A Witch Hunt by any other name is still a Witch Hunt.
from Salem, to Joe McCarthy, to Donald Trump.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/7/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
New Fears for Julian Assange
August 7, 2019
Legendary journalist John Pilger has been to see Assange in Belmarsh Prison
in London and his report is not encouraging.
Journalist John Pilger has recently visited imprisoned WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange and has raised an alarm about Assange's "deteriorated"
health.
Pilger said in a Tweet on Wednesday that Assange is "isolated" and treated
"worse than a murderer."
"I now fear for him," Pilger wrote.
Assange is suffering from an undisclosed ailment and has been confined to
the hospital ward at the maximum security prison for several weeks. He was
arrested on April 11 by British police who were called by the Ecuadorian
government into its London embassy in apparent violation of international
asylum law. Assange had been granted political asylum by Ecuador in 2012.
He
had been suffering health problems in the embassy but British authorities
refused to allow him from leaving the embassy for treatment without being
arrested.
Almost immediately after his arrest the United States unveiled an
indictment
against him for alleged intrusion into a government computer although the
indictment itself describes normal procedures of investigative journalism:
encouraging a source to provide more information and working to protect the
source's identity.
On May 23, Assange was charged under the U.S. Espionage Act for possession
and dissemination of classified information given to him by WikiLeak's
source, Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. army intelligence analyst. It was
the
first time the Espionage Act was used against a journalist for publishing
classified information.
Manning, meanwhile, is imprisoned in Alexandria, VA for refusing to testify
to a grand jury on Assange's case. Since Assange has already been twice
indicted, it is not clear if a new indictment against him is being
prepared.
On Wednesday, the judge in Manning's case denied her a hearing and said
$1,000-a-day fines against her did not amount to "punishment."
Assange is now fighting an extradition request from the United States as he
serves a 50-week sentence in Belmarsh for having skipped bail in an
unrelated Swedish investigation into sexual assault allegations, which had
been dropped twice before by Swedish authorities, but was revived after his
arrest. Assange had sought asylum in the Ecuador embassy because he feared
extradition to the United States, fears that have been borne out by events.
He faces 175 years in prison in the U.S.