Australia Betrays Its Own Citizen Journalist

[reorg]

By Dave Lindorff

...

Despite credible reports that the US has a secret sealed spying indictment prepared against Assange, currently facing deportation from Britain to Sweden on questionable and probably politically motivated charges of rape, and concerns that the US is prepared to seek to extradite him to the US to face potential capital charges if he is extradited to Sweden, Australia has not done anything to defend its own citizen against such threats. These threats and an unsuccessful appeal of the extradition request in British courts have led to Assange’s latest decision to seek asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London.

The most that Gillard has said about Assange’s case by way of “support” is that Australia does not permit extradition to countries where its citizens could face a death penalty, but of course the US could always promise not to seek the death penalty in any prosecution of Assange. Gillard also is on record as having stated that Assange is “guilty” of having released secret US documents from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and cables between the US and foreign governments (an astonishing statement since such an action is not even a crime!). The Gillard government in February passed legislation making it impossible for Assange, had he succeeded in defeating Swedish efforts to extradite him from Britain, to return to Australia and avoid a future extradition request from the US.

So it has come to this: A man who has courageously exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan is forced to flee to a Latin American country’s embassy to avoid capture, prosecution in a kangaroo court or perhaps even a military trial, and then imprisonment, torture and maybe even execution by the self-described “leader of the free world” — the country that has committed these war crimes he exposed. And his own country not only won’t help him. It is cooperating in his persecution.

My old employer, the Sydney Morning Herald, using Australia’s freedom of information law, obtained some diplomatic cables showing that the Australian government in Canberra has been working in concert with the Obama administration in the US to facilitate US prosecution of Assange as a spy. The Sydney Morning Herald also reports that the Australian government has taken steps to prevent further release of its diplomatic correspondence with the US regarding the Assange case. ...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/21/australia-betrays-its-own-citizen-journalist/