If you love truth, you’re as much of a criminal as Assange and risk sharing his fate — RT World News

“What we’re witnessing is a murder,” NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told the ‘Belmarsh Tribunal’ in London on Friday, appearing via video link.

“Everywhere we look, from Afghanistan to economics, from pandemic to pervasive surveillance, the obvious has been made unspeakable,”He added that, speaking out would make one as Assange. “political criminal”Charged for “the transgression of choosing the wrong side.”

“Do we have any rights, if we don’t defend them?” Snowden said. “Can we be said to be free if even our power to express ourselves, to understand the facts of our world, can be fenced off from us?” 

Everybody who is passionate about truth is an indictable criminal. Assange is in the same group as Snowden in the eyes the state.

If we’re going to free the world, we have to free Assange.

The ‘Belmarsh Tribunal’ set out to turn the tables on Assange’s accusers – the US government, but also the UK that has kept him imprisoned, Sweden for making spurious accusations that drove him to exile in the first place, and Ecuador for revoking his asylum. The Progressive International organized it and was presided over Friday by Srecko Horvat, a Croatian philosopher that co-founded DiEM25, the European political organization, with Yanis Varoufakis (ex-Greek finance minister), who spoke as well. 

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The proceedings lasted more than 2.5 hours and Snowden was the last speaker. Fellow whistleblowers Annie Machon (former MI5 officer) and Daniel Ellsberg (known for leaking the ‘Pentagon Papers’), addressed the tribunal as well. Also among the speakers were four Labour MPs, including former party leader Jeremy Corbyn; two parliamentarians from Germany’s Die Linke; a former Australian Greens senator; former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa; and several distinguished journalists, historians and lawyers.

Assange: “being persecuted for being a publisher, for being a journalist,”Machon pointed out the “absolutely disgusting” fact that he is being denied First Amendment rights by the US even as the same rights are being accorded to Christopher Steele, author of the fraudulent ‘dirty dossier’ accusing former President Donald Trump of ties to Russia.

Ellsberg said Assange’s extradition will mean that every journalist on the planet has a target. Ellsberg was also able to tune in remotely. He was the first American to be prosecuted on the charges now levied against the WikiLeaks publisher, but was set free due to the government’s illegal acts and abuses during the investigation – which in Assange’s case ended up being “blatantly worse,”He stated.

Correa was the president of Ecuador, and Assange received asylum under his presidency. He lamented that Lenin Moreno, his successor, offered to sell the publisher to America in less than one week. Moreno allowed the embassy in question to continue its operations. “torture” Assange by depriving him of rights and putting him under surveillance, and eventually revoked his asylum in violation of Ecuador’s constitution and allowed armed British police to drag Assange out of the building, in April 2019.

“I am a former head-of-state and I understand that the state must keep some information confidential. But war crimes, crimes against humanity, cannot be kept confidential… and those who unveil these crimes cannot be persecuted — even more so, persecuted by the criminals,”Correa spoke.

“This is just a naked political persecution,” said Stella Moris, the mother of Assange’s children, calling it emblematic of the efforts to dismantle the international rules-based order and human rights on which it was ostensibly centered.

The recent revelations by the US government that Assange was being kidnapped from their embassy and assassinated were also mentioned. 

“Julian is holding back a tide of authoritarianism, and if we win this, we can push back,”Moris. “If he loses this, we all lose.”

The US has charged Assange, an Australian citizen, with violating the Espionage Act by publishing classified State Department cables and Pentagon documents related to the ‘Global War on Terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq, back in 2010, as well as conspiring with his source to hack into computers. That’s despite the key witness in the case admitting that he lied about some of the decisive facts on which the prosecution’s argument has been built.

Since Assange was arrested in London, Assange has been kept without bail at Belmarsh maximum security prison. While Assange has been held without bail at the maximum security Belmarsh prison in south London for almost 2.5 years, the US has appealed this decision and will hear the appeal next week.

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