Assange: The Age confirms intelligence reports

Assange reports to remain secret

JULIAN Assange continues to be the subject of Australian intelligence reports more than a year after the WikiLeaks website published thousands of leaked US military and diplomatic documents.

The Age,

19 August, 2012

In a freedom of information decision, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed to The Sunday Age the existence of at least two intelligence reports on WikiLeaks and Assange from Australia's embassy to the US in February and March this year. The Washington embassy cables, one running to 10 pages, have been withheld from release because they are "intelligence agency documents".

Yesterday, The Saturday Age reported that Australia's ambassador to the US, former Labor leader Kim Beazley, had made high-level representations seeking advance warning of any US moves to extradite Assange on charges arising from WikiLeaks obtaining secret US government information.

On Thursday, Ecuador granted Assange political asylum at its London embassy on the grounds that if extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations, he will be at risk of extradition to the US.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr yesterday continued to deny knowledge of any intention by Washington to prosecute Assange.

In June, Senator Carr told the ABC's Insiders: "I've received no hint that they've got a plan to extradite [Assange] … I would expect that the US would not want to touch this.''

But, as reported yesterday, Australia's Washington embassy reported in February that "the US investigation into possible criminal conduct by Mr Assange has been ongoing for more than a year".

A spokesman for Senator Carr yesterday acknowledged that WikiLeaks could be linked to the investigation but insisted that did not mean the US was intent on extradition. While visiting the Solomon Islands, Senator Carr told the ABC Australia was monitoring the US military prosecution of Private Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked classified information to WikiLeaks.

A spokesman for Senator Carr also confirmed the government made a fresh offer of consular assistance to Assange, who declined. Intelligence agencies including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service are represented in Washington and liaise closely with their American counterparts.

Other freedom of information decisions have also revealed Australian intelligence interest in WikiLeaks and Assange. In December 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard received a "top secret" ASIO briefing on WikiLeaks, accompanied by media talking points concerning ''WikiLeaks' release of ASIO-derived information''.

Foreign Affairs and Trade deputy secretary Gillian Bird consulted with ASIS when preparing a briefing about WikiLeaks for former foreign minister Kevin Rudd in December 2010. The brief has been withheld from release on national security grounds.

Other diplomatic cables relating to Assange sent from the Washington embassy through late 2010 and 2011 have also been withheld because they contain intelligence information.

British police are stationed outside Ecuador's embassy, ready to arrest Assange if he leaves the building.

Australia prepping 'contingency plan' for Assange US extradition

Australian officials have confirmed that the country's diplomatic mission in Washington has been prepareing for Julian Assange's possible extradition to the US, but called it "contingency planning."

RT,

18 August, 2012

The country's authorities say there is nothing unusual in the move, as the must be ready for all eventualities.

"The embassy is doing its job, just to be in a position to advise the government if it believed that an extradition effort was imminent. There is no evidence of such an extradition effort," Trade Minister Craig Emerson told ABC television.

The US could have sought Assange's extradition from Britain rather than waiting for him to arrive in Sweden, but "obviously they haven't done that,” he noted.

Meanwhile, Australian newspaper The Age reports that according to information obtained from diplomatic cables, the Washington mission is taking the possibility of extradition seriously. They also say the cables show that Australia has no objection to Assange's potential extradition.

The newspaper also says that Assange continues to be the subject of Australian intelligence reports citing the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, confirming the existence of at least two intelligence reports concerning WikiLeaks and Assange from the Australian Embassy to the US in February and March this year.

Emerson did not comment on the claim that Australia would not oppose Assange's extradition to the US. He only said that Australia would adhere to "normal processes" and continue providing consular assistance.

"The legal processes have been followed, and… there's no particular role for Australia beyond ensuring that Mr. Assange has reasonable consular assistance, and that's what we're offering,” he declared.

On Thursday, Ecuador announced that it would grant the WikiLeaks founder political asylum, which he applied for in June. Quito said the asylum was granted over fears that if extradited to Sweden, Assange could be transferred to the US and once there, face execution. 

 

In Sweden, the whistleblower is wanted for questioning over sexual assault allegations, but no charges have been filed against him. 

 

Currently Assange remains at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, as the UK has forcefully asserted that it will deny him safe passage to Ecuador.

Good editorial from Mebourne's the Age.

Assange exploits decade of US folly

the Age,

18 August, 2012

THE saga of Julian Assange's extradition from Britain, which began with the WikiLeaks founder having sex with ''Miss A'' and ''Miss W'' in Sweden two years ago, could only have happened in a post-9/11 world. Before the US-led coalition's ''war on terror'' redefined the rule of law as dispensable, Assange's fear of political persecution - the basis on which he has won asylum in Ecuador's embassy in London - would simply have been ridiculous. Instead, the insistence by Britain, Sweden and Australia that there is no more to this extradition than a purely criminal investigation is debatable.

The Saturday Age reveals that Australia, as Assange's home country, has communicated with the US about his potential prosecution over the online release of a trove of classified information. Senior US officials have declared him a security threat who should be prosecuted for espionage. There is evidence of a US investigatory process and preparations for an indictment that could form the basis for extradition from Sweden. Australia has been a reluctant defender of Assange's legal rights ever since Prime Minister Julia Gillard pre-emptively declared: ''The foundation stone [of the WikiLeaks postings] is an illegal act that certainly breached the laws of the United States of America.'' Claims to be ignorant of US prosecutors' plans now stand exposed as false.

The Australian attitude recalls the glaring lack of concern about the detention without charge of two other citizens, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, at Guantanamo Bay. The US tried to put its detainees beyond the reach of its courts, engaged in extrajudicial rendition and torture, then tailored retrospective laws to obtain convictions in military courts. Few requirements of a fair trial were met. The role of Britain and Australia in all this assists Assange's claim that he fears extradition to the US to face charges that may carry the death penalty.

Ecuador has clashed with the US and has a record of rights abuses - notably, and ironically, in judicial interference and denying its citizens freedom of expression. However, the recent track record of the US and its allies in bending and even breaking long-standing international laws and conventions creates enough doubts about the circumstances of Assange's case that Ecuador has felt able to accept him as a ''victim of political persecution''. The claim that he faces a real but unacknowledged risk of extradition to a third country, the US, where ''he would not face a fair trial'', is founded on the record of the past decade.

Advertisement

Let us be clear about this. Justice in the Swedish case requires a fair hearing of the allegations of sexual assault, a serious, non-political crime. Even given troubling aspects of the investigation and the question of whether the alleged acts constitute a crime in British law, Assange's bid for asylum would have been doomed if only Britain and Sweden had an interest in this case, as our government pretends.

Yet if this were a routine and, in the scheme of things, minor case, would the British government be willing to move heaven and earth to get its man? Foreign Secretary William Hague even declares that Britain refuses to recognise the concept of diplomatic asylum and could arrest Assange inside Ecuador's embassy. The threat to repudiate the Vienna Convention, which rules embassy premises ''inviolate'', recalls the US scorn for the Geneva Conventions, which has already opened one can of worms for global relations. Imagine China had made such a declaration when a dissident recently took refuge in the US embassy.

The Assange case does not require a spotless hero for us to be concerned that every citizen be afforded exactly the same rights and protections. The rule of law depends on the fair, consistent and transparent application of the law to every accused person. A nation that unfailingly does so could never credibly be accused of persecution. Assange is the first Australian to be granted asylum for fear of persecution by the US, which has long been a refuge from persecution. That speaks volumes about the tangled web left by the ''war on terror''.