*The persecution of Julian Assange** * Jonathan Cook 4 May 2022 16:43 UTC /According to UN torture expert, the UK and US have colluded to publicly destroy the WikiLeaks founder – and deter others from exposing their crimes/ // The British home secretary, Priti Patel, will decide this month whether Julian Assange is to be extradited to the United States, where he faces a sentence of up to 175 years <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61162908> – served most likely in strict, 24-hour isolation in a US super-max jail. He has already spent three years in similarly harsh conditions in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison. The 18 charges laid against Assange in the US relate to the publication by WikiLeaks in 2010 of leaked official documents, many of them showing that the US and UK were responsible for war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one has been brought to justice for those crimes. Instead, the US has defined Assange’s journalism as espionage - and by implication asserted a right to seize any journalist in the world who takes on the US national security state - and in a series of extradition hearings, the British courts have given their blessing. The lengthy proceedings against Assange have been carried out in courtrooms with tightly restricted access and in circumstances that have repeatedly denied journalists the ability to cover the case properly. Despite the grave implications for a free press and democratic accountability, however, Assange’s plight has provoked little more than a flicker of concern from much of the western media. Few observers appear to be in any doubt that Patel will sign off on the US extradition order – least of all Nils Melzer <https://www.geneva-academy.ch/masters/ll-m/faculty/profile/47-nils-melzer>, a law professor, and a United Nations’ special rapporteur. In his role as the UN’s expert on torture, Melzer has made it his job since 2019 to scrutinise not only Assange’s treatment during his 12 years of increasing confinement – overseen by the UK courts – but also the extent to which due process and the rule of law have been followed in pursuing the WikiLeaks founder. Melzer has distilled his detailed research into a new book, The Trial of Julian Assange <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697240/the-trial-of-julian-assange-...>, that provides a shocking account of rampant lawlessness by the main states involved – Britain, Sweden, the US, and Ecuador. It also documents a sophisticated campaign of misinformation and character assassination to obscure those misdeeds. [...] continua qui: https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/show-trial-julian-assange-book