In a pivotal development for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the High Court in London granted him the opportunity on Tuesday to continue his legal battle against extradition to the United States. The decision comes amid ongoing international scrutiny over the implications of Assange's potential trial in the US.
Assange, 52, has been embroiled in a legal saga for years, with US prosecutors seeking his extradition to face 18 charges, primarily related to espionage. However, the High Court ruled that the US must provide "satisfactory assurances" regarding Assange's rights, including the ability to invoke the First Amendment and clarity on whether he could face the death penalty if convicted. The latest ruling stems from Assange's legal team's efforts in February to challenge Britain's approval of his extradition to the US, arguing that his prosecution was politically motivated. In a significant turn, two senior judges acknowledged Assange's realistic prospect of successfully challenging extradition on multiple grounds, setting the stage for a prolonged legal battle. While the US has accused Assange of "indiscriminately and knowingly" publishing the names of sources, rather than merely expressing his political views, his defense team has vehemently contested these allegations. Assange's case has drawn widespread attention from human rights advocates, free speech proponents, and legal experts, who argue that his extradition could set a dangerous precedent for journalistic freedom and whistleblowing. As the legal proceedings unfold, Assange remains confined in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London, where he has spent years fighting extradition and facing numerous legal challenges. The decision by the High Court to allow Assange to continue his appeal underscores the complex legal and ethical dilemmas surrounding his case, with implications that extend far beyond his individual fate.
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The US Justice Department is considering whether to allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to plead guilty to a misdemeanour offense in order to avoid extradition to the US on espionage charges, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The potential deal would see Assange plead guilty to mishandling classified information, with the five years he has already served in London’s Belmarsh Prison counting as his sentence, the unnamed sources told the newspaper. Assange’s lawyers and US officials have held preliminary talks in recent months to sketch out a possible bargain, the sources said. However, Barry Pollack, a lawyer for the jailed journalist, told the newspaper that “there are no signs” that the department is ready to accept the deal. If a deal were reached, it would end a legal battle in play for more than a decade. After his arrest by British police in 2010 for sexual offense allegations that he denied, Assange jumped bail in 2012 and was granted asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He was arrested again in 2019 when Ecuador revoked his asylum, and has remained in Belmarsh ever since. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment against Assange on the day of his arrest, charging him with 17 counts of espionage. If extradited to the US and convicted, the former WikiLeaks boss faces up to 175 years in prison. The charges stem from his publication of classified material obtained by whistle-blowers, including Pentagon documents detailing alleged US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The UK Home Office approved his transfer to American custody in 2022, but Assange – now in poor health after nearly five years of solitary confinement – has filed repeated appeals, none of which have been successful. Last month, Britain’s High Court postponed a decision on granting Assange a final chance to appeal his extradition. Washington’s use of the Espionage Act to prosecute Assange is controversial, as the Australian-born journalist published, but did not steal, the classified material in question. Former US President Barack Obama refused to press charges against Assange for this very reason, arguing that his activity was no different from that of any newspaper, and was therefore protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. With an election coming up this November, US President Joe Biden is keen to avoid the “political hot potato” of an extradited journalist arriving in Washington to face criminal prosecution, the Wall Street Journal wrote. Furthermore, American “prosecutors face diminishing odds that he would serve much more time even if he were convicted stateside,” the paper noted. Tucker Carlson said on Tuesday that US spies had monitored him while he was in Russia earlier this month, and leaked to a ‘friendly’ outlet that he had met with Edward Snowden. This is despite the American journalist’s claim that he had tried to keep his meeting with the NSA whistle-blower a secret.
Carlson went to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin. During his eight days in Moscow, he also met with Snowden – and US spies found out about it, he told podcaser Lex Fridman in the course of a three-hour conversation. “I was being intensely surveilled by the US government,” Carlson told Fridman, noting that US spies had thwarted his plans to interview Putin in 2021 and that he received confirmation that he was being intensely monitored ahead of his Moscow trip. “Then, I’m over there, and of course I want to see Snowden, whom I admire.”Snowden allegedly accepted Carlson’s invitation to have dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel, but declined the interview as well as a photo request, saying that it would be better to tell no one. “I didn’t tell anybody,” Carlson told Fridman, however the meeting was leaked. “Semafor runs this piece – reporting information they got from the US intel agencies, leaking against me, using my money, in my name, in a supposedly free country – they run this piece saying I met with Snowden, like it was a crime or something.” “If you have a media establishment that acts as employees of the national security state, you don’t have a free country. And that’s where we are,” Carlson added. Carlson revealed that he did not fear getting arrested in Russia at any point, but was warned by his lawyers that the US might arrest him depending on the content of the Putin interview. “I felt not one twinge of concern for the 8 days that I was there,” he told Fridman about being in Moscow. Before he left for Russia, his team of attorneys counseled him to “not do this… A lot will depend on the questions you ask of Putin. If you’re seen as too nice to him you could be arrested when you come back,” Carlson quoted the lead lawyer as saying, to which he said he replied, “You’re describing a fascist country, OK?” In 2013, Snowden revealed that the NSA was systematically engaged in mass illegal spying on American citizens. Fearing for his safety, he fled to Hong Kong with the intent to reach Ecuador, which did not have an extradition treaty with the US, but was stopped during a layover in Moscow after Washington canceled his passport. Russia ended up granting him asylum and reportedly, eventual citizenship. One of the founders of Semafor, the outlet to which Carlson claims US spies leaked his dinner with Snowden, is Ben Smith, a former editor-in-chief of the now defunct BuzzFeed newsroom. In 2017, Smith notoriously published the ‘Steele Dossier,’ a sham document leaked by US spies to discredit incoming President Donald Trump. It is not a secret that Julian Assange can divide opinion. But now is a time to put all such issues firmly to one side. Now is a time to stand by Mr Assange, and to do so on principle, for the sake of his freedom – and ours.
There can be no divide over the attempt by the United States to have the WikiLeaks founder extradited from Britain to face charges under the US Espionage Act, which reaches a critical stage in London this week. The application embodies not just a threat to Mr Assange personally. It is also, as this newspaper has consistently argued over many years, an iniquitous threat to journalism, with global implications. It poses the most fundamental of questions about free speech. On these grounds alone, Mr Assange’s extradition should be unhesitatingly opposed. In 2010, WikiLeaks published revelatory US government documents exposing diplomatic and military policy in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Four years ago, during the Trump presidency, the US justice department issued a WikiLeaks-related indictment of 18 counts against Mr Assange. It charged him with multiple breaches of the 1917 Espionage Act, a statute that originally clamped down on opposition to America’s entry into the first world war. In recent years, though, the act has mainly been invoked against leakers. Earlier targets included the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who passed documents to the New York Times exposing US government lies about the Vietnam war. Those charges were eventually dismissed, but it was a close-run thing. The Espionage Act contains no public interest defence. A person charged under it cannot present evidence about the content of the material leaked, cannot say why they did what they did and cannot argue that the public had a right to know about the issues. Those restrictions are no more acceptable in Mr Assange’s case than in Mr Ellsberg’s time. The free press still matters. Journalists sometimes depend on whistle blowers. The relationship between them is particularly delicate and important in cases where national security is invoked. When the unequalled global power of the US is involved, the stakes are especially large. But even national security, and certainly the national security of a global superpower, cannot in every single circumstance invariably override the public interest in publication and the right to know. That was the core issue in the Ellsberg case, as it also was in the WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden cases. In Espionage Act prosecutions, however, that public interest argument is always muzzled. This week, Mr Assange’s lawyers will seek leave to appeal against the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then home secretary Priti Patel. If he is extradited, and unless the UK relents or President Biden intervenes, he faces a criminal trial in which his arguments will be silenced, and a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for each of the Espionage Act charges. If convicted, he could be locked away for his lifetime. The implications for journalism are every bit as serious. This newspaper’s journalism, and that of potentially every newspaper based in the US or an allied country, would be at risk too. If the prosecution succeeds, the New York Times lawyer in the Pentagon Papers case has said, “investigative reporting based on classified information will be given a near death blow”. That prospect is on the line in the courts this week. A society that claims to uphold freedom of the press cannot possibly remain indifferent. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of grossly misrepresenting the situation in Ukraine, claiming he told an “absurd story” about the origin of the conflict during his sit-down with Tucker Carlson.
Speaking during a visit to Washington, DC on Friday, Scholz weighed in on Putin’s recent interview with the former Fox host, arguing it only “mocks what real actions have been done by Russia in Ukraine” and presented a “completely absurd story about the cause of this war.” “There is a very clear cause, that is the desire of the president of Russia to annex part of Ukraine. And all the stories that are told about it do not change the fact that that is exactly the purpose of his imperialist efforts,” the chancellor added. Scholz went on to say that the fighting could “end at any time,” but not “by Ukraine capitulating,” and that “conditions for a peaceful solution” must be created as soon as possible.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of grossly misrepresenting the situation in Ukraine, claiming he told an “absurd story” about the origin of the conflict during his sit-down with Tucker Carlson. Speaking during a visit to Washington, DC on Friday, Scholz weighed in on Putin’s recent interview with the former Fox host, arguing it only “mocks what real actions have been done by Russia in Ukraine” and presented a “completely absurd story about the cause of this war.” “There is a very clear cause, that is the desire of the president of Russia to annex part of Ukraine. And all the stories that are told about it do not change the fact that that is exactly the purpose of his imperialist efforts,” the chancellor added. Scholz went on to say that the fighting could “end at any time,” but not “by Ukraine capitulating,” and that “conditions for a peaceful solution” must be created as soon as possible. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that defeating Russia in Ukraine is “impossible by definition”, but insisted he does not seek to expand the war to neighbouring countries such as Poland and Latvia.
In a high-profile interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Putin repeated his claim that invading Ukraine was necessary to stop the country from threatening Russia by joining NATO, denied that he had territorial ambitions across Europe, and insisted he would only send troops into neighbouring countries if attacked first. Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended his war in Ukraine in a two-hour interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that defeating Russia in Ukraine is “impossible by definition”, but insisted he does not seek to expand the war to neighbouring countries such as Poland and Latvia. In a high-profile interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Putin repeated his claim that invading Ukraine was necessary to stop the country from threatening Russia by joining NATO, denied that he had territorial ambitions across Europe, and insisted he would only send troops into neighbouring countries if attacked first. It is absolutely out of the question. You just don’t have to be any kind of analyst, it goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of a global war,” Putin said in the interview posted on social media and Carlson’s personal website on Thursday. “And a global war will bring all of humanity to the brink of devastation. It’s obvious.” During a two-hour interview that saw Putin talk at length about the history of Eastern Europe and Russia, the Russian leader said that his government was in contact with the United States and that a peaceful resolution to the war would only be possible if Washington stopped supplying weapons to Ukraine. “I will tell you what we are saying on this matter and what we are conveying to the US leadership,” Putin said. “If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks, that’s it, and then we can agree on some terms. Before you do that, stop.” Putin said he has “never refused” to negotiate peace with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy but Moscow has not yet achieved its goals in Ukraine, including “de-Nazification”, referring to his claim that Kyiv is committing genocide against ethnic Russians. Asked by Carlson whether he would be willing to release imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as a “sign of your decency”, the Russian leader said a deal is possible and there is “no taboo” on resolving the issue. “We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them. No, we have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner. However, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that if our partners take reciprocal steps,” Putin said. Gershkovich has been detained in Russia since March 2023 on spying charges that Washington has described as “baseless”. The Kremlin said Putin agreed to sit down with Carlson because he presented a less one-sided view of the war in Ukraine. Carlson has repeatedly questioned the rationale for US support for Kyiv, and in a video posted on social media this week, he criticised US media outlets for their “fawning” coverage of Zelenskyy. After his interview with Putin aired, Carlson said in a video posted on his website that anyone who believed Putin would give up Crimea for peace is a “lunatic” and “they want a weak leadership in Russia”. Before the interview, Carlson attracted criticism for travelling to Moscow to interview the Russian leader, with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accusing the former TV host of being a “useful idiot”. Conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson has said on Instagram that his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be aired at 6pm EST on Thursday.
Carlson, who launched his own network on X (formerly Twitter) in June 2023, traveled to Moscow for a sit-down with Putin. The Kremlin confirmed the meeting on Tuesday. The Russian president rarely grants one-on-one interviews to foreign press. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Putin has “no desire” to speak to Western media outlets that have “completely one-sided” opinions and “aren’t even trying to be impartial.” Carlson said he wanted to talk to the Russian leader because many Western news outlets “lie to their readers and viewers” and are biased in their coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “That’s wrong. Americans have the right to know all they can about a war they are implicated in,” he said in a video on X on Tuesday. Carlson has been criticized by some politicians and media figures at home and abroad who say his interview with Putin will only amplify Russian “propaganda.” “He parrots Vladimir Putin’s pack of lies about Ukraine,” former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told MSNBC. Newsweek quoted one former and two current members of the European Parliament as saying that Carlson could be banned from visiting the EU for providing “a platform” for Putin. Anyone calling for the arrest of US journalist Tucker Carlson over his plan to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin should themselves be detained, billionaire Elon Musk has suggested. Carlson arrived in Moscow last weekend, saying he intended to show Americans an unfiltered Russian position on the Ukraine conflict and the broader tensions between Moscow and the West. The former Fox News host accused the mainstream media of failing to provide the full picture due to political reasons, and said Musk had promised not to suppress the distribution on X (formerly Twitter) of his planned interview with Putin. There has been speculation about the potential risks to Carlson in his homeland due to his trip to Russia. Malaysia-based conservative blogger Ian Miles Cheong has suggested that he “could become the next Julian Assange,” noting that “politicians and establishment media shills” have been calling for Carlson’s arrest. “Arrest those calling for his arrest!” Musk responded in a post on X. WikiLeaks founder Assange is currently in a British prison, fighting a US extradition request. Washington has indicted him with crimes related to the way whistleblower Chelsea Manning obtained classified materials on the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which were damning for the American government. Supporters say Assange, who has not had full freedom since 2012, is being persecuted by the US and its allies for exposing their dirty secrets. He was jailed in 2019 after Ecuador revoked the political asylum that had allowed him to stay at the country’s embassy in London, enabling British law enforcement to arrest him. Some public figures in the US have accused Carlson of harboring sympathies for Putin, and of intending to spread “Russian propaganda” by interviewing him. Even before the goal of Carlson’s visit to Moscow was confirmed, neoconservative writer Bill Kristol urged the US government to prevent the journalist from returning home, “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Carlson has insisted that he does not like the Russian leader, but said it is important for the American public to hear Putin’s views on the Ukraine conflict and the tensions between Moscow and Washington, considering what’s at stake. He also accused the American government of trying to prevent him from interviewing Putin, a notion that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed as “ridiculous.” American journalist Tucker Carlson has spent several days in Russia and even attended a ballet performance at the Bolshoi Theatre, Telegram channel Mash reported on Saturday, sharing several photos of the conservative commentator. Carlson allegedly touched down at Vnukovo airport on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul on Thursday after several hours’ delay, according to the channel. He was later spotted taking in the ballet Spartacus at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The conservative commentator has yet to confirm the trip and it remains unclear what business he had in Russia. However, rumors of his intention to interview President Vladimir Putin have been circulating since last year.
Despite dominating prime-time ratings for years, Carlson was fired from Fox News in April for reasons that have never been made public. He subsequently launched his own talk show streaming on X (formerly Twitter). While Carlson has been repeatedly demonized by the US media establishment as a “useful idiot” for Moscow – if not a Russian agent entirely – due to his skepticism regarding Washington’s foreign policy and particularly the conflict in Ukraine, the journalist has never previously visited Russia or worked with Russian media organizations.
It has been almost three months since Victoria Roshchyna's family and colleagues received any word from the award-winning Ukrainian journalist.
Roshchyna, who is known for her courageous reporting on Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, disappeared shortly after passing a checkpoint. Friends and colleagues believe Russian forces detained her. The reporter had quickly pivoted from covering court cases to reporting from the front lines when Russian forces invaded her home country. As a freelance journalist, she has written for publications that include the Ukrainian news websites Hromadske and Ukrainska Pravda, as well as the broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Roshchyna told the stories of children killed in Dnipro and Berdyansk. She spoke to survivors of a missile strike in Uman and reported from Mariupol, where Russian occupiers staged a celebration in front of ruined houses. She interviewed soldiers and civilians, putting a human face to the brutality of war. But covering these stories came with great personal risk. On March 5, 2022, the car that Roshchyna was traveling in was shot at by Russian forces. She and the driver managed to escape and seek shelter in a nearby house. Roshchyna's camera and laptop were stolen from the car, according to reports from the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based nonprofit. Less than a week later, Russian security agents detained Roshchyna. She was held for 10 days, hit and threatened.She detailed the experience for Hromadske, writing, "I didn't feel fear … there was only despair over the unknown and wasted time, the inability to do my job." "The fact that she was detained by Russian soldiers and lived through that experience and went back and kept reporting as if that never happened certainly shows an incredible amount of courage and tenacity and a journalist who's willing to risk everything to report the news," said Elisa Lees Munoz, executive director of the International Women's Media Foundation, or IWMF. The IWMF in 2022 awarded Roshchyna its Courage Award for her coverage of the war. One year on from presenting that award, Munoz and others are advocating for Roshchyna's release. "To disappear somebody is one of the worst things that one can do," Munoz said. "It's certainly intended to send a message to others — we can do that to anybody." WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be granted honorary citizenship of Rome, city councilor Antonella Melito said on Tuesday. She added that the process will be completed after all the necessary paperwork has been done.
Assange, 52, has been incarcerated at the high-security Belmarsh Prison in London since 2019 as he fights extradition to the US, where he could face a life sentence over the 2010 release of highly sensitive US Army intelligence information related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to Melito, by granting Assange citizenship, Rome intends to send a message of “solidarity and support to all those who are unjustly detained and convicted in violation of their fundamental rights.” The motion to confer honorary citizenship on the Australian activist was presented by a former mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi. On Wednesday, Raggi posted on social media that “an important step was taken in the protection of Julian Assange, as a person and as a symbol.” She added that the Wikileaks founder’s case shows that “freedom of the press must always be defended.” In June, Assange’s wife Stella visited the Vatican and met with Pope Francis. Later, in an interview with the Catholic Herald magazine, she said that Francis had sent a letter to her husband in March 2021, which was a “significant event” at a particularly low point for him. At the time, a lower court in Britain had ruled that Assange’s treatment in the US “would not be humane,” but decided not to grant him bail. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in August that he was frustrated by the lack of a diplomatic solution to end Assange’s detention. He said he would continue to press the US to cease its prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder, despite US Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejecting all previous pleas from Canberra to ensure his wellbeing. “This has gone on for too long. Enough is enough,” Albanese told reporters at the time. “We remain very firm in our view and in our representations to the American government and we will continue to do so.” A Reuters journalist was killed Friday while reporting from southern Lebanon, and several others were injured, including two from the same news agency. “We are deeply saddened to learn that our videographer, Issam Abdallah, has been killed,” a Reuters spokesperson said on Friday. Abdallah was part of a Reuters crew in southern Lebanon who were providing a live signal at the time of the strike, the spokesperson said. “We are urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region, and supporting Issam’s family and colleagues. Our thoughts are with his family at this terrible time,” the spokesperson said in the statement. Reuters journalists Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh also were injured and are seeking medical care, the spokesperson added. The broadcaster Al Jazeera said that two of its journalists, Karmen Jokhadar and Eli Brakhia, were injured at the same time. Agence France-Presse also reported that two of its team were injured and that the shelling took place after an attempted push into Israel from Lebanon by a Palestinian faction. The AFP named its injured crew as Christina Assi and video journalist Dylan Collins. Details of the incident were not immediately clear.
The Israeli military has carried out strikes on its border with Lebanon in response to rocket and militant attacks. The Reuters journalists are believed to have been hit by one such strike, according to Agence France-Presse and Al Jazeera. VOA could not immediately verify if that was the case. The Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan said Friday he had just learned of the attack and that Israel will "always try to mitigate and avoid civilian casualties." Saying that Israeli forces would never want to "kill or shoot any journalist that is doing the job," Erdan said: "We were in a state of war, things might happen. We regret them, we feel sorry. And we will investigate it. Right now, it's too early to call what happened." The conflict playing out in a densely packed region has already led to media casualties. At least 10 other journalists have been killed while reporting from Gaza since Israel declared war on Hamas following the militant group’s bloody incursion into southern Israel last week, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Friday the U.N. is concerned by reports of explosions in the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission area of South Lebanon and the “distressing reports” of a journalist being killed and others injured. “Journalists need to be protected and allowed to do their work,” Dujarric said. |
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