Easter Adjournment

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I wish to speak on this matter while it is not sub judice. Julian Assange is currently being held at Her Majesty’s prison Belmarsh, a high-security prison, and has been for nearly three years. He is being held there on remand not for any violations of UK law, but solely because he faces extradition to the USA for his journalistic work with WikiLeaks. He is a political prisoner and I want to put on the record that a cross-party group of parliamentarians have been repeatedly refused even an online video meeting with Julian Assange.

He has pursued journalistic work that has exposed atrocities committed in the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well human rights abuses committed in Guantanamo Bay. Much of the horrific details that we now know of those events were exposed by Julian Assange’s journalism, and for that we should be grateful.

That journalism was carried out in our country. He was invited here by The Guardian, which along with TheNew York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País —some of the biggest news outlets in the world—was among the first five news organisations to publish articles based on his work. It is journalism for which he has received numerous awards. Yet now he faces extradition to the US and a prison sentence of up to 175 years in a super-maximum security prison.

Civil liberties groups and leading newsrooms view the US Government’s prosecution against Assange with deep alarm. Amnesty International has said:

“Prosecuting Julian Assange on these charges could have a chilling effect on the right to freedom of expression”.

The secretary-general of Amnesty International labelled it, “Politically motivated and unjustified”, and said that the case

“undermines press freedom, the rule of law, and the prohibition of torture.”

Reporters Without Borders, the International Federation of Journalists and press freedom groups Article 19, Index on Censorship and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, as well as the National Union of Journalists, issued a joint declaration stating:

“Julian Assange…is being prosecuted for exposing US rendition, unlawful killings and the subversion of the judiciary. And the UK government is allowing extradition proceedings to continue.

The prosecution of Julian Assange was a political decision taken by the Trump administration”

and it

“creates a dangerous legal precedent, allowing any journalist in Britain to be prosecuted and extradited.

Our government must ensure the UK is a safe place for journalists and publishers to work. Whilst Julian Assange remains in prison facing extradition, it is not.”

The Washington Post’s executive editor said that it was

“criminalising common practices in journalism that have long served the public interest.”

President Biden was there as part of Obama’s Administration when the decision was taken not to prosecute Julian Assange. The message that I have is that that should be the position. If that does not happen, I call on the Home Secretary to use her powers and refuse to sign an extradition warrant.