The Royal Courts of Justice accepted the US appeal for the extradition of Julian Assange.

Thanks to the live broadcast of Ruptly, we had access to the first news that was spread the morning  of December 10th on the US appeal to the sentence of January 4th, which prevented the extradition of the Australian publisher and journalist, Julian Assange.

On December 10th  in front of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, activists and journalists learned the appeal of the US government has been accepted by the English high court. Below, are the statements released from two of the people that were allowed inside the Courts to listen to the verdict: Craig Murray, Scottish author, journalist and former diplomat for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Ministry, early activist in the Assange case and himself persecuted by justice and released just 10 days ago; Stella Moris, Julian Assange’s girlfriend and mother of two of his children and a lawyer.

Craig Murray:

“Today’s judgment was a partial victory in that the judge found that on the medical evidence and on the evidence of conditions in American jails, the Magistrate have made the correct decision in refusing to extradite Julian Assange. However, they said based purely on diplomatic assurances from the United States in a diplomatic note that they accepted the word of the United States Government as to the conditions in which Julian would be held and they said that this is because they were solemn assurances from a State. Well of course, these are solemn assurances from the State who’s war crimes and murder of civilians were exposed by Julian Assange. You cannot accept these kinds of assurances from the Government of the United States! Also because the Government of US has broken precisely these kind of assurances in other legal cases, for which there are a series of judgments at the European Court of Human Rights, which were ignored by this Court. So this is one stage in the legal battle which will go on. We have a point, of course, is: so far this appeal hearings have only been on the subject against which the US Government was appealing. The aspects of the original judgment against which the Assange team intend to appeal have yet to be heard, and those are freedom of speech, those are the right not to be extradited on political motivation, those are the fact that the extradition treaty with the US specifically bills out political extradition. And we have the fact that Julian Assange is in prison for revealing to the world heinous war crimes and that none of those who committed the war crimes is in jail. That is still a position here today. Of course we are slightly disappointed: it is very, very difficult to get a fair hearing from a justice system in UK in anything which cuts across the perceived interest of the security state, be it the UK or the US. But this is a stage in this struggle and the legal battle and the political battle will continue! Thank you very much.”

Stella Moris:

Hi everyone and thank you for coming! I want to emphasize that the High Court accepted all the medical evidence and the conclusions of the magistrates that if Julian is extradited and placed under extreme conditions of isolation it would drive him to take his own life, that extradition is oppressive. Yet the High Court decided against Julian on this occasion on the basis of political assurances-non-assurances that the US has given to the UK Government. I say “non-assurances”, cause Amnesty International says non-assurances: Amnesty International has analyzed these assurances and said that they are inherently unreliable, they incorporate the possibility of braking those assurances in their very wording. Today it’s been almost a year since I stood outside Court with our victory of the blocking of the extradition. For the past year and the past two years and a half Julian has remained in Belmarsh prison and in fact he has been detained since the 7th of December 2010 in one form or another, 11 years: for how long can this go on? Today is international Human rights day, what a shame, how cynical, to have this decision on this day! To have one of the foremost /the foremost publisher, journalist of the past 50 years in a UK prison, accused of publishing the truth about war crimes, about CIA kill teams, and in fact everytime we have hearing we know more about the abusive nature, the criminal nature of this case. Julian exposed the crimes of CIA tortures, of CIA killers and now we know that those CIA killers were planning to kill him too! How can this Court approve an extradition request under these conditions? How can they accept an extradition to the country that plotted to kill Julian, that plotted to kill a publisher because of what he published? This goes to the fundamentals of press freedom and of democracy! We will fight! Every generation has an epic fight to fight and this is ours because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society, of what it means to have press freedom, of what it means for journalists to do their jobs without being afraid of spending the rest of their lives in prison. The UK imprisons journalists, they are imprisoning Julian on behalf of a foreign power which is taking an abusive, vindictive prosecution against a journalist and this is what it’s about! I urge everyone to come together and fight for Julian. Julian represents all our liberties and all our rights. Julian’s lawyers are intending to appeal to the Supreme Court on this decision.