Lawyer for Assange: US has empanelled secret grand jury against WikiLeaks leader

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Lawyer for Assange: US has empanelled secret grand jury against WikiLeaks leader
By Patrick Martin
14 December 2010

As WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was preparing to appear today before a
London court to appeal a judge’s denial of bail, his attorney Mark Stephens
warned that Sweden had instigated legal proceedings in order to hand Assange
over to the US authorities.

Speaking with interviewer David Frost on al-Jazeera television, Stephens said,
“We have heard from the Swedish authorities there has been a secretly empanelled
grand jury in Alexandria…just over the river from Washington DC, next to the
Pentagon.”

Sweden is seeking to question Assange on trumped-up sexual assault charges that
have been instigated by right-wing elements in Sweden, backed by the US
government, in order to disrupt the efforts of WikiLeaks to continue publishing
documents that expose US military atrocities and diplomatic conspiracies around
the world.

In the al-Jazeera interview, Stephens said, “[T]he Swedes, we understand, have
said that if he comes to Sweden, they will defer their interest in him to the
Americans. Now that shows some level of collusion and embarrassment, so it does
seem to me what we have here is nothing more than holding charges…so ultimately
they can get their mitts on him.”

These remarks are the most direct allegation from Assange’s defense team that
the Swedish charges are simply a device to seize the WikiLeaks leader and then
turn him over for prosecution by the US government, or perhaps to be detained in
a military or CIA prison.

The US wants to prosecute Assange for his role in the WikiLeaks exposures, but
Justice Department prosecutors have yet to make public any legal basis for doing
so. The secret federal grand jury in Alexandria would have been convened by the
US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who has prosecuted many
high-profile terrorism cases, including that against Zacarias Moussaoui, an Al
Qaeda member who was detained while training at a Minnesota flight school before
the 9/11 attacks.

A grand jury from the Eastern District would almost certainly include people
employed by or with family connections to the US national security apparatus,
since the Pentagon, Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Homeland
Security all have their headquarters in the area.

Both Democratic and Republican politicians in Washington have jumped on the
bandwagon of demonizing Assange and WikiLeaks. The outgoing Democratic chairman
of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers of Detroit, will hold a public
hearing Thursday to discuss “legal and constitutional issues raised by
WikiLeaks,” including the possible use of the Espionage Act to prosecute him.

The incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Republican Peter
King of Long Island, introduced a bill last week to make it illegal to publish
the names of those who supply information to the US military or intelligence
agencies. King has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute Assange
under the Espionage Act.

King said his new bill, the Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful
Dissemination (SHIELD) Act, would remove any ambiguity about whether Assange, an
Australian citizen who published documents sent to him anonymously, could be
charged with violating US law. Three US senators have introduced a similar bill
in the Senate.

In his comments to al-Jazeera, Stephens also previewed some of the arguments
that Assange’s defense team will make at Tuesday’s court hearing in London. “He
is entitled under international law, under Swedish law, to know the charges or
the investigation that’s going on, the allegations made against him and the
nature of the evidence which is said to support it,” Stephens said. “As I sit
here talking to you now, he hasn’t that information, so he’s not been able to
comprehensively rebut” the charges against him.

“Julian remains prepared to meet consensually with the Swedish prosecutor should
she care to come to London,” he continued. “There is not a necessity for a show
trial if she doesn’t want it.”

The legal case against Assange is increasingly discredited in Britain, not only
because of the suspicions of Swedish-US collusion, but because of the conduct of
the London court itself. The same magistrate, Howard Biddle, who denied bail to
Assange December 7, granted bail the following day to a 30-year-old businessman,
Shrien Dewani, facing charges of conspiring to murder his wife during their
honeymoon in South Africa.

While Dewani faces charges of attempted murder, Assange has not been officially
charged with any crime. He is sought by Swedish authorities for questioning in
relation to claims by two women that he sexually assaulted them. The disparity
in Biddle’s treatment of the two cases strongly suggests that a political motive
was behind the denial of bail to Assange.

In a lengthy analysis of the purported assaults, the Independent found that even
if the two women are deemed credible witnesses—despite evidence that a
right-wing politician prompted them to file charges—there is still no case to be
made to sustain a conviction.

The article explained: “But with no forensic evidence taken or available, all of
these alleged offences seem to be a matter of one adult’s word against that of
another. Unless recording devices were in use in the two bedrooms concerned, or
there are details…yet to be made public, it is very hard to see how the offences
could be conclusively proved.”

In a letter to the Guardian published Friday, supporters of Assange, headed by
investigative journalist John Pilger, called for his release. “We protest at the
attacks on WikiLeaks and, in particular, on Julian Assange,” they wrote, adding
that the publication of secret documents had “assisted democracy in revealing
the real views of our governments over a range of issues.”

The letter continued: “All we knew about the mass killing, torture and
corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan has been confirmed. The world’s leaders can
no longer hide the truth by simply lying to the public. The lies have been exposed.”

The letter also condemned the actions of corporations like Amazon, the Swiss
banks and credit card companies in bowing to US government pressure to cut off
financial payments to WikiLeaks from its supporters.

Besides Pilger, the letter was signed by numerous artists: comedians Alexei
Sale, Mark Thomas, AL Kennedy and Terry Jones (of Monty Python); actors Miriam
Margolyes, Celia Mitchell, Roger Lloyd Pack and Andy de la Tour; playwright
Caryl Churchill; designers David Gentleman and Katharine Hamnett; and writer
Iain Banks.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/wiki-d14.shtml

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