John Shipton, father of detained Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, is to participate in a Q and A session in Mullumbimby this Wednesday evening, 8 May.
The multi award-winning journalist is still in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, where his ill health prevented his appearance at his latest legal hearing.
The UK High Court is to decide on an appeal from Mr Assange’s lawyers against a recent decision in favour of the US Justice Department’s extradition request.
The appeal concerns the ability of the US to guarantee Mr Shipton rights available to US citizens under the US Constitution, as requested by the UK High Court.
Ask and you won’t receive, says Shipton of US protections for non-citizens
Mr Shipton says the US Justice Department has been honest in its response.
‘What they say is that Julian can ask for protection or seek, in their words, the protection of the First Amendment of the United States,’ Mr Shipton told Bay FM’s Community Newsroom last week.
‘In other words, you can ask but you won’t receive,’ Mr Shipton said, ‘it’s not possible’.
The Supreme Court of the United States has examined the issue of foreign citizens receiving the protection of the United States Constitution already, Mr Shipton told reporter Dr John Jiggens.
The court had previously decided that it was not possible he said.
‘Lots of fascinating detail,’ Mr Shipton says of Assange case
As for the Australian government, Mr Shipton said it was ‘moving ever closer to a successful negotiation depending upon, of course, the circumstances’.
Mr Shipton is partway through a tour of South East Queensland and the Northern Rivers in the lead up to the court’s expected decision on 20 May.
The tour has featured appearances at Nimbin’s Mardi Grass and Brisbane’s May Day March and Mr Shipton is to appear in Mullumbimby’s Civic Hall on Wednesday evening, with thanks to Turning Point Talks and the Northern Rivers Assange supporters.
He will be accompanied and interviewed by former NSW magistrate David Heilpern and Bay FM Community Newsroom / Echo Publications reporter (and writer of this article) Mia Armitage.
Entry is by donation, with all proceeds to go towards Mr Shipton’s campaign for his son’s freedom.
The evening is to start at 7pm.
‘Come along if you get a minute,’ Mr Shipton said, ‘because there’s lots of fascinating detail in the geopolitical movement and legal movements and the social movements and pressures that manifest in social media that’s around the persecution of Julian Assange and the abrogation of human rights and due process’.
