Lawyers for the WikiLeaks publisher want the OAS independent body to keep
Assange from being sent to a courtroom in the U.S. and to end his isolation.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Julian Assanges lawyers have filed an urgent petition to the Inter-American
Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) to stop Ecuador from extraditing him to
the United States and to pressure the U.S. to reveal its sealed charges
against the WikiLeaks publisher, WikiLeaks said on Wednesday.
His lawyers also applied to the IACHR to get Ecuador to end its surveillance
of Assange and to stop the isolation imposed on him, according to the
1,172-page filing.
The application by Mr. Assanges lawyers identifies a raft of legal
obligations that the U.S. and Ecuador are flouting in their treatment of Mr.
Assange, WikiLeaks said in a statement. The lawyers document Trump
Administration attempts to pressure Ecuador to hand over Mr. Assange,
notably recent serious overt threats against Ecuador made by senior U.S.
political figures, unlike the more veiled threats made in the past.
The IACHR is an autonomous part of the Organization of American States (OAS)
to promote and protect human rights. Its decisions are not legally binding
on OAS member states. But it can create political embarrassment for states
that are found to have committed human rights violations.
The calls to extradite Mr. Assange to the United States, as the result of
his work as a publisher and editor, is the reason Mr. Assange obtained
political asylum at Ecuadors embassy in London in August 2012, WikiLeaks
said.
Baltasar Garzón, the international coordinator of Assanges legal team,
called for international solidarity for this case in which the right to
access and impart information freely is in jeopardy, the statement said.
A decision whether to unseal the details of an indictment against Assange is
held up in a courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia. In November, Judge Leonie
Brinkema delayed her decision for what she said would be a week.
The WikiLeaks petition to the IACHR also reveals for the first time that
U.S. federal prosecutors have in the last few months formally approached
people in the United States, Germany and Iceland and pressed them to testify
against Mr. Assange in return for immunity from prosecution, the WikiLeaks
statement said.
Those approached are associated with WikiLeaks joint publications with
other media about U.S. diplomacy, Guantanamo bay and the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, said the statement.
The Trump administration is clearly intent on using the prosecution of
Julian Assange as an icebreaker to set a dangerous precedent that would
enable the prosecution of most serious media organizations, according to
WikiLeaks. It added that the threats against Assange have significantly
increased since WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 CIA documents, the
largest leak of CIA classified information in history.
The petition points out espionage activity against Assange in the embassy by
private security firms contracted by Ecuador which, instead of being
involved in protecting the asylee, have spied on Mr. Assange and his
visitors. The private firms have been acting as informants to the FBI,
WikiLeaks said, citing media reports.
Ecuador is required to end the regime of isolation imposed on Mr. Assange,
suspending the application of the so-called special protocol and
guaranteeing his rights as an asylee will be respected in full, the filing
said.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent
for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and
numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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