Some see Julian Assange as a reckless activity, while others think he’s a God because he exposes the truth. Is he a traitor or a hero – a hacktivist or a hack? The truth is somewhere in the murky middle.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell.
Every country, every nation has its own laws. Today everyone is up in arms about the British laws, will prevent Julian Assange from being extradited to the US. But for us to fully understand the intricacies, we need to look at his case.
What Did Julian Assange Do?
Julian Assange is known for attacking delicate and exceptionally private data from the US military catalogs, he later distributed this information the Wikileaks site.
According to Assange, the information carried abusive behavior information that exposed the US military. The reason why the US sought Julian’s extradition from the UK is that the information leaked contained classified material. His actions put the lives of US military men at risk. Currently, Julian is in the UK’s prison.
Ever since Assange leaked the information, he was known for violating human rights and hence had to spend about seven years of his life in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Going through his seven years in jail were exacerbated when he was asserted of rape, albeit the case was later dropped. It was said that on the off chance that he was removed, he would confront lifelong incarceration an likely to commit suicide in the American system of mass incrassation, so repulsive that not even one hundred days in office President Joe Biden signed an executive order to end private prisons immediately.
His Ecuadorean hosts would call him “The Guest”, but over nearly seven years staff and security at the Ecuadorean embassy in Knightsbridge. Staff shared eight rooms and a corridor with a tenant they came to fear and despise.
Julian Assange, grew increasingly erratic as the days and months passed, flitting from bouts of adolescent behavior to depressive moods. Complaints against him ranged from his playing football and skateboarding in the hall to attempting — even effecting — regime change in foreign countries.
The Wikileaks founder has been repeatedly accused of hacking systems within the embassy, and the president of Ecuador recently intimated a link between a personal hack and Mr. Assange, which Wikileaks has vehemently denied.
His sleep patterns and rumored poor hygiene led one diplomat to tell The Times in 2015: “Day has been turned into night, night into day. It is virtually impossible to conduct a normal diplomatic relationship when you are also functioning as a one-man boutique hotel.”
Extradition
The act of handing a suspect to another country to face trial under legal rules and regulations is known as extradition. Extradition is a just way of judging any victim since nations can cooperate while finding and tracking down suspects if they have fled from a country and then send back the suspects to the country where the crime was committed to face trial.
How Do Countries Agree For Extradition?
One major core value of extradition is legal agreements. Both the countries involved have to sign a treaty or a set of treaties considering the laws of both the countries. The rules and regulations for extradition are carried out through those treaties.
Every country has different rules and regulations. While some go easy on the extradition, countries like Germany only extradites their own citizens.
Extradition From UK To the US And Vice Versa
Saying that The United States and The United Kingdom have a symmetrical extradition relationship is no lie. This relationship is based on a 2003 treaty signed by both countries.
Since British Government involvement is a lot, before putting a suspect in the United Kingdom on trial The United States had to seek permission. The process is not as easy as it sounds; the request should be accurate to be passed forward on to the courts and then a warrant for finding the lost suspect is issued.
Finally, when the suspect has been caught, he goes through a judgment round on request. Unless the judge is not satisfied that the person held is the suspect and his crime is an office, he will not approve the trial in the United Kingdom if the crime took place in its region.
Another thing that the judge considers before approving extradition is that if the person was ever arrested before or whether the crime took place in any other country.
According to the United Kingdom laws, extradition is not approved to face a trial in any country that gives death penalties unless the country signs an agreement to remove the death penalty.
After a signed application is sent by the requesting country, the US home secretary makes the final decision. If the suspect finds the trial or extradition problematic, he/she can make an appeal that would be followed by a year of the court hearing.
Ever since the permission for appeal was granted, European Court imposed that they will not entertain any extradition that violates human rights.
Evidence Of Suspect: A Necessity?
According to British law, evidence of guilt is not required for extradition. This means that the judge will him or herself decide the person’s innocence at the end of a trial.
The process here is relatively simple; the requesting company only needs to explain that a case exists and they want the judge to take notice.
In January of this year, a British judge blocked Julian Assange’s extradition to the US, to face his charges on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. But why did they deny the extradition?
“I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.”
In other words, the British government found our prison system to be so atrocious that they feared Julian Assange would kill himself if he were to have to come to the US to answer for his crimes.
But are they wrong? Let’s take a look at some of the facts.
The Horrors of the US Prison System
Nearly one out of every 100 people in the US is in a prison or jail cell (0.7%). It’s crazy to imagine that 0.7% of the United States population is currently in a federal, or state prison or local jail. 1 out of 100.
It’s hardly news that American prisons and jails can be dangerous places. But the Justice Department’s report mirrors other recent accounts of inmate deaths and violence across the country that, taken together, paint a grim picture of the brutality that occurs behind prison walls—and the horrifying consequences of America’s indifference to it.
In 2019 the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released a summary of its findings on the state of Alabama’s prisons. A dive into the 53-page report reveals the horrors of being incarcerated in the US prison system.
One prisoner had been lying dead for so long that “his face was flattened,” while another was tied up and tortured for two days. One prisoner was doused with bleach and beaten with a broken mop handle. Another was attacked with shaving cream so hot that it caused chemical burns, requiring treatment from an outside hospital.
This report came shortly after a damning investigation by Oregon Public Broadcasting, KUOW, and the Northwest News Network found that at least 306 people have died in Oregon and Washington jails since 2008, often from suicide and other preventable causes.
But the actual total is unclear because officials in both states haven’t comprehensively tracked how many people die in the government’s custody. “State lawmakers who could improve funding, staff training, or standards have taken little action,” the report said. “They say they are in the dark about how many people have even died in jail, let alone how to prevent those deaths. As a result, long-festering problems avoid the spotlight.”
Four hundred and twenty-eight prisoners died in Florida’s prisons in 2017, amounting to a 20 percent leap over previous years. In Mississippi, 16 prisoners died in the state’s custody last August alone. Some of them may have died from natural causes or unpreventable problems. But that’s not always the case.
Arizona regulators testified that multiple prisoners in state facilities had died from inadequate healthcare services by a private provider. Perhaps the most famous death in recent years was Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old woman who committed suicide in a Texas jail after she was arrested during a routine traffic stop in 2015. Bland warned officials during her intake procedure that she had made suicide attempts in the past, but they took no extraordinary measures.
How widespread is the problem? It’s hard to tell because the United States generally does a poor job of collecting criminal justice data.
This willful ignorance is almost as troubling as the deaths themselves. It suggests that too many states see prison and jail brutality as somehow normal. Not every death in custody may be preventable, but a great many of them are.
So what do you think? Should Julian Assange be extradited to the US?
3 Responses
Yes, he should be extradited. Just because you don’t agree with the laws doesn’t make them any less of a law. That’s not how the justice system works.
If true , and there seems to be ample evidence he did try to warn a US embassy of a creditable threat which was ignored, that is one of perhaps many reasons he should not be extradited .
It is shameful how most countries views our justice system as inhumane, this is another reason he should not have been extradited. The British Judge called it correctly.
He should have be pardoned and just be done with this. After all the world has learned a considerable amount already, Thanks to him . If he acts up again and gets anymore bright ideas, which I doubt, then just delete him for all social media lol