Does the US Want Julian Assange Dead?
Aaron Bastani, Novara Media, 2021 (25 mins)
In an interview with Novara Media following the recent UK judgement in the US attempt to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis tears away the paper thin facade of US and British justice, condemning also the cowardice of the media which first exploited Assange’s journalism and then indulged in a concerted character asssassination. Of Assange’s ten year persecution and the harsh conditions of his solitary confinement in Belmarsh prison, Varoufakis asks pointedly: “What crime has he been convicted of? You don’t do that even to a serial killer… They are not trying to extradite him. They are trying to kill him, so that journalists like you and me think twice before exposing the war crimes of the US army.”
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MORE ON THE PERSECUTION OF JULIAN ASSANGE
Some whose only knowledge of Julian Assange’s case has been gleaned through the highly effective filter of the corporate media may find Varoufakis’s claims hard to believe. If you seek more information concerning Assange’s treatment from an authoritative independent source, the powerful 25 minute video of the UN rapporteur on torture, Professor Nils Melzer, is strongly recommended. Interestingly, according to his own account, until he first started examine the evidence, Melzer had been very reluctant even to consider the Assange case, because he had been so influenced by Assange’s character assassination in the corporate media.. However after his 2019 investigation, Melzer, a highly respected international lawyer, accused the governments of the US, UK, Sweden and Ecuador of conspiring in the psychological torture of Assange, concluding with the words:
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law. The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”
Melzer’s charges were ridiculed in the UK media, ignored by the UK government for several months, and then summarily dismissed without any attempt at refutation.
Other interesting analyses of Assange’s case are those of Jonathan Cook (Jan 2021) and Medialens (Sept 2020),
