Britain a no-extradition-treaty state when it comes to America.
Donald Trump must be absolutely thrilled. No need to pardon Julian and set himself, Donald, up for yet another charge of obstruction of justice - which a pardon can be; Jim Comey investigated Bill Clinton’s Marc Rich pardon for possible criminality. No, unless the British High Court changes its ways and reverses Baraitser’s “Get Out of Jail Free” ruling, Julian Assange will be exfiltrated to Russia before you can say “Aeroflot”, there to live the rest of his miserable life in the cold, surrounded by Borscht and cabbage, and the natural contempt that Russia’s intelligence services so rightly have for the traitors that serve them.