Bronterre News

Nearly two years after UN rapporteur’s ‘psychological torture’ warning, WikiLeaks founder remains in top security jail

IT WAS in November 2019 that the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, delivered a stinging rebuke to the British government over the continued detention of Julian Assange, warning that the WikiLeaks founder showed “all the symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture”.

  Yet, 20 months later, the Australian journalist remains incarcerated in Belmarsh maximum security prison in south-east London, his fiancée, South African lawyer Stella Moris, spotlighting the global damage caused to the UK’s reputation by keeping him in jail for so long.

  Melzer, a Swiss academic and professor of international law at Glasgow university, had expressed alarm at the continued deterioration of Assange’s health since his arrest and detention earlier in 2019, saying his life was now at risk. He was sent to Belmarsh in April 2019, held in connection with a US extradition request on espionage charges for publishing evidence alleging US war crimes and other misconduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

  Central to the WikiLeaks exposés was a classified 2010 US military video allegedly showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that was said to have killed about a dozen people, including two Reuters news-staff.

  Despite this harrowing testimony, US prosecutors and Western security officials see Assange as a reckless enemy of the state whose actions threatened the lives of agents named in the WikiLeaks material.

OVERWHELMINGLY, however, the balanced conclusion must be that the persecution of Assange is unconscionable, a saga of vengefulness by a UK-supported US, while being a politically-motivated assault on the sort of journalism that alarms, embarrasses or damages politicians.

  The particular danger of the latter, of course, is that it will be giving succour to oppressive regimes around the world whose desire to eradicate press freedom never falters.

  As Stella Moris puts it in an interview with The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour: “The treatment of Julian is compromising the UK constantly all round the world. 

  “It’s giving authoritarian governments points to score all round the world both privately and in international fora like the UN. 

  “You cannot start a new values competition with China with Julian Assange in Belmarsh. It just does not work. You don’t get to take the moral high ground with this as your starting point.”

  She pointed to a statement by Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, who had said the difference between China and the US was that China put its critics in prison. 

  She said: “I am not sure the British government is aware of how much international criticism it is facing over this issue, or the damage it is doing to its soft power reputation. It’s a tool to whack the UK again and again. It is the perfect response for authoritarian leaders when they are criticised by the UK, or pressed to release political prisoners: ‘What about Julian Assange?’”

  Meanwhile, the Foreign Office could end up looking very silly by running, as it is, a campaign of resistance to what is recognised as a worldwide attack on media freedom while Assange the journalist, who is backed by international press freedom campaigners Reporters without Borders, languishes in jail. 

  The Obama administration decided not to prosecute Assange, saying it could find nothing that did not amount to newsgathering and, if it did charge him, it would have to charge other organisations that had published the same material, such as The New York Times and The Guardian. The Trump administration reversed that logical and fair-minded position..

  Joe Biden was inaugurated on 20 January. The following month, turning its back on the Obama position, the US Justice Department said it planned to continue to seek Assange’s extradition to face hacking conspiracy charges. That was five months ago; it’s outrageous that this legal process should be allowed to drag on month after month. How much longer does the Biden administration want? Ten months? An unknown number of years? 

  Moris portrays Britain as caught by a highly political case launched by the Trump administration as part of its war on journalism – a war that never had much support in the US. Who’s going to disagree with any of that?

EQUALLY, WHO’S going to disagree with the warning of Nils Melzer and his medical team, who visited Assange in May 2019 and reported that he showed “all the symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture” and demanded “immediate measures for the protection of his health and dignity.”

  Instead, Melzer said,“what we have seen from the UK Government is outright contempt for Mr. Assange’s rights and integrity.

  “Despite the medical urgency of my appeal, and the seriousness of the alleged violations, the UK has not undertaken any measures of investigation, prevention and redress required under international law.”

  Under the Convention against Torture, he pointed out, states “must conduct a prompt and impartial investigation wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed.” 

  Melzer added: “In a cursory response sent nearly five months after my visit, the UK Government flatly rejected my findings, without indicating any willingness to consider my recommendations, let alone to implement them, or even provide the additional information requested.” 

  As predicted by the special rapporteur, shortly after his visit Assange was transferred to the prison’s health care unit. 

  “He continues to be detained under oppressive conditions of isolation and surveillance, not justified by his detention status,” said Melzer, stressing that, having completed his prison sentence for violating UK bail terms in 2012, Assange was now being held exclusively in relation to the pending extradition request from the United States.