28 March 2024

UK court disregards CIA plot to kill Julian Assange
This week, the High Court handed down its decision on Julian Assange’s attempt to appeal his extradition to the US.

The judges, both of whom are closely connected to the British establishment, ruled that Assange may be extradited to the US should the US government provide acceptable assurances that he won’t be given the death penalty, or discriminated against based on his nationality.

The British media widely reported this outcome as something of a victory for Assange.

The Guardian declared: “Julian Assange wins temporary reprieve in case against extradition to US”. The Times even suggested that it was not Assange, but the US case, that was in jeopardy, with the headline: “Julian Assange extradition under threat due to death penalty fears”.

In reality, the High Court has effectively told the US government precisely what needs to be done to secure Assange’s extradition, and the ball is now firmly in Washington’s court.

One of the most worrying, and frankly perverse, aspects of the High Court’s decision relates to CIA plots to kill or kidnap Assange while he was in arbitrary detention in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.


During the extradition proceedings, Assange’s lawyers tried to convince the judges that this evidence derailed the prosecution’s case: how can Assange be expected to receive a fair trial in a country whose government secretly plotted to murder him?

Despite this, the judges refused to admit this evidence, agreeing with a past ruling that “there was nothing to show that the [CIA] conduct in relation to the Embassy was connected to the extradition proceedings”.

The judges added that Washington’s “rationale” for plotting to kill or kidnap Assange “is removed if the applicant is extradited”. In other words, the US government would not need to murder Assange in order to prevent him from escaping its jurisdiction if he were already in its jurisdiction.

Putting aside these outrageous mental gymnastics, it’s hard not to determine that the British judges have already condemned Assange to a guilty verdict in the US.


Indeed, if Assange is found innocent in the US and subsequently attempts to leave its jurisdiction once again, how can anybody be sure that the CIA, one of the most violent organisations on the planet with a well-documented vendetta against Assange, will not try and kill him again?

David Cameron implicates himself
In February, UK foreign secretary David Cameron accepted that Israel, as the occupying power, has to ensure that humanitarian aid, food, water, and shelter are available to people in Gaza. “If they don’t do that, that would be a breach of international humanitarian law”, he said.

Yet in a letter to Alicia Kearns, the chair of the foreign affairs select committee, Cameron has now acknowledged that Israel is doing precisely that.

In the letter, published earlier this week, Cameron noted that “UK aid for Gaza has been routinely held up waiting for Israeli permissions”. He added that “some UK funded aid” has been stuck at the Gaza border “for just under three weeks waiting for approval”.

The main cause of this remains “arbitrary denials by the Government of Israel and lengthy clearance procedures, including multiple screenings and narrow opening windows in daylight hours”. On top of this, Cameron conceded that the Israeli government “is preventing the necessary staff from getting visas”.

In Cameron’s own words, then, Israel is committing serious violations of international humanitarian law. Despite this, the Foreign Office has not amended its earlier position that Israel is complying with international law, and is refusing to publish its formal legal advice on the matter.

Cameron’s statements could, and should, return to haunt him should there be an independent investigation into Western complicity in the Gaza genocide.

BBC admits pro-Israel ‘mistake’
In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) heard South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. The proceedings lasted two days, with South Africa submitting its evidence on the first day, and Israel providing counter-arguments on the second.

Many observers noted at the time that the BBC decided to live-stream Israel’s defence, while not offering the same level of coverage to South Africa’s historic submissions.

This week, the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and its director of editorial policy and standards, David Jordan, were questioned by MPs on Westminster’s Media Committee on whether this demonstrated a pro-Israel bias.

Davie told the MPs that the BBC had taken “a reasonable position”, while Jordan acknowledged that it may have been a “mistake in not making the two live coverage events similar or the same”.

Jordan continued: “In this particular conflict, if you don’t have absolute equivalence, as you know, it leads to people suspecting that you’re doing something deliberately to be biased. That isn’t the case”.

Is this really not the case?

A recent analysis of the BBC’s coverage showed that there has not been a single mention of “genocide” on its Twitter feed since 1 February. Another report found that the BBC, alongside other British media outlets, has consistently framed the war on Gaza in sympathetic terms to Israel.


Yet perhaps Jordan is correct in stating that the BBC’s pro-Israel was not deliberate. As Noam Chomsky told the BBC’s Andrew Marr in an interview in the 1990s: “I’m sure you believe everything you say. But what I’m saying is if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”.