Justice for Assange as UN Denies UK’s Last Appeal
The United Nation has rejected a UK appeal ruling in favor of Julian Assange, thus forcibly ending both London and Stockholm’s forced “arbitrary detention.”
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Announced Wednesday, that is has rejected the UK’s last appeal against the government’s previous ruling, where the panel had previously reiterated Assange’s detention was unlawful. According to UN officials, the UK did not provide any additional evidence, putting to rest the UK’s expected re-examination into the case.
Earlier this year the UN had instructed parties that both the UK and Sweden must take immediate steps to ensure that the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, whose been in captivity for 4 years, has liberty, protection and enjoyment of fundamental human rights.
“The UN expert group also considered four requests for review of previous opinions, submitted by the Arab Republic of Egypt, the State of Kuwait and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Working Group concluded that the requests did not meet the threshold of a review as enshrined in paragraph 21 of its methods of work, and that they were thus not admissible,” the panel said Wednesday, according to the Washington Times.
BREAKING: UN rejects UK appeal on #Assange https://t.co/31TThJ8DGk #svpol #auspol #ozpol pic.twitter.com/vI5MCKOsC7
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 30, 2016
“Now that all appeals are exhausted, I expect that the UK and Sweden will comply with their international obligations and set me free,” Assange said in a written statement. “It is an obvious and grotesque injustice to detain someone for six years who hasn’t even been charged with an offence.”
Justice for Assange, a party working beside Assange and Wikileaks, said that the UN standing firm on its previous ruling indicates that “the UK and Sweden are once again required to immediately put an end to Mr. Assange’s arbitrary detention and afford him monetary compensation.” The group added that failure to do so would undermine the UN human rights protection system.
However, it is still unclear how effective the UN’s recent ruling may be at actually freeing the whistleblower forced into captivity. Ecuador’s prosecutor recently came forward stating that there is no “quick way out” of the Ecuadorian embassy for Julian. A compound he has been stuck in since 2012 after being granted asylum in Ecuador.
“Julian Assange is not, and has never been, arbitrarily detained in the UK and his continued presence in the Ecuadorean Embassy is entirely self-inflicted,” Foreign Office Minister for the Americas, Sir Alan Duncan told the Press Association. “We completely reject the opinion of the UN Working Group and are very disappointed that they will not review their deeply flawed and incorrect position.”
“A European Arrest Warrant for an allegation of rape remains outstanding and the UK has a legal obligation to extradite him to Sweden,” Duncan added. “He has exhausted the well-recognised protections available to him under the British legal system. He has been avoiding arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorean Embassy for more than four years now and the UK wants to see a conclusion to this case.”
Assange faces potential, but yet unfiled charges over rape allegations in Stockholm dating all the way back to 2010. Assange has always denied accusations as there is baseless evidence, noting that him being taken to Sweden would only pave the road for him to be extradited to the United States. If such occurred the whistleblower would presumably get the same treatment as Manning if not worse.
Assange has been stuck in the embassy for over 4 years now, unable to go outside and see the sunlight. Earlier in November, a group of Swedish investigators came to interview Assange inside the embassy regarding the rape charges, in which the whistleblower “cooperated fully” with prosecutors.
What’s quite worrisome is that Assange’s whereabouts have been unknown since October 4th. Assange has not been seen alive since that date and the public has taken note. It’s gotten so bad that Wikileaks has had to ask their followers to stop asking for proof of life from Assange, saying they have no meaningful way of proving his life. Not to mention his email provider recently received a legal request they can’t speak about.
Assange may have this gracious UN ruling in his hand, but Where is Assange?
The UK Govt should be ashamed of themselves. The fact that there are African Nations recusing themselves from the ICC is no different from this appalling situation.