Nobel Peace Prize Winners Highlight The Assange Conundrum

-British Muslims Asked To Support Assange And Help Prevent His Extradition-

10th October 2021, London, UK.

This week's announcement by the Norwegian Nobel Committee that it has awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to two journalists for their 'courageous fight' to safeguard freedom of expression should be celebrated.

Philippino journalist Maria Ressa and Russian investigative reporter Dmitry Muratov have deservedly won this prestigious award, in the process being recognised as 'representatives of all journalists in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions'.

But the award sidesteps one of the most pressing freedom of speech issues of modern times, a potential miscarriage of justice which the British Government has been trying to sweep under the carpet for the last two years but which is about to hit it in the face again.

This month the Australian founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, will have spent two years in solitary confinement in Belmarsh maximum security prison. Arguably the greatest free speech campaigner of them all, Assange has been serving his stretch having already been found by a British court as unlikely to survive the testing regime of a United States supermax detention facility, and thus not to be suitable for extradition under British law.

The US wants Assange back on American soil where it plans to try him as a spy and where he could serve a maximum sentence of up to 175 years.

Assange's defence team maintains that he is a journalist, doing the universal job of all journalists to expose systemic untruths and to champion freedom of the press.

This unprecedented stretch for someone who won their case on mental health grounds nearly a year ago will be in the spotlight with a public march at 1.00pm on Saturday 23rd October from BBC Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London to the High Court in the Strand. The march will be followed by a demonstration at 9.00am on 27th October at the High Court itself, when a British judge will start to hear the US government appeal for Assange's extradition.

Last week on a call the Don't Extradite Assange Campaign reached out to Muslims in Britain and asked them to do more in support of a campaigner who helped expose the hidden and unapalatable truths of the long and bitter Iraq and Afghan wars.

By releasing the hacked official Iraq and Afghan logs, Wikileaks opened the door to a wholesale rewriting of the official narrative of these conflicts as depicted and managed by the western governments which executed them.

In a meeting hosted by British MP Apsana Begum, both John Rees of the Don't Extradite Assange campaign and Assange's partner, the lawyer Stella Morris flagged up the miscarriage of justice being overseen by the British government in its dealings over Julian Assange's case.

The meeting was made more urgent in light of the recently exposed plot by rogue CIA operatives to take unilateral action against Assange in the UK, and by the fragile state of his health after two years in the punitive conditions of Belmarsh.

Assange now has the support of Amnesty International, which could make him a prisoner of conscience like Alexei Navalny, it was revealed. This cause could be strengthened by a letter to Amnesty from the British Muslim community.

The Don't Extradite Assange campaign has also written a letter to the governor of Belmarsh requesting a meeting concerning the case, but this meeting has so far been refused, DEA spokesman John Rees stated.

Stella Morris, part of Assange's defence team, voiced her concern over the state of civil liberties in the UK generally and Assange particularly. 'The situation shows that this is not a safe country for journalists, Julian Assange or a free press if you anger the US authorites. This is potentially a new paradigm,' she said.

More at:

https://dontextraditeassange.com

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