Free Julian Assange! Irish campaign begins to organise
2 March 2020
A meeting was held in central Belfast on Friday the 28th of February to protest the trial of Julian Assange and the attempt to extradite him to the US.
Speakers included Mairead Maguire, professor Kristian Lasslett of Ulster University and the editor of VIEW magazine, Brian Pelan.
The facts of Assange's case are straightforward. He and the WikiLeaks group were responsible for the greatest scoop in current history when they released thousands of intelligence reports of US war crimes in Iraq.
The US have pursued him through fake charges, a Kafkaesque show trail in London, torture, and the promise of life imprisonment in American high security prisons.
The legal process has been accompanied by a massive smear campaign, centring around charges of rape.
These charges are totally untrue but have been successful in isolating Assange. At the same time the establishment press, who published much of the information provided by Wikileaks, washed their hands of all responsibility and left him to his fate.
The case is extremely important because it is one of many examples of intimidation and murder of investigative journalists and the assertion of the right of the State to act as it pleases.
A second organising meeting is to be held to launch a campaign in Ireland to prevent the extradition process from proceeding.