US President Jo Biden, responding to a question, made the comment that the US is considering the dropping of the prosecution of Julian Assange.
How seriously we take what appeared to be an off-the-cuff remark remains to be seen.
In 2012 Assange was granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government and spent seven years besieged under the permanent watchful eye of a heavy police guard outside their embassy.
Last Thursday, April 11, marked five years to the day since Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London by the London Metropolitan Police.
On being removed under obvious protest by Assange and with minimum legal process he was taken to London’s Belmarsh high-security prison where he has remained ever since.
Even though no charges for crime committed in the UK have been brought against him by UK authorities, Assange spent much of that time in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.
As article 39 of the Magna Carta drawn up and presented to King John at Runnymede in 1215 as a challenge to his tyrannical rule states: ‘No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land’.
Perhaps 800 years of amendments have rendered the statute irrelevant.
It would certainly appear so in the case of Assange.
The full details of Julian’s case have never been subjected to ‘lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land’. His lawyers claim that if they had, the case would have been thrown out of court long ago.
So have we returned to the tyranny of the reign of King John?
For more insight and harrowing detail, the film The Trust Fall: Julian Assange documentary is highly recommended.
It is now showing at the Palace Cinema Byron Bay.
The campaign to free Julian Assange grows ever louder.
