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      UN torture envoy calls for immediate release of Julian Assange on 10th anniversary of arrest: ‘He’s not a criminal and poses no threat to anyone’

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      The rights of Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange have been “severely violated” for more than a decade, according to the UN’s top envoy on torture, and the British government should release him from detention immediately.Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, said Mr Assange had been convicted of no crime, and yet as he awaited for a court to decide whether to extradite him to the US to face espionage charges, he was at threat of contracting Covid-19.Mr Melzer repeated his assertion Mr Assange’s treatment amounted to torture, and called for the British authorities to either release him or put him under guarded house arrest.“The British authorities initially detained Mr Assange on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Sweden in connection with allegations of sexual misconduct that have since been formally dropped due to lack of evidence,” he said in a statement released in Geneva.“Today, he is detained for exclusively preventative purposes, to ensure his presence during the ongoing US extradition trial, a proceeding which may well last several years.”He added: “Mr Assange is not a criminal convict and poses no threat to anyone, so his prolonged solitary confinement in a high security prison is neither necessary nor proportionate and clearly lacks any legal basis.”Mr Assange, 49, founded the whistleblower site Wikileaks in 2006, but generated headlines around the world in 2010, when he released material passed to him by then US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.Assange: A timeline of the investigationMr Assange said the material showed the US and its allies were committing war crimes during its occupation of Iraq.Among the most disturbing of the material was video footage that showed two US AH-64 Apache helicopters attacking buildings in Baghdad in 2007, and then closing in a group of people. Among the people were children and journalists.“Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards,” one US airman could be heard to say of the attack that killed at least a dozen people. Ms Manning served seven years for leaking the video, much of that time spent in solitary confinement. Mr Assange, who is being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison, which like many such facilities has seen an outbreak of Covid cases, was arrested 10 years ago over alleged sexual crimes in Sweden. Mr Assange has always denied the allegations and Mr Melzer said they were withdrawn because of lack of evidence.Mr Assange jumped bail in 2012 and sought and obtained political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he spent seven years. He was arrested from there in April 2019 by the British authorities, acting on an extradition request from the US where he faces 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret American military documents a decade ago. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.The British government accused Mr Assange of skipping bail and he was sentenced to 50 weeks imprisonment. Judge Deborah Taylor told him he had exploited his position.  “Whilst you may have had fears as to what may happen to you, nonetheless you had a choice,” she told him. Mr Assange’s defence team argues he is a journalist and entitled to First Amendment protections for publishing such information. They have also said the conditions he would face in a US prison would breach his human rights. They also argued he had entered the Ecuadorian Embassy out of desperation to avoid being sent to the US.“Mr Assange’s rights have been severely violated for more than a decade. He must now be allowed to live a normal family, social and professional life, to recover his health and to adequately prepare his defence against the US extradition request pending against him,” said Mr Melzer.Last month, Stella Morris, Mr Assange’s partner and the mother of his two children, called on Donald Trump to pardon him.“I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas,” she tweeted.There was no immediate response to enquiries from the British Home Office. More

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      in UK Politics

      Trump urged to pardon Julian Assange by his partner and mother of two children: ‘Please bring him home for Christmas’

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      In an appeal to the president a day after Mr Trump announced he was pardoning disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn, Stella Morris posted a picture of their young children.“These are Julian’s sons Max and Gabriel. They need their father. Our family needs to be whole again,” she wrote.“I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas.”She tagged the message @RealDonald Trump and added the hashtag #PardonAssangeMr Assange, 49, remains held in a high-security British prison cell as he awaits a judge’s decision about whether he can be sent to the US to face espionage charges.Ms Morris has said he has been confined exclusively to his cell for over a week because of a coronavirus outbreak on his block at London’s Belmarsh Prison.Your daily US politics newsletterSign upAlready have an account? Log in hereMr Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, attended four weeks of an extradition hearing at the Central Criminal Court in London in September and October. The judge overseeing the case said she would deliver her decision on 4 January.US prosecutors have indicted Mr Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret American military documents a decade ago. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.Mr Assange’s defence team argues that he is a journalist and entitled to First Amendment protections for publishing leaked documents that exposed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have also said the conditions he would face in a US prison would breach his human rights.Mr Assange jumped bail in 2012 and sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which ended up becoming his home for seven years before he was evicted and subsequently arrested. He has been in a London prison since April 2019.Last week, Mr Morris said: is partner Stella Morris, the mother of their two young children, said: “Keeping Julian in the UK’s harshest prison, exposed to a deadly virus and away from his family is not only cruel, it offends British values and democracy itself.Additional reporting by Associated Press More

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      Joe Biden says ‘we must keep’ an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland

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      Speaking to reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, on the day he formally introduced his nominations for top diplomatic and international security posts, the president-elect said he had spoken to British prime minister Boris Johnson, and Micheál Martin, the Irish Taoiseach, urging them to maintain an open crossing.One of the key stumbling blocks as Britain prepares to break ties with Europe at the end of the year, is what will become of the border between Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, and Ireland, which will continue to part of the European Union.At the height of the conflict known as the Troubles, the border area was the location for many atrocities. Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the border and the citizens on both sides have enjoyed both peace, and no fixed border posts.“We do not want a guarded border. We want to make sure — we’ve worked too long to get Ireland worked out, and I talked with the British prime minister, I talked with the Taoiseach, I talked with others, I talked to the French,” said Mr Biden.Your daily US politics newsletterSign upAlready have an account? Log in here“The idea of having a border north and south once again being closed is just not right, we’ve just got to keep the  border open.”In September, Mr Biden, who can trace his Irish ancestry to County Mayo, made a similar point on Twitter.Antony Blinken speaks after President-elect Joe Biden nominates him for secretary of state“We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit,” Mr Biden wrote. “Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.” More

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      Attacks against female journalists around world surge

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      Attacks and harassment of female journalists around the world soared last month, a new report has found.The study, carried out by the Coalition For Women In Journalism, documented 87 cases of physical attacks, legal harassment, detainment, arrests and online attacks around the world in October. This constitutes a sharp rise from the 54 cases of such abuse that were reported in September.The Coalition For Women In Journalism, a New York-based non-profit organisation that helps journalists around the world, has recorded over 540 threats against women journalists in 2020 so far. Some 109 of them were physical attacks and obstructions on the field, three were murders, 63 were orchestrated trolling campaigns, and 15 were instances of sexual harassment. While 47 female journalists were arrested, 86 were detained and 67 were subjected to legal harassment.The organisation has called for female journalists who are threatened, attacked, and harassed to be properly protected via preventive measures that guarantee their safety.The prominent photographer, whose work has been in The New York Times and who had recently been covering Black Lives Matter demonstrations, can be seen being tackled to the ground in a video clip.“They didn’t care I was a photographer. They didn’t care I was press. People who know me were shouting out that I was press, and they didn’t care,” Ms Kihn told Hyperallergic.She added: “What did I do to deserve that? Walk in the road. I am a photographer documenting this movement. What about freedom of the press?”However, the NYPD sought to deny Ms Kihn’s arrest in a tweet, saying: “All arrested individuals from today’s protests have been verified to not be NYPD credentialed members of the press.”Coalition For Women In Journalism condemned her arrest and said it constituted an attack on freedom of the media. The organisation said: “Evidently, these arrests are assaults to press freedom and we continue to follow and monitor these events closely. “We have a great concern for the safety of women journalists; not only for their well-being but also for their freedom of expression. The Coalition For Women In Journalism will always stand on the side of protecting the rights to free expression and free press. “Additionally, we condemn the violence against women journalists. We stand with the photographer Chae Khin and all women journalists who are dealing with similar issues on the ground.” More

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      Ex-South Korean President Lee back to prison after ruling

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      Former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was sent back to prison on Monday, four days after the country’s top court upheld his 17-year prison term for corruption crimes.South Korean television stations showed a convoy of black vehicles, including one carrying Lee, arriving at Seoul’s Dongbu Detention Center. Center officials later confirmed his imprisonment. Earlier Monday, Lee was taken from his home to a Seoul prosecutors’ office to be formally notified about his sentence and undergo identification checks there.Lee, 78, was convicted of taking bribes from big businesses including Samsung, embezzling corporate funds from a company that he owned and committing other corruption-related crimes before and when he served as president from 2008-13. A Seoul district court initially sentenced Lee to 15 years in prison in 2018. He was bailed out of prison several months later but was taken back into custody this February, after an appellate court handed down a 17-year term and canceled his bail. Days later, however, he was released again after he appealed the ruling on his bail cancellation. On Thursday, the Supreme Court confirmed the 17-year term. Lee, a former Hyundai CEO, won the 2007 presidential election on a promise to reinvigorate the country’s economy. But his five years in office were marred by the global financial crisis, massive public protests over the resumption of U.S. beef imports and military animosities with North Korea.Lee’s corruption case erupted after his successor, fellow conservative Park Geun-hye, was removed from the presidency and jailed over a separate corruption scandal in 2016 and 2017 that sparked one of the biggest anti-government protests in South Korea. More

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      The US Election 2020: The facts, the figures and the legends

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      The president’s official residence in Washington – 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – has a history scarcely less colourful than that of the presidency. Work began on it in 1792. John Adams was the first to occupy it (before it was finished) in 1800 and Dolley Madison famously did it up, with the help of a grant from Congress, only for the British to burn it to a shell in 1814. James Monroe spent $50,000 – controversially – doing it up again, in extravagant Parisian style. Martin Van Buren was attacked for turning it into “a palace as splendid as that of the Caesars”. Chester A Arthur auctioned off wagon-loads of priceless presidential memorabilia in order to pay for another makeover in the 1880s. There have been numerous refurbishments and additions since, including extensive restorations under Theodore Roosevelt (who added the West Wing), William Howard Taft (who added the Oval Office) and Harry S Truman (after the house was declared to be in imminent danger of collapse in 1948). The most extravagant recent redecoration was instigated by Jacqueline Kennedy, with the help of the French designer Stéphane Boudin.Your daily US politics newsletterSign upAlready have an account? Log in here More

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      in UK Politics

      Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe 'summoned to court in Iran and told to pack bag for prison'

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      The UK has condemned Iran’s “unacceptable and unjustified” treatment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after she was summoned to a court and told to prepare for a return to prison.The 42-year-old has been held in Tehran on charges of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, allegations which she denies, since 2016 but had been moved from her cell to a family home in March as part of the country’s coronavirus containment measures. On Tuesday she was summoned to a court appearance and told to pack a bag as she would be returning to jail following the hearing on Monday, according to her husband Richard Ratcliffe.“We don’t know what will happen on Monday, we don’t know how far and how soon they will take forward their prison threat,” he added.“But we do know that the Revolutionary Guard are signalling something to the British government. We also know they are signalling this could have a long time still to run.”
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      ‘A very good guy’: What Trump has said about key UK leaders since becoming president

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      Donald Trump has often made his feelings about other world leaders well known, whether that be on Twitter or by speaking to reporters.Here is some of what he has had to say about British politicians and other figures since he won his place in the White House.After the president shared a number of videos from far-right group Britain First on social media in November 2017, the then-prime minister’s spokesman said it was “wrong for the president to have done this”.The president responded by tweeting about Ms May: “Don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”Mr Trump was highly critical of Ms May’s handling of Brexit negotiations, and more sour words were exchanged when British ambassador to the US Sir Kim Darroch resigned over leaked diplomatic messages critical of the White House in July 2019.Your daily US politics newsletterSign upAlready have an account? Log in hereHe tweeted: “I have been very critical about the way the UK and Theresa May handled Brexit. What a mess she and her representatives have created.“I told her how it should be done, but she decided to go another way. I do not know the Ambassador, but he is not liked or well thought of within the US. We will no longer deal with him.“The good news for the wonderful United Kingdom is that they will soon have a new prime minister.”He added the next day: “I told theresa-may how to do that deal, but she went her own foolish way-was unable to get it done. A disaster!”However, when Ms May was forced to set out a timetable to exit No 10, Mr Trump called her “a good woman, she worked very hard, she’s very strong”. More