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

[Antid Oto]

Lets hope UK-scumbag Boris Johnson dies from covid-19 en their fucking 
royals too..

On 28-03-2020 11:13, Antid Oto wrote:
> 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.”
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