Stella Moris is the fiancée of Julian Assange. They have two children together. Speaking outside the High Court in London after two senior judges ruled in favour of the WikiLeaks publisher’s extradition to the United States, she made the following impassioned statement.
I want to emphasise that the High Court accepted all the medical evidence and the conclusions of the magistrate that if Julian is extradited and placed under extreme conditions of isolation it will drive him to take his own life. That extradition is oppressive.
Yet the High Court decided against Julian on this occasion on the basis of political assurances—non-assurances—that the US has given to the UK government. I say non-assurances. Amnesty International says non-assurances. Amnesty International has analysed these assurances and has said that they are inherently unreliable. They incorporate the possibility of breaking those assurances in their very wording.
Today, it’s been almost a year since I stood outside court with our victory of the blocking of the extradition. For the past year, the past two years and a half, Julian has remained in Belmarsh Prison and in fact he has been detained since the seventh of December 2010 in one form or another. For how long can this go on?
Today is International Human Rights Day. What a shame, how cynical to have this decision on this day. To have one of the foremost, the foremost publisher, journalist of the past 50 years in a UK prison accused of publishing the truth about war crimes, about CIA kill teams. And in fact every time we have a hearing, we know more about the abusive nature, the criminal nature of this case.
Julian exposed the crimes of CIA torturers, of CIA killers and now we know that those CIA killers were planning to kill him too.
How can this court, how can these courts, approve an extradition request under these conditions? How can they accept an extradition to the country that plotted to kill Julian, that plotted to kill a publisher because of what he published? This goes to the fundamentals of press freedom and of democracy.
We will fight. Every generation has an epic fight to fight, and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society. Of what it means to have press freedom. Of what it means for journalists to do their jobs without being afraid of spending the rest of their life in prison.
The UK imprisons journalists. They are imprisoning Julian on behalf of a foreign power which is taking an abusive, vindictive prosecution against a journalist. And this is what it is about. I urge everyone to come together and fight for Julian. Julian represents all our liberties and all our rights.