Assange: U.S. Rule Of Law Suffering 'Calamitous Collapse'...

[paulitician]

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Friday that the US justice system was suffering from a "calamitous collapse in the rule of law", as Washington reeled from the sensational exposure of vast spy agency surveillance programmes.

Speaking in an interview with AFP at Ecuador's London embassy, where he has been holed up for almost a year, the founder of the whistleblowing website accused the US government of trying to "launder" its activities with regard to the far-reaching electronic spying effort revealed on Thursday.

"The US administration has the phone records of everyone in the United States and is receiving them daily from carriers to the National Security Agency under secret agreements. That's what's come out," said the 41-year-old Australian.

Two damning newspaper exposes have laid bare the extent to which President Barack Obama's intelligence apparatus is scooping up enormous amounts of personal data -- on telephone calls, emails, website visits -- on millions of Americans and foreigners.

Obama has defended the programmes, saying they are legal, necessary to combat terror, and balance security with privacy.

Assange, whose website has enraged Washington by publishing hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables and classified files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the Obama administration was engaged in a bid to "criminalise all national security journalism in the United States".

US soldier Bradley Manning is being court-martialled for leaking the huge cache of government files to WikiLeaks, while there has been an outcry in the US media after the government seized the phone records of journalists at the Associated Press and Fox News in a bid to root out government sources.

Commenting on Washington's spying on journalists and members of the public, as well as his own treatment by US authorities, Assange said: "Over the last ten years the US justice system has suffered from a collapse, a calamitous collapse, in the rule of law.

"We see this in other areas as well -- with how Bradley Manning has been treated in prison, with US drone strikes occurring -- even on American citizens -- with no due process."...

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Assange: US rule of law suffering 'calamitous collapse' - FRANCE 24
DRUDGE REPORT 2013®

 

[paulitician]

It's time to start thinking about who the real criminals are. Time for Americans to get it together.

 

[waltky]

UN gonna back up Assange...

Holed up in Ecuador's embassy, WikiLeaks' Assange to win support from U.N. panel
4 Feb.`16 - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 to avoid a rape investigation, was detained arbitrarily in contravention of international law, a U.N. panel will rule on Friday.

Assange, who enraged the United States by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, appealed to the panel saying he was a political refugee whose rights had been infringed by being unable to take up asylum in Ecuador. The former computer hacker denies allegations of a 2010 rape in Sweden, saying the charge is a ploy that would eventually take him to the United States where a criminal investigation into the activities of WikiLeaks is still open.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks to the media outside the Ecuador embassy in west London​

Britain said it had never arbitrarily detained Assange and that the Australian had voluntarily avoided arrest by jumping bail to flee to the embassy. But the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled in Assange's favor, Sweden said. "Should I prevail and the state parties be found to have acted unlawfully, I expect the immediate return of my passport and the termination of further attempts to arrest me," Assange, 44, said in a short statement posted on Twitter.

Police reinforcements arrive at the Ecuador's embassy, where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is taking refuge in London​

He had said that if he lost the appeal then he would leave his cramped quarters at the embassy in the Knightsbridge area of London, though Britain said he would be arrested and extradited to Sweden as soon as he stepped outside. The decision in his favor marks the latest twist in a tumultuous journey for Assange since he incensed Washington with his leaks that laid bare often highly critical U.S. appraisals of world leaders from Vladimir Putin to the Saudi royal family.

STEPPING OUT?

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Assange finds surprising ally _ but it may not be enough
Feb 4,`16 -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has found a surprising ally - a little known United Nations panel that has decided he has been unfairly detained in Britain while seeking to avoid extradition to Sweden to answer allegations of sexual misconduct.

But it's not clear if the findings of the five members of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, to be officially announced in Geneva Friday, will lead to a change in Assange's legal status. The sun-starved computer hacker has holed up inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for more than three years, and as things stand now he still faces arrest if he steps outside. Swedish officials said Thursday the UN panel report concludes Assange has been a victim of an "arbitrary detention," apparently because he has been unable to leave the embassy without fear of being immediately taken into custody by British police armed with a European arrest warrant.

British and Swedish officials have indicated they will not be swayed by the U.N. panel's report, which is not binding and has no legal authority. Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over allegations of rape stemming from a working visit he made to the Nordic country in 2010 when WikiLeaks was attracting international attention for its secret-spilling ways. They haven't charged him with any crime so far, but Assange has refused to return to answer questions - saying he fears the whole thing is an elaborate setup designed to send him to the United States to face espionage charges there. British police also accuse Assange of jumping bail.

The unexpected panel finding in Assange's favor confounded some experts who have followed the case. Ove Bring, a professor of international law at Stockholm University, said he was very surprised. "First of all I don't think it's a detention. Secondly, it's not arbitrary," Bring said. He said Assange's situation "is definitely not a case of unlawful detention" since the WikiLeaks-founder has chosen to stay at the embassy. He could at any time have agreed to be questioned in Sweden, after which the prosecutor most likely would have been forced to abandon the case due to a lack of evidence, Bring said.

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