On Thursday, the British district judge who heard Assange's bail request mocked him and laughed when Assange's lawyers requested a fair hearing. "His assertion that he has not had a fair hearing is laughable," said judge Michael Snow. "And his behavior is that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests." Assange has been sent to Belmarsh, a maximum security prison for terrorists and other high-risk detainees, where half of all prisoners are allowed to leave their cells for only two hours a week.
There is no question that Assange will be denied the right to a fair trial in the US, where the entire political and media establishment has already pronounced his guilt. In whatever "trial" takes place, Assange's lawyers will be regularly denied the right to review evidence against their client on the grounds that it is "classified" for "national security" purposes.
The conspiracy against Assange confirms the absence of any constituency for the defense of democratic rights in the ruling class.
To the leaders of the democratic revolutions of the 18th century, the practices now called extraordinary rendition recalled the dark and crowded dungeons of Charles II and Louis XIV, filled with political prisoners. The bourgeois revolutions in France and the United States abolished arbitrary detention and torture as the hated method of political reaction, upholding the right of due process, habeas corpus, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Under international law today, extraordinary rendition is a crime against humanity according to the Nuremberg principles.
If the ruling class can conduct this operation against Assange without any opposition from the political or media establishment, then any crime is possible. All the while, "left" figures like Jeremy Corbyn go along with the lie, absolving themselves of any responsibility.
As for the British government, its brutal handling of Assange contrasts with its response to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who fought an extradition request after Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon attempted to prosecute Pinochet in Spain for mass murder. In 2000, the Labour government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to extradite Pinochet and ordered his release from house arrest at his mansion in Surrey.
"The attempted trial of an accused in the condition diagnosed in Senator Pinochet on the charges which have been made against him in this case could not be a fair trial in any country and would violate Article Six of the European Convention on Human Rights," the Home Office wrote at the time.
While the dictator Pinochet murdered and tortured thousands of workers and socialists after taking power in the September 11, 1973 coup, Julian Assange published evidence of US war crimes. He is hated by the international ruling class because he has done significant damage to the interests of imperialism.
The seven years since Assange was forced to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy have seen the reemergence of the class struggle on an international scale. It is this powerful social force -- the working class -- that must be mobilized to defend democratic rights and secure the liberation of class-war prisoners like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
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