Obama administration steps up vendetta ag ainst WikiLeaks ’ Julian Assange

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Obama administration steps up vendetta against WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange
By Patrick O’Connor
10 December 2010

The British Independent newspaper reported Wednesday that US and Swedish
officials were engaged in behind closed doors discussions aimed at delivering
WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange into American custody. Assange is currently
imprisoned in London, awaiting an extradition hearing next Tuesday on bogus and
politically motivated sexual allegations raised in Sweden.

Citing unnamed diplomatic sources, the Independent revealed that “informal
discussions” were underway between the American and Swedish authorities.
“Sources stressed that no extradition request would be submitted until and
unless the US government laid charges against Mr Assange, and that attempts to
take him to America would only take place after legal proceedings are concluded
in Sweden,” the newspaper stated.

Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer acting for Assange, told ABC radio in Australia that
any extradition to Sweden would be a precursor to extradition to the US. She
said there were “rumours already that an indictment has been put before a grand
jury in the US.”

The Swedish allegations are nothing but a vehicle for the vicious vendetta
against Assange being pursued by the administration of President Barack Obama.
The US campaign is being waged in retaliation for the journalist’s principled
role in coordinating the dissemination of a vast cache of diplomatic cables
exposing the criminal activities carried out by US imperialism on a daily basis
around the world.

US Attorney-General Eric Holder this week emphasised that his office was
investigating every possible avenue for prosecuting the WikiLeaks’ editor. “I
don’t want to get into specifics here, but people would have a misimpression if
the only statute you think that we are looking at is the Espionage Act,” he
declared. “That is certainly something that might play a role, but there are
other statutes, other tools that we have at our disposal.”

A New York Times article on Tuesday, “US Prosecutors Study WikiLeaks
Prosecution”, pointed to some of the Obama administration’s desperate efforts to
concoct a legal pretext for its pursuit of Assange. An unnamed government
official said prosecutors were investigating whether WikiLeaks had actively
assisted in the leak of the diplomatic documents rather than merely publishing
them. This would potentially allow Assange to be prosecuted on the same charges
as the leaker—alleged to be former army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning.
The New York Times acknowledged that there was no evidence that WikiLeaks had
done anything but publish the documents. The newspaper cited another
administration official who revealed that the Justice Department was also
investigating whether Assange could be charged with “trafficking in stolen
government property”—an absurd accusation given that the published cables are
reproductions of files, not physical documents.

Assange confronts the very real danger of being assassinated or “disappeared” if
he were handed over to the American authorities. Senior political figures,
Democrats and Republicans, have identified the WikiLeaks’ editor as an “enemy
combatant” and terrorist and demanded his assassination. The Obama
administration has said and done nothing to distance itself from such outrageous
provocations.

The immediate aim of Washington and its allies appears to be to use the trumped
up Swedish allegations to mire Assange in legal proceedings for as long as
possible, diverting him from overseeing the cable release and the defence of
WikiLeaks against on-line attacks that are reportedly being coordinated from
within the White House

Numerous experts in international law have condemned the legal proceedings
against Assange. While the journalist has not even been charged with any offence
in Sweden, he has been denied bail and locked up in a segregated unit of
London’s Wandsworth prison, with only one hour of exercise permitted each day
and “limited access” to the internet. Moreover, he has been detained before
Swedish prosecutors have had to present any prima facie evidence that there is a
case to answer. His legal team is reportedly already preparing to challenge the
attempted extradition in the London High Court. The Independent has reported:
“If they lose the case there, they can take it all the way to the Supreme Court,
a process which could last many months.”

In a letter to the British Guardian published Wednesday, Katrin Axelsson from
Women Against Rape—an organisation that campaigns for more sex offenders to be
punished—questioned the “unusual zeal” with which the WikiLeaks’ founder was
being pursued. “Assange, who it seems has no criminal convictions, was refused
bail in England despite sureties of more than £120,000,” she wrote. “Yet bail
following rape allegations is routine... There is a long tradition of the use of
rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with
women’s safety.”

The Australian Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday rushed
to the defence of the Obama administration and its witch-hunt of Assange.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland claimed that obtaining classified information
was an offence under Australian law.

McClelland told journalists: “The distribution of that information, again
without knowing the United States’ law, may be an offence. Certainly to release
that sort of information by an officer of the Commonwealth, if it were
Australian material, may certainly involve issues of criminality, but again I
can’t speak in respect to American laws... In respect to the further
distribution of [the leaked material], clearly it is something that the United
State’s Attorney-General, Eric Holder, who’s a highly competent lawyer, has said
they are looking at and looking at very closely. And I have said we would
provide every assistance to those investigations to the United States government.”

The government’s justice minister Brendan O’Connor today confirmed that the
Australian Federal Police had launched its own investigation. “We want to, of
course, always ensure that this country and its citizens are secure. And if
there are any concerns about our national security then they must be properly
considered and examined and that’s being done now.”

The AFP investigation potentially opens up yet another judicial avenue for
harassing Assange. The Australian government has definite form with such
methods—former Solomon Islands Attorney-General Julian Moti has spent the last
four years challenging a still unresolved case that, like Assange’s, involved
sexual misconduct allegations, and is alleged by Moti to be a politically
motivated frame-up.

The Australian government is not backing away from Prime Minister Gillard’s
provocative and highly improper December 2 statement that WikiLeaks’ publication
of the US cables was “illegal”. This is despite Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd
earlier blaming “the Americans” for the leak, and flies in the face of mounting
condemnation of Gillard’s stance in Australia. (See: “Support builds for Julian
Assange in Australia”)

The prime minister has undoubtedly been issued with definite orders from
Washington to hold the line. Throughout the “cablegate” affair she has
functioned as nothing but the mouthpiece for the American political
establishment, making clear her contempt for the democratic and legal rights of
Assange, an Australian citizen.

Opposition to the witch-hunt and persecution of Assange is building around the
world. The official WikiLeaks page on the Facebook website has expanded from
151,000 supporters on November 28, to 930,000 on December 7, to more than 1.1
million today. More than 1,000 “mirror” servers hosting WikiLeaks’ archive have
been set up in every part of the world. Well over 100,000 people have downloaded
the encoded WikiLeaks “insurance file” of highly confidential documents that may
be decrypted in the event that the attacks against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange
escalate.

A reported 1,500 computer hackers, or “hacktivists”, have launched retaliatory
actions against the websites of corporations and governments involved in
attacking WikiLeaks. Corporations that have frozen donation services for
WikiLeaks such as PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa, and others such as Amazon, which
refused to continue hosting the organisation’s servers, have come under
sustained attack. Politicians including Sarah Palin have also been targeted, as
has the chief Swedish prosecutor. According to the Dutch media, a 16-year-old
boy in Rotterdam, Holland was arrested Wednesday night for allegedly taking part
in the operation against MasterCard.

In a statement conveyed by his lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, and reported in
today’s Australian, Assange said he was concerned that he was unable to respond
to new allegations that he was behind these hacking activities. “He did not make
any such instruction,” she said, “and indeed he sees this as a deliberate
attempt to conflate hacking organisations and those engaged in hacking and
WikiLeaks, which is not a hacking organisation. It is a news organisation and a
publisher.”

Protests and demonstrations have been organised in several countries today and
over the weekend. Such actions in defence of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and
Bradley Manning are now a burning issue confronting working people and youth
internationally.

The mass cable leak has laid bare the true state of social and political
relations in the twenty-first century. WikiLeaks is regarded as such an immense
threat by US imperialism and its allies because its criminal objectives and
operations, which stand in direct opposition to the interests and sentiments of
the broad mass of the world’s population, depend on total secrecy.

While the persecution of Assange has sparked a passionate movement in his
defence, it as yet lacks a clear political focus. The struggle to defend
democratic rights and internet freedom is inseparable from the struggle for the
development of an internationally unified movement of the working class,
directed against imperialism and the profit system, on the basis of a socialist
and internationalist program.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/wiki-d10.shtml

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