Assange Extradition in Tatters

Anyone got a dinghy and some oars?

Jun 29, 2021

[Image is a single frame from the last source]

The real story here is western English media silence, but first the story itself. Please read it.

Edward Snowden spotted the significance immediately (see sources).

Summary of the story

To bolster the indictment issued against Julian Assange to be extradicted to the USA, the USA's Dept of Justice provided their third "ammended" indictment, this time bolstering their accusations that Julian Assange is guilty of offences under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) using the testimony of Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson (Siggi).

Siggi had volunteered for Wikileaks whilst they were in Iceland working with some Icelandic parliamentarians, notably Birgitta Jónsdóttir, on a media freedom law. During this time the big leaks from Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning to Wikileaks occurred after nobody at major USA media establishments would touch it.

Siggi is convicted of numerous crimes. He also is reported to have stolen USD 50 000 from Wikileaks. He became a USA FBI informant, and continued his illegal acts given immunity, after becoming an informant.

This is the person who the DoJ/FBI chose to be their key witness for the third indictment.

Its important to understand the evolution of events in charging Assange. The Obama regime, despite their "secret" grand jury declined to indict due to the "New York Times problem"; that there is no difference between Wikileaks' activities and those of national security reporters at major USA media outlets. As I have expressed while the State Department Cables publication (*) annoyed them, the Vault 7 release infuriated then CIA director Pompeo. They needed to break free of the "NYT problem" and the key to that was bolstering the CFAA indictment. To do that, they chose Siggi's testimony, who we now know, as admitted in interviews with Stundin's staff, contained many lies.

Media Response

It has now been three days since Stundin published their story which provides good evidence that the USA has mislead the UK judiciary in their indictment proceedings. There are at least two scandals here. The obvious is the continued persecution of Assange who remains in jail in the UK despite having already served the outrageously long sentence for bail violation which is a rubbish charge because he obtained political asylum. The second is the deliberate use of an unreliable witness by the USA's DoJ as evidence to the UK court. These two combine to provide even more evidence that this prosecution has always been political. Assange is a political prisoner for publishing accurate information.

A google search, from Scandinavia for "stundin wikileaks" should show relevant news articles on the topic, as it is such a big story. The domains matching the query are:

studin.is
wikileaks.org

Then we get into articles which precede the Stundin story. Thus, the article is censored by Google.

Meanwhile, as search on DuckDuckGo yields heaps of results. The top domains are:

studin.is
rt.com
thepostmillenial.com
leeperspective.com
facebook.com
reddit.com

All of which are discussing the article, and there are many more. I have linked to others not listed above, too (see sources).

For such an important article, revealing the duplicity of a key "witness" for the indictment under which the Assange extradition hearing was held, which is the most important press freedom case in decades, one would expect the media to cover it. Who is missing? All of them:

BBC, CNN, WaPo, NYT, Rueters, AP, AFP, etc.

Thus, whilst this is an important event in the continued deconstruction of the case again Assange (UC Global, anyone?) it is not reported. The editors at these "leading" publications are under strict influence.

Are they or their managers surprised by the recent survey of 46 countries using 92 000 respondents showing that national trust in media amongst those countries rates from 29% to 62%.

When asked what news topic people found most trustworthy, the answer was:

The Weather

I bow down to the respondents. Yes, my friends, I wholeheartedly agree. The best bit is that the weather is a fundamentally chaotic phenomenon, and that’s the best reporting the “leading” media can do.

This whole thing is so farcical that thought it appropriate to provide some comedy. See the last source for enjoyment, from which the article image is clipped.

(*) The whole "CableGate" thing is a story in itself. To keep publishing under attack, from one assumes USA actors, Wikileaks asked for people to mirror their site. This included the encrypted file containing all of the State Department Cables. The password to this was written as a chapter title by Luke Harding (and co-author) in a book published by The Guardian. When Wikileaks spotted this, they informed the USA State Department about the problem which was about to occur. They had been, as with previous efforts, trying to partner with local news outlets in various countries to maximize the impact of the stories, and have them redacted to protect identities at risk. The first decrypted complete "CableGate" archive was published by cryptome.org, not wikileaks.org, as was declared in evidence at the extradition trial in September 2020.

Sources

Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment, Stundin

The end of the case, Snowden