Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Why the UK has not extradited Julian Assange directly to the US


In deference to its transatlantic master the UK government would dearly have loved to have banged Julian Assange on a plane to the United States where he would have been imprisoned and most likely, if not forgotten about, at least remembered less frequently, over time. Many commentators with an interest in the Assange story use this as an argument to justify his extradition to Sweden. The argument goes something like this. “If the UK wanted to extradite Julian Assange it would be easier to extradite him directly from the UK.” If this is true, why then was this option eschewed? There are several reasons.

First of all it is a myth to think it would be easier to extradite Assange from the UK. In the present climate Jack Straw and the UK security services are fighting behind the scenes to exonerate themselves from the extraditions authorised by them that enabled the rendition and torture of civilians emanating from Middle Eastern and North African countries. How many were sent back to their homelands where they were on the wanted list of the regime in power it is not yet possible to say. Rest assured, it is much higher than the one or two who are challenging Straw’s decision to have sent them back to be tortured. The fate of some may never even be known. It will be noted that Mr Belhadj and Mr al Saadi were living respectively in China and Hong Kong at the time of their renditions, and after their arrests and imprisonments they were tortured for years in Libya, before Blair’s love affair with Gadaffi came to an end; and NATO forces exploded a path to exploit the oilfields of Libya. This was the act which liberated Mr Belhadj and Mr al Saadi from prison.

Guantanamo Bay, a gulag or concentration camp by any other name, has left a legacy of mistrust towards the United States and the way the US administers justice.  Its injustice has also been costly to the UK taxpayer. British citizens like Moazzam Begg were extradited on the instructions of the United States. As with Mr Belhadj and Mr al Saadi the arrest was made abroad, this time in Islamabad. Moazzam Begg, who witnessed two inmates at Bagram being beaten to death, or nearly beaten to death, was himself tortured and abused before his imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay.

Another whistleblower, who like Assange is a thorn in the side of authority, is the messianic Jew, Mordechai Vanunu. In 1986 Vanunu revealed to the Sunday Times Israel’s nuclear weapons’ programme having worked at the nuclear plant in Israel where the manufacturing process was facilitated. The full facts as to how he was arrested are sketchy but there was no known extradition request from Israel to the UK. Instead Vanunu was enticed to Italy where MOSSAD agents were lying in wait for him. He was arrested and spent 18 years in an Israeli prison, subsequent years under virtual house arrest, and still does not have the freedom to go where he wishes.

Jewish banking families, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, call the tune for UK and US governments, and they are the real decision-makers. It was one of the Rockefellers who informed the late Aaron Russo that there was going to be an event which would lead to a new world order in the Middle East. It was also known that seven countries were to be destabilised to achieve this aim. Of those seven only Syria and Iran have not been fully destabilised yet. People like Mordechai Vanunu and Julian Assange, being opposed to such actions, do not fit in with these bankers’ dreams, so are taken out of circulation to stop them spreading further truths enabling the banking giants to complete their evil intentions.

To do things properly long-winded procedures have to be followed in this country. Despite its abominable human rights record the US has requested the extradition of UK citizens, nearly always of Asian extraction, including Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan (a poet and sufferer from Asperger’s syndrome), who Theresa May has pledged to hand over to her US masters. The US made requests for extradition six years ago in the case of Ahsan and even longer ago in the case of Ahmad. Both men have been in prison without a single charge being brought against them. Ahmad was beaten by UK police and awarded damages. Although their cases have gone to the European Court of Human Rights, and extradition has shamefully been endorsed by that court, their appeals have yet to be heard.

This is why neither the UK nor the US want to extradite Assange directly from the UK. It is much easier to ship him to Sweden on trumped-up charges, where he would be picked up by CIA agents, whisked off to the United States, and put in prison for a very long time. It would happen, as it did with Vanunu, very quickly. William Hague has almost certainly clandestinely agreed to this. When Assange sought asylum not only did Hague behave like a baby who had dropped his dummy, but made vague threats to storm the Ecuadorian Embassy. Hague has been repeatedly asked to guarantee that Assange would not be extradited from Sweden but the only guarantee Hague would give is that Assange would not be executed. Assange could see this coming and he pre-empted them.

How much of a puppet of the United States has the UK become? The US, where human rights have reached an all-time low, have a one-sided extradition agreement which enables UK citizens to be extradited to the US, without having to make any case against those citizens. Conversely the US would never − never ever − allow the UK to have one of its citizens extradited here. The whole Cameron, Hague, May outfit is a Muppet Show and it is very clear to whose tune they are singing and dancing.

To sum up, the examples cited above show that it is much easier to arrest somebody outside of the UK for extradition purposes than it is here.  This answers all those who make the argument: “If the UK wanted to extradite Julian Assange it would be easier to extradite him directly from the UK.”


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