A court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the U.S. unless the U.S. provides assurances that he will be well treated while in custody. That does not sound encouraging but Assange had been hanging by a thread, ready to be extradited to the U.S. on this ruling.
The U.S. now has to prove that it will respect Assange’s human rights. Lol. The U.S. government has three weeks to “prove” that Assange can “rely on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution [and] that he is not prejudiced at trial (including sentence) by reason of his nationality, that he is afforded the same First Amendment protections as a United States citizen and that the death penalty is not imposed.”
The First Amendment should be enough for him to have never been charged in the first place!! Assange was an award-winning journalist who exposed war crimes! The war criminals should have been charged in the first place.
The court ruled that Assange “has a real prospect of success on 3 of the 9 grounds of appeal” so he could be allowed to move those “unless satisfactory assurances are provided.” What kind of “satisfactory assurances” would the court accept here given that this is clearly a politlcal extradition and political extraditions are supposed to be forbidden under international law?
It is hard to consider this a victory given Assange is still behind bars but given the alternative of him being put on a plane to America this week, it is a small win in an uphill battle. Stella Assange will join Redacted today at 4PM Eastern Time.
