He points out that even the prominent human rights group Amnesty International has avoided characterising Assange as a "prisoner of conscience", despite his meeting all the criteria, with the group apparently fearful of a backlash from funders (p81).
He notes too that, aside from the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, comprising expert law professors, the UN itself has largely ignored the abuses of Assange's rights (p3). In large part, that is because even states like Russia and China are reluctant to turn Assange's political persecution into a stick with which to beat the West - as might otherwise have been expected.
The reason, Melzer observes, is that WikiLeaks' model of journalism demands greater accountability and transparency from all states. With Ecuador's belated abandonment of Assange, he appears to be utterly at the mercy of the world's main superpower.
Instead, Melzer argues, Britain and the US have cleared the way to vilify Assange and incrementally disappear him under the pretence of a series of legal proceedings. That has been made possible only because of complicity from prosecutors and the judiciary, who are pursuing the path of least resistance in silencing Assange and the cause he represents.
It is what Melzer terms an official "policy of small compromises" - with dramatic consequences (p250-1).
His 330-page book is so packed with examples of abuses of due process - at the legal, prosecutorial, and judicial levels - that it is impossible to summarise even a tiny fraction of them.
However, the UN rapporteur refuses to label this as a conspiracy - if only because to do so would be to indict himself as part of it. He admits that when Assange's lawyers first contacted him for help in 2018, arguing that the conditions of Assange's incarceration amounted to torture, he ignored their pleas.
As he now recognises, he too had been influenced by the demonisation of Assange, despite his long professional and academic training to recognise techniques of perception management and political persecution.
"To me, like most people around the world, he was just a rapist, hacker, spy, and narcissist," he says (p10).
It was only later when Melzer finally agreed to examine the effects of Assange's long-term confinement on his health - and found the British authorities obstructing his investigation at every turn and openly deceiving him - that he probed deeper. When he started to pick at the legal narratives around Assange, the threads quickly unravelled.
He points to the risks of speaking up - a price he has experienced firsthand - that have kept others silent.
"With my uncompromising stance, I put not only my credibility at risk, but also my career and, potentially, even my personal safety" Now, I suddenly found myself with my back to the wall, defending human rights and the rule of law against the very democracies which I had always considered to be my closest allies in the fight against torture. It was a steep and painful learning curve" (p97).
He adds regretfully: "I had inadvertently become a dissident within the system itself" (p269).
Subversion of law
The web of complex cases that have ensnared the WikiLeaks founder - and kept him incarcerated - have included an entirely unproductive, decade-long sexual assault investigation by Sweden; an extended detention over a bail infraction that occurred after Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador from political extradition to the US; and the secret convening of a grand jury in the US, followed by endless hearings and appeals in the UK to extradite him as part of the very political persecution he warned of.
The goal throughout, says Melzer, has not been to expedite Assange's prosecution - that would have risked exposing the absence of evidence against him in both the Swedish and US cases. Rather it has been to trap Assange in an interminable process of non-prosecution while he is imprisoned in ever-more draconian conditions and the public turned against him.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
3
3
