Stella Assange pleads with Australian PM Albanese to bring Julian home to his family
Channel: Consortium News
Date: 2023-03-08

Stella Assange to Belmarsh Tribunal

The Belmarsh Tribunal has come to Sydney almost four years into Julian's arbitrary detention, arbitrary imprisonment in Belmarsh High Security Prison in south east London. Julian was arrested on the 11th of April 2019, and every day since then he has been in a cell in this horrible place alongside actual criminals and convicts and dangerous individuals and he's there not because he is serving any sentence.

He is not a prisoner at all, formally. He is there on remand while the United States seeks his extradition. You've heard today a lot of detail about what the US is actually accusing him of, which is journalism, which is doing the right thing, which is trying to get states to follow their own rules and actually obey the law.

Julian's work has been an indictment of how the United States and its allies have conducted themselves during the wars, the illegal wars in Iraq and the illegal detention of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, and the U.S. interference, for example, in Spain and Germany and Italy - in their attempts to put U.S. citizens on trial for kidnaping and torturing European citizens on European soil - and derailing those attempts.

So Julian has stood up for the enforcement of the international legal conventions that Australia has signed up to, that the United States has sometimes signed up to. As you know, the U.S. has not signed up to the Convention Against Torture, amongst others. And Julian's work and his motivation has been to strengthen democracy and to strengthen citizens’ right to know information that matters for democracy and to hold abusers to account.

And it is those abusers who have used, abused the legal system to keep Julian imprisoned indefinitely, keep Julian imprisoned in the worst possible conditions in the United Kingdom and bury him alive in the United States if he gets extradited there. Our youngest child has now turned four and Julian will have spent four years in Belmarsh Prison on the 11th of April 2023.

And as time goes by, you have these anniversaries. They come and go. And for some it's just a number. But for us, it's our lives, it's our past, it's our present. And every day that passes, it's our future. Julian's day to day existence is made tolerable through his contact with the outside world, a contact that would be impossible if he were extradited, and a contact that, even in its minimal form, is a lifeline.

There is no pretence that what is happening here is a legal process, a legitimate process. This is a political case. This is the CIA director, the secretary of state, putting pressure on the DOJ to extradite Julian. It is not his place, but he admits it himself. There's just no question that this case has political origins, that it is a criminal endeavour by the Trump administration now pursued or continued by the Biden administration.

And so I think it's no longer a question about whether Julian should stand trial, whether he should be free, but how he should be free and when he should be free in the eyes of those in power. And the answer is right now. Right now. And how? Well, whatever it takes. Because Australia is the most important ally to the United States. It is more important than Israel and the Middle East.

It is more important than the United Kingdom. It is the most important ally because of China. And Australia has the power to bring Julian home. The Prime Minister, more than anyone, holds Julian's fate in his hands. And so I ask the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, to take Julian's fate in his hands and bring him home to us, bring him home to our kids, bring him home to me and end his suffering.

Hosted by Mary Kostakidis & Mark Davis.

Organised by Progressive International & Wau Holland foundation. Co-sponsored by the Search Foundation, Jacobin, PEN Sydney, PEN International, Declassified Australia, NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Consortium News & The Walkley Foundation.

The Belmarsh Tribunal will take place in the Great Hall of Sydney University. Up to 400 can attend in person. RSVP here:
https://act.progressive.international...