Julian Assange: 600+ Rights Groups and Individuals Condemn UK and Sweden for Failing to Recognize UN Arbitrary Detention Finding

A campaigner calling for the release of Julian Assange from his asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy, June 19, 2014 (Photo: Andy Worthington).Yesterday, March 1, over 600 rights groups and prominent individuals — including Ai Weiwei, Pussy Riot, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Brian Eno, Ken Loach, Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, and the Northern Irish peace activist Mairead Maguire — delivered an open letter to the British and Swedish governments (via the EU reformist group DiEM25), at the 31st United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, urging the two governments to respect the finding last month by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that Assange — the WikiLeaks founder, who, in 2010 and 2011, released the Iraq and Afghan war logs, a trove of US diplomatic cables from around the world, and the Guantánamo files, all originally leaked by Chelsea Manning — has been subjected to arbitrary detention. This was “partially,” as the Guardian explained, “on the grounds that Swedish prosecutors used disproportionate methods, including a European arrest warrant, rather than initially interviewing him in the UK.” The statement was delivered to the Swedish and UK Permanent Representatives to the United Nations.

Noam Chomsky said, “Julian Assange should have been freed a long time ago.  The judgment of the UN Working Group is welcome, and should be implemented forthwith.” Mads Andenas, professor of international law at Oxford All Souls, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary Detention, said, “UK politicians [have] aimed at weakening the authority of the UN body for short-term opportunistic gain.”

Assange has been living for over three and a half years in the Ecuadorian Embassy, behind Harrod’s, in Knightsbridge, in London, where he first sought asylum in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations, which he has always denied. Read the rest of this entry »

Photos: Vigil for Julian Assange outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, on the 2nd Anniversary of his Asylum Request, June 19, 2014

Please click here to see my photos of the vigil on Flickr.

On Thursday June 19, 2014, supporters of Julian Assange held a vigil outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge in London (just behind Harrods), which I attended and photographed.

Supporters of the WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief have been holding vigils almost every day since he walked into the embassy seeking political asylum on June 19, 2012. He feared that he would end up being extradited to the US from Sweden, where he is accused of sexual offences (claims which he denies), and his asylum claim was accepted by the government of Ecuador on August 16, 2012.

WikiLeaks’ work, exposing US crimes through documents released by Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning — including the “Collateral Murder” video, featuring US personnel indiscriminately killing civilians and two Reuters reporters in Iraq, 500,000 army reports (the Afghan War logs and the Iraq War logs), 250,000 US diplomatic cables, and the Guantánamo files — has, of course, been enormously influential, and I am pleased to have worked with WikiLeaks as a media partner on the release of the classified military files from Guantánamo in April 2011. For further information, see my ongoing project to analyze all the files.

To mark the anniversary, Julian Assange released the following statement (I have added the links at the end): Read the rest of this entry »

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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