What the Prosecution Case is all about
The original indictment was based on a rather simple accusation of computer interference, something Assange had allegedly somehow assisted Chelsea Manning in downloading secret documents, evidence of war crimes. This narrow indictment sought to obscure the real political reason for U.S. prosecution once he would be extradited, treason under rarely used Espionage Act of 1917, a law passed primarily to prosecute leftist and anti-war immigrants in the US.
Yet the U.S. government had no real evidence of Assange's assisting Manning. No authorities had even done the basic task of forensics (collect, preserve, and analyze scientific evidence during the course of an investigation).
Realizing they were getting nowhere, the U.S. government introduced a superseding indictment during the hearings, giving the defense just a few hours before filing it with the court.
So that meant there were then 17 additional charges, all related to the Espionage Act, for which Chelsea Manning had already been convicted in not a court but a military courtmartial, by a jury of military officers and a military judge in what many legal observers called a "Kangaroo court." She served seven years in prison for disclosing nearly 750,000 classified and otherwise sensitive military and diplomatic documents. These disclosures revealed U.S. war crimes against the peoples of Afghanistan (90,000 reports) and Iraq (over 400,000 reports), the horrific Baghdad airstrike killing a dozen civilians ("Collateral Damage" video), and 250,000 diplomatic "cablegate" documents.
WikiLeaks' disclosure of those diplomatic cables to media organizations between 1966 and 2010 remain an extreme embarrassment to the U.S. government, not to mention evidence of war crimes should any country ever want to prosecute them. Among the disclosures were various Hillary Clinton orders to U.S. diplomats, U.S. ambassadors' complaints about allies and other embarrassing commentary and revelations. These revelations were new while war crimes are old hat, so to speak.
Another part of the indictments, not related to Manning, include the release of 800,000 Guanta'namo Bay detainee assessments documenting routine torture of kidnapped and imprisoned individuals suspected, but never tried or convicted of "terrorism."
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. She was a victim of Bush and Obama's wars. At the end of Obama's term, he granted her parole. Yet the same grand jury in Alexandria Virginia responsible for the indictment(s) that have led to the current imprisonment of Julian Assange in the UK sent her to prison again - this time for contempt of court. She sat in prison against for a year (March 2019 to March 2020), and was fined $256,000 simply for heroically standing on principle and refusing to be forced to testify against Assange.
The case against Assange thus has its origins in the "War on Terror" launched by the Bush administration as his response to four hijacked aircraft attacks on September 11, 2001.
This is how a member of Consortium News team, Alexander Mercouris, described that war: "The result has been a series of wars in a succession of Middle East [and North African] countries fought by the U.S. and its allies and proxies, which have caused the devastation of whole societies"In the process, the U.S. has become drawn increasingly into practices which it once condemned or, at least said it condemned."
Mercouris cites "extrajudicial killing" including of children and U.S. citizens, by drone strikes; and "extraordinary rendition" - that is kidnapping and torture of individuals sometimes chosen at random or suspected enemies of U.S. informants.
To commit these acts that violate both international and U.S. laws, Mercouris contends that the U.S. has created "a vast and ultimately unaccountable national security apparatus of a sort that is ultimately incompatible with a democratic society." This is manifested through an "indiscriminate and illegal bulk-surveillance program [conducted primarily by the National Security Agency and the FBI] that was exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, and by the systemic FISA surveillance abuse exposed over the course of the Russiagate 'scandal'." (3)
"All this explains the extreme reaction to Julian Assange, and the determined attempts to destroy him, and to pulp his reputation. [Assange/Wikileaks] have done those things which the U.S. government and its national security apparatus most fear, and have worked hardest to prevent, by exposing the terrible reality of much of what the U.S. government now routinely does, and is determined to conceal, and what much of the media is helping the U.S. government to conceal." .
RON RIDENOUR is a US-born journalist and anti-war activist living in Denmark. A member of www.thiscantbehappening.net, his books, including "The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert" and 'Winding Brook Stories' are available at Amazon and Lulu. His other work can be found at ronridenour.com;ronrorama|AT|gmail.comEmail address
Coming Next: Part II - A travesty of justice: UK Caters to the US Government's Desire to Crush Assange
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