Excerpt: "Dear President Correa, We are writing to urge you to grant political asylum to Julian Assange."



WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. (photo: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

Grant Asylum to Assange

By Michael Moore, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Naomi Wolf, et al, Just Foreign Policy

ear President Correa,

We are writing to urge you to grant political asylum to Julian Assange.

As you know, British courts recently struck down Mr. Assange’s appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he is not wanted on criminal charges, but merely for questioning. Mr. Assange has repeatedly made clear he is willing to answer questions relating to accusations against him, but in the United Kingdom. But the Swedish government insists that he be brought to Sweden for questioning. This by itself, as Swedish legal expert and former Chief District Prosecutor for Stockholm Sven-Erik Alhem testified, is “unreasonable and unprofessional, as well as unfair and disproportionate.”

We believe Mr. Assange has good reason to fear extradition to Sweden, as there is a strong likelihood that once in Sweden, he would be imprisoned, and then likely extradited to the United States.

As U.S. legal expert and commentator Glenn Greenwald recently noted, were Assange to be charged in Sweden, he would be imprisoned under “very oppressive conditions, where he could be held incommunicado,” rather than released on bail. Pre-trial hearings for such a case in Sweden are held in secret, and so the media and wider public, Greenwald notes, would not know how the judicial decisions against Mr. Assange would be made and what information would be considered.

The Washington Post has reported that the U.S. Justice Department and Pentagon conducted a criminal investigation into "whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange violated criminal laws in the group's release of government documents, including possible charges under the Espionage Act." Many fear, based on documents released by Wikileaks, that the U.S. government has already prepared an indictment and is waiting for the opportunity to extradite Assange from Sweden.

The U.S. Justice Department has compelled other members of Wikileaks to testify before a grand jury in order to determine what charges might be brought against Mr. Assange. The U.S. government has made clear its open hostility to Wikileaks, with high-level officials even referring to Mr. Assange as a “high-tech terrorist,” and seeking access to the Twitter account of Icelandic legislator Birgitta Jónsdóttir due to her past ties to Wikileaks.

Were he charged, and found guilty under the Espionage Act, Assange could face the death penalty.

Prior to that, the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of providing U.S. government documents to Wikileaks, provides an illustration of the treatment that Assange might expect while in custody. Manning has been subjected to repeated and prolonged solitary confinement, harassment by guards, and humiliating treatment such as being forced to strip naked and stand at attention outside his cell. These are additional reasons that your government should grant Mr. Assange political asylum.

We also call on you to grant Mr. Assange political asylum because the “crime” that he has committed is that of practicing journalism. He has revealed important crimes against humanity committed by the U.S. government, most notably in releasing video footage from an Apache helicopter of a 2007 incident in which the U.S. military appears to have deliberately killed civilians, including two Reuters employees. Wikileaks’ release of thousands of U.S. State Department cables revealed important cases of U.S. officials acting to undermine democracy and human rights around the world.

Because this is a clear case of an attack on press freedom and on the public's right to know important truths about U.S. foreign policy, and because the threat to his health and well-being is serious, we urge you to grant Mr. Assange political asylum.

Thank you for your consideration of our request.

Michael Moore, Film Director

Danny Glover, Film Director

Oliver Stone, Film Director

Naomi Wolf, Author

Glenn Greenwald, Constitutional lawyer and columnist, Salon.com

Chris Hedges, Journalist

Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel, one of three “whistleblowers” named Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002

Ann Wright, US Army Colonel (Retired) and former US diplomat

Ray McGovern, Former U.S. Army officer and longtime senior CIA analyst (ret.)

Thomas Drake, NSA Whistleblower, Bill of Rights Activist

Linda Lewis, Board Member, Whistleblower Support Fund

Kent Spriggs, Guantanamo habeas counsel

Jesselyn Radack, National Security & Human Rights Director, Government Accountability Project

Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Medea Benjamin, Cofounder, Global Exchange

Kathy Kelly, Co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Mark Johnson, Executive Director, Fellowship of Reconciliation

Denis J. Halliday, UN Assistant Secretary-General 1994-98. National of Ireland

Leslie Cagan, co-founder, United for Peace and Justice

Russ Wellen, Foreign Policy in Focus

James Early, Board Member, Institute for Policy Studies

Jim Naureckas, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Sam Husseini, Director, Washington Office of the Institute for Public Accuracy

Robert Naiman, Policy Director, Just Foreign Policy

Jane Hirschmann Jews Say No! New York, organizer, U.S. Boat to Gaza

Richard Levy, lawyer, passenger, U.S. Boat to Gaza

Helaine Meisler, Orton-Gillingham Learning Specialist, Helaine Meisler Learning Center, Woodstock, New York

Laurie Arbeiter, Artist/Activist, WE WILL NOT BE SILENT

Mayo C. Toruño, Professor and Chair, Economics Department

California State University, San Bernardino

Julio Huato, Associate Professor of Economics, St. Francis College

Michael Brun, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Illinois State University

Dana Frank, Professor, Department of History, University of California, Santa Cruz

Adrienne Pine, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, American University

Miguel Tinker Salas, Professor, Latin American History, Pomona College

Steve Ellner, Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University/Universidad de Oriente, Venezuela

Marc Becker, Professor of Latin American History, Truman State University

Dr Francisco Dominguez, Head of Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies, Middlesex University, London, UK

Peter Hallward, Professor of Philosophy, Kingston University London

Doug Hertzler, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Eastern Mennonite University

Carolyn Eisenberg, Professor of US Foreign Policy, Hofstra University

Vijay Prashad, Professor of International Studies, Trinity College, USA

T.M. Scruggs, Professor Emeritus, University of Iowa

Ellen Schrecker, Professor of History, Yeshiva University

Antonia Darder, Leavey Endowed Chair of Ethics and Moral Leadership, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles

Demetra Evangelou, Professor, Purdue University

Gilbert G. Gonzalez, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Irvine

Renate Bridenthal, Professor (retired), City University of New York

A. Belden Fields, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, University of Illinois

C. G. Estabrook, Visiting Professor (retired), University of Illinois

Carol Murry, Doctor of Public Health, Hawaii

Ellen Barfield, Veterans For Peace

Libor Von Schönau, OccupyWallStreet Legal, New York

Gar W. Lipow, journalist, member of Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, author of Solving the Climate Crisis through Social Change

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