[D66] Julian Assange’s bail request denied despite coronavirus risk

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wsws.org:

Julian Assange’s bail request denied despite coronavirus risk
By Thomas Scripps
26 March 2020

UK Judge Vanessa Baraitser yesterday refused an application to grant 
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange bail. He is currently held on remand in 
London’s HMP Belmarsh, pending completion of a hearing to decide on his 
extradition to the United States on charges of espionage carrying a life 
sentence.

Assange’s legal team made the bail request due to the “very real” and 
potentially “fatal” risk posed to his fragile health by the coronavirus 
pandemic. The judge’s decision is more proof that the British 
government, in collusion with the Trump administration and US security 
services, want nothing less than to see the world-famous journalist dead.

Baraitser’s refusal came amid mounting calls for the release of 
vulnerable, low-risk prisoners from the UK’s overcrowded and woefully 
unprepared prison systems during the coronavirus crisis.

Allan Hogarth of Amnesty International UK said elderly prisoners and 
those with underlying medical conditions should “immediately” be 
considered for release “if they do not pose a threat to themselves or 
society.” The Prisoners’ Advice Service is calling for the old or 
infirm, those on indefinite imprisonment for public protection 
sentences, and those who simply do not pose threat to be released now.

Before the hearing began, over 17,000 people had signed a petition to 
Home Secretary Priti Patel demanding “Release Julian Assange from 
Belmarsh Prison before COVID-19 spreads.”

Due to the UK lockdown, the court was sparsely attended, with several 
lawyers participating online. Physically present were Baraitser, one 
clerk, Assange’s leading defence barrister, Edward Fitzgerald QC, five 
journalists and six WikiLeaks supporters.

Baraitser began by informing the court that HMP Belmarsh had allowed 
Assange just 15 minutes access to a video link. The rest of the hearing 
would have to proceed in his absence. Assange was unable to participate 
properly due to audio issues with the lawyers dialling in to the court: 
“I can’t hear half of them,” he said at one point.

Proceeding under these flagrant abuses of due process, US prosecutors 
delivered a volley of lies to justify keeping the WikiLeaks founder in 
prison.

Lawyer Clair Dobbin first said that it was not a matter for the court to 
release individual prisoners, but for the Ministry of Justice. The 
court, she said, “cannot pre-empt the government.” But it is on 
Baraitser’s say-so of September 2019 that Assange is still held in a 
maximum-security prison on remand, despite his sentence for “absconding 
bail” having expired that month.

Dobbin repeated the now doubly absurd claim made by the prosecution to 
keep Assange held on remand; that the “risk of flight” posed by the most 
famous political prisoner in the world—now in the midst of a national 
lockdown and closure of international travel—“is insurmountable.”

“There exists concrete evidence of his absconding,” she said. “He has 
been tested and failed.”

This refers to Assange using his right to asylum to shelter in the 
Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 and escape an international manhunt launched 
by a murderous US government. Assange’s persecutors are using their past 
criminality as justification for today’s.

Dobbin then claimed that Assange is “not within the high-risk groups for 
coronavirus” and implied that there was little risk of infection anyway 
since, “It's widely publicised that visits to prisons by all family 
members have stopped.”

Assange has a chronic lung condition and has been severely physically 
weakened by brutal mistreatment amounting to psychological torture over 
the past decade. On Tuesday, the campaign group Doctors for Assange 
tweeted, “Medically, legally, ethically, & morally, Assange should be 
granted bail tomorrow.”

Lissa Johnson, a spokesperson for the group, tweeted, “If Julian Assange 
is not granted bail on Wednesday, and he succumbs to Covid-19 in prison, 
his death will be a politically-motivated, state-sanctioned killing, by 
wilful medical neglect.”

Assange’s case, Doctors for Assange said, represents a “significantly 
increased risk of death amid Covid-19 pandemic to a low-risk prisoner,” 
citing World Health Organisation guidance, the statement of the 
President of the Prison Governor’s Association that Covid-19 related 
deaths in prisons were inevitable and London School of Hygiene and 
Tropical Medicine Professor Richard Coker’s warning of the “‘substantial 
risk of virus spreading at particularly fast rate’ in prisons.”

There are clear signs that this risk is becoming a reality. On Tuesday, 
4,300 prison staff—12 percent of the total—were away from work because 
they were ill or self-isolating. The Ministry of Justice has announced 
that 19 prisoners across 10 jails have been diagnosed with the 
infection, plus four prison staff across four jails and three prisoner 
escort and custody services staff. London, where Belmarsh prison is 
located, is the epicentre of the UK’s epidemic.

On the prosecution’s claim that Assange is a flight risk, Fitzgerald 
said, “It is extremely unlikely he would forsake the legal battle he is 
engaged in.” He outlined the strict conditions of release which the 
defence would be prepared to accept to ensure Assange’s safety, 
including house arrest with his partner and father, GPS tagging which 
would alert authorities if he even leaves the interior of the house, and 
12 sureties to offer bail.

On the risks to Assange’s health and life, Fitzgerald explained that 
medical expert Dr. Sondra Crosby “considers that he is particularly at 
risk, one, of developing coronavirus and, if he does, that it develops 
into very severe complications for him.”

“If he does develop critical symptoms it would be very doubtful that 
Belmarsh would be able to cope with his condition,” Crosby concluded.

Assange, Fitzgerald continued, “will be seriously endangered in 
circumstances from which he cannot escape” if he continues to remain in 
prison. This danger is exacerbated by the “risk to his mental health and 
his human contact” posed by lockdown procedures, which will also further 
restrict Assange’s already minimal contact time with his lawyers.

Responding to the prosecution’s suggestion that Assange was at little 
risk of coming into contact with the virus, Fitzgerald said, “When we 
sought to have access to Belmarsh we were told that 100 members of staff 
were off sick due to the coronavirus. That does not suggest that there's 
no coronavirus problem in Belmarsh.”

Baraitser responded with a declaration that the “global pandemic… does 
not provide grounds for Mr Assange’s release.” She had “no reason not to 
trust” the government’s advice on protecting prisoners from the virus 
“as both evidence-based and reliable and appropriate.”

Following the ruling, Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, 
tweeted, “No surprise. If UK cared for Assange’s health, justice or 
[the] rule of law, he would not be persecuted, imprisoned & tortured for 
the purpose of suppressing press freedom & facing extradition to a 
country claiming total impunity for torture & war crimes.”

Speaking for Doctors for Assange, Dr. Stephen Frost told the World 
Socialist Web Site, “We are astonished that Julian Assange has been 
denied bail, despite expert witness medical evidence having been 
submitted to the Court strongly recommending that he be released on 
bail. On the evidence available, in the absence of access to proper 
medical care since 2012, Mr. Assange must be assumed by doctors to be 
severely immunocompromised and therefore at greatly increased risk of 
contracting and dying from coronavirus in any prison, but especially in 
a prison such as Belmarsh. Every extra day Mr. Assange is incarcerated 
in Belmarsh prison constitutes an increased threat to his life.”