The Minister of State for Europe and North America rightly called him a miserable worm in our House of Commons. But correspondence with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture suggests management of the publisher’s welfare was never outclassed by an impeccable record on his strategic containment.
Since he came to notoriety as Wikileaks’ founding editor in 2006, Julian Assange has been a controversial figure. Yet certain misconceptions about his plight should now be dispensed with, for timely assurance that nothing was untoward about relevant conduct of the UK.
Despite morphing several times, his legal situation remained straightforward, particularly over the last four years while held in maximum security on remand, as the US sought to extradite him for drawing public attention to leaked data relating to national security.
In his final hearing the court was meticulous enough to grant him appeal, yet only on two matters: exclusion of any free speech defence via the First Amendment and a potential death penalty.
Both avenues may well have been to no avail, but apparent lenience from the US terminated British proceedings, with an agreed plea deal that sentenced him to no more than time already served.
He thereby admitted to violating US law, by fulfilling commitment as a publisher to obtain from whistleblowers and share with the public information in its interest, despite classification as secret, his rationale being stated as contradiction of the First Amendment by said law, namely the “Espionage” Act.
Notional Hardship
His extended prisoner status was commonly objected to and a theme of inhumane conditions had at times been insurgent. Even the International Bar Association fell prey to such nonsense by saying it “condemns UK treatment” of Assange.
In fact the treatment was mostly standard. There were irregularities like confiscating legal documents, leaving his winter clothes unavailable for the season and consistently bringing him to court after the judge let proceedings develop. Yet all this accords with methods pioneered by the US. Indeed Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh where he waited on fortune is often called Britain’s Guantanamo Bay.
Human downsides of vital security measures can be hard to quantify and thus easily blown out of proportion. So to restore balance and forensically bury remains of moral panic over Assange, the pivotal history is detailed in what follows.
Fitting Punishment
In May 2019, Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, issued a report to the UK government outlining action on its part that “amounts to psychological torture.”
While technically late by several months, the reply vindicated patience as a concise and comprehensive schooling.
Dear Mr Melzer,
The Government rejects any allegation that Julian Assange has been subjected to torture in any form as a result of actions by the UK Government. The UK Government does not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture for any purpose. The United Kingdom does not accept that Mr Assange was ever arbitrarily detained; he was free to leave the Ecuadorean Embassy at any time.
Mr Assange has been convicted under English law of failing to surrender to custody following due legal process. Judges in the UK are completely impartial and independent from Government. They hear cases based on the evidence presented and in accordance with the law. Mr Assange was legally represented at the hearing and chose not to give or call evidence on his behalf. The detailed sentencing remarks of the District Judge were published on the judicial website and fully explain the decision process. Mr Assange did not appeal his conviction and has withdrawn his appeal against his sentence.
Yours sincerely, Julian Braithwaite
[Ambassador to the United Nations]
Though properly addressed with ‘Mr’ in that stern reply, it appears Dr Melzer evoked pity as a law professor at Glasgow University. For despite this learning and placement, it never dawned on him that UK judges are wholly impartial.
He further seems unable to conceive that Britain has nothing to do with torture, while his assertion of the opposite crudely breaches decorum. Such factual and moral error was extensively developed through a tissue of accusations, none of which merited any specific reply. Yet erring on the side of candour to provide just one, by noting how the Wikileaks editor could have left his sanctuary, at least accords with British renown for sportsmanly conduct.
Voluntary Inertia
Assange’s choice to wither under siege was unmistakable. In fact, its relevant dimensions inhere in the simple notion of a rabbit facing hounds barking at its hole. If inclined to escape trauma, meet any bodily need or follow a sundry urge, it is always perfectly free to chance an exit. All that prevents it hopping toward lively jaws are signals from its tiny brain. Ergo, nothing detains it unless enveloped in the same fur.
This is not to deny that people are detained by disruptive weather, as most have the wisdom to neither abandon primary concerns nor leave without a viable direction. But if more than animals without innocence, libertine hackers who draw ire from society just amount to models of errancy. Whether or not their woes include hampered movement, it could thus only fortify virtue to display our lack of empathy and especially in ways that impact them.
Moreover, were he so guiltless and innocuous as to reduce wardens to the likes of schoolgirls observing one savaged bunny, the UN would remain disanalogous to any beast handler. For it has no method of enforcement. A hefty stick at the minimum goes with all whose business is to manage a snarling canine, due to otherwise forbidding odds of insuperable attack, as could be based anything from circumstance and temperament to rabies or pack psychosis.
There may of course be occasions for anyone to say ‘good dog’ or ‘bad dog’, though certainly not with the incorrect qualitative term. Indeed, censure in that instance can effect immense pain and damage. Yet despite key responsibilities for welfare, a host of institutions behaved as if this point was moot. Exposed by that particular irony were organelles of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the IBA as noted, the Lancet Journal, Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International, which, among many others, grievously traduced Britain over its faultless care of Assange.
Due Perspective
Further regarding the embassy standoff, we must be mindful that officers only wanted this fugitive in their custody and thus kept from moving past them, even by way of a round trip to hospital. That cannot be detainment, which is always where an enforcer most prefers.
Such preference applies merely on account of definitions and logic, though none would suppose it originates on earth when people are detained in traffic or by natural events. Heavenly will may thus be inferred, yet can also explain untreatable suffering in a diplomatic mission and likewise reform that expels an asylee.
But whether or not divine, the power which brought Assange to British justice was by virtue of that a wholesome one. Many accordingly wished him isolated in maximal stress till expiring at a US facility, as minimal deterrence for publication of data from whistleblowers.
Pronouncements issued under auspices of the UN can thus be moves in semantic shell games. Yet they could never obscure the integrity of our legal apparatus. For while judicial failure may dog rogue states, it will always be clear that precisely what makes them rogue is deviation from our example.
Lawbreaker
Bail violation occurs through failure to meet indicated requirements like reporting at a police station, without what is known as reasonable cause. Such notice was served to Assange in writing on his tenth day of domicile under jurisdiction of Ecuador. Yet he never emerged to attend or therefore made any estimable claim that the universal right to seek asylum is reasonable.
Instead, he confused certain radicals with presumed validity of his entry and remaining on sovereign premises. For example, a lawyer replied to the summons by remarking that assessment of any claim to asylum has priority over extradition and subsidiary matters under UK law.
After sixteen months of weighing submissions from all parties, a UN panel of esteemed jurists conspicuously indulged activism through a finding of arbitrary detention, rendering null and void Britain’s agreement to abide by the outcome of the group’s undertaking.
Besides glaring non-applicability of detainment, the problem with their stance is that no relevant UK action was conceivably arbitrary. As just explained, nobody could seriously imagine the charge of absconding was unsound with regard to any detail of law or principle of reason.
The convicting judge was thus right to brand the offender’s silence, puzzled query and plea of not guilty “the behaviour of a narcissist.” He further banished allusion from the defence to bias of a previous judge as nothing but smears lobbed at the press.
Profound Carelessness
Assange neglected to organise presentation of evidence by himself or the team, who were unconscionably late for that hearing. Yet this perfect shambles was barely an hour since an upending shock of being disenfranchised and carted off to trial without notice. It is thereby obvious that nothing could ever impel him or those in his train to take responsibility.
Heaven knows why he didn’t plead guilty, when the lack of interest on display and cancellation of appeal implied as much anyway. Nevermind that his remand would follow the term, or that prison measures force a rationing of defence resources. There was no end to such distractions advanced by fevered activists.
Excepting the original allegations against him, concerning details surrounding condoms which ceased to require clarification to a Swedish court, that is the simple history of Assange’s incarceration.
Being that he often expressed paranoia about rendition from there to the US, one can only wonder at the delusions under which he imposed no less than seven years of unhealthy confinement upon himself, just to avoid a maximum of four in the relative comforts of Sweden.
He might even have been acquitted and was never actually charged with what curiously translates best as an oxymoron: ‘minor rape’. It appears the dropped allegation was only made by prosecutors and court-appointed lawyers, whose conduct drew protest from the domestic legal community in addition to this complainant and another, likewise dissatisfied with her representation both legally and by an exaggerating press, regarding a lesser claim.
The Big Picture
Just prior to dispatch of the outstanding letter above, Assange’s magistrate had the good sense to apply for parole on his behalf, to preemptively quash it and hold him for the Trump administration.
Such vigilance was naturally apropos to relentless pursuit of accountability for Wikileaks publications from 2010, which left neoconservatives incensed by exposing US military impropriety.
Though legally irrelevant, it would be improper to ignore equal resentment from liberals, for publishing internal documents showing corruption of Democratic primaries in 2016 and thereby effecting a Russian scheme to assault US democracy.
This plot was clear from superficially hedged statements provided by resistance to President Trump in the media and intelligence community. Yet apart from that, neglecting to withhold information that can harm prospects of an election contender is condemned by all ethical persons, especially if not done in a perfectly equitable fashion or conceivably fortunate to some foreign interest.
Most significant, however, is that these impacts in 2010 and 2016 were magnified by prestigious outlets disseminating such information in the public interest, even breaking news through extensive partnership in the former case, as if no government should go after them.
Deprecated Justice
When his unprecedented 50-week sentence expired four years ago, Assange applied for bail. Yet his ongoing complaints, crowned with vulnerability to Covid19 in jail with a chronic lung issue, did not outweigh risk of some new country affording him asylum.
The likelihood of such a jolt to national dignity if not security was of course infinitesimal, though naturally intolerable. Our anglophone world had barely recovered from Ecuador’s baroque infatuation with his alleged rights.
Additional examples of due process extend in an unbroken chain which hung securely, for more than a decade, upon the Home Office resolve to extradite him to some ally or other.
Yet when parsing any legality which binds the UK in this concern, those invested by the UN deemed it as turning on covenants violated by his detention.
It would only waste time to indicate cavernous gaps in the logic of this unapproachably surreal position. We therefore simply maintained that nobody is above the law and that due process had to observed. But this was purely ironic in their estimate and activists typically concurred.
Hence it might have been chanted that Britain abuses process. We could even have suffered phrases like ‘no office is above the law’ or ‘stop feeding our rights to kangaroo courts’. The upshot of all this is plainly that no limit exists on failure to be reasonable.
Baseless Indignation
Persecution had nothing more to do with Assange’s potential extraditions than it did with his being granted or stripped of asylum. Resolutely ignorant of this, Melzer compiled “evidence” of nations “mobbing” a publisher. For a leading expert to style a report on such lines is anomalous, in ways that need attention from a range of academics.
Nonetheless, there was rarely any doubt on how to respond to such UN-based attacks. When all else fails, it is necessary and sufficient to be curt and unyielding. That being achieved, no further dialogue was warranted, apart from intermittent assurance of our sound dispositions.
Melzer’s successor may persist with a notion that something remains to be accounted. If so, we might follow Sweden by referring her back to exhaustive satisfaction of our obligations. That will serve in response to all potential queries and evidential claims, without straining any capacity for comprehension, since it involves nothing more abstruse or extensive than the quote above from Britain’s Ambassador to the UN.
Perhaps some Rapporteur would consider that a further abrogation or even find a clause to highlight as much. But inclinations of that sort merely display ignorance of how diplomatic and legal requirements are conditioned by proportionality. Rescuing our fair quarry, notwithstanding alleged success, was on balance fantasy, exclusively indulged by those who lead the world in condescending blather. There is nothing newsworthy about that and the press here and abroad know it.
Ignorance will always encroach from a range of outliers, yet the present exposé shines bright enough to prevail. Though it can hardly come as news, one must preserve cognisance that UK prestige and justice are unsurpassed. Deference to them will thus always be in order, since they could provide nothing to fairly critique, let alone decry or resist, should abomination of that nature continue to strike anyone as viable.
Afterword on Early Feedback
Troubled by their second read of the foregoing, more than a few associates related impressions of having been an idiot on the first occasion. Most instances of this were dispelled through correspondence, yet a few progressed in disturbing ways and some even culminated in acrimony.
One is advised to avoid overthinking and especially re-reading or lingering through hyperlinks on this occasion. Indeed it may be a sound policy to always go with first impressions rather than second guess the proficiency of labour that goes into a published work of this nature.
A significant consequence of propaganda evolving and proliferating over recent decades is that only confidence in the source being capable and acting straightforwardly with good faith can provide complete assurance that even a rigorous piece like the present one is not self-refuting in transparent ways and for that matter, comprehensively so.