Jeremy Corbyn among 24 MPs urging Joe Biden to drop Assange extradition bid


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A group of British MPs have written to the US president urging him to drop his administration’s attempt to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

An open letter to Joe Biden, who’s in the UK for the G7 summit, said dropping the prosecution would be a “clarion call for freedom”.

Assange is being detained in Belmarsh prison in London. Meanwhile the US continues an attempt to extradite him over the activities of WikiLeaks.

Joe Biden at the G7 summit
Joe Biden at the G7 summit (Leon Neal/PA)

Dangerous precedent

The MPs said they’d hoped Biden’s victory might be the occasion to draw a line under the prosecution.

They added:

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Unfortunately, the US Department of Justice is still pursuing this case, leaving Julian Assange facing a third year of incarceration in Belmarsh high-security prison.

The effect of your predecessor’s decision to take a criminal case against a member of the press working in our country is to restrict the scope of permissible press activities here, and set a precedent that others will no doubt exploit.

The case against Mr Assange weakens the right to publish important information that the government finds uncomfortable. Indeed, this value is central to a free and open society.

Prominent signatories

Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott

Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott are among the signatories (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

The letter continued:

The case against Mr Assange also undermines public confidence in our legal systems. Our countries are also increasingly confronted with the contradiction of advocating for press freedom abroad while holding Mr Assange for years in the UK’s most notorious prison at the request of the US government.

We appeal to you to drop this prosecution, an act that would be a clarion call for freedom that would echo around the globe.

The letter was signed by 24 MPs including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MPs Diane Abbott and John McDonnell and Green MP Caroline Lucas.

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      1. Why are you submitting such obnoxious stuff to the Canary?
        Jeremy Corbyn is definitely not a “has been” and in spite of the nasty smears like yours and those from the MSM, he’s one of the few pioneers on the genuine left to highlight the disgraceful state of our unequal corrupt “democracy”.

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      2. So whose bum would you sniff? You unspeakable half wit. Had you been living in Hitlers Germany you would love the Fuehrer had you been in Stalins Russia you would crawl to him you would always believe what you were told, you would always mindlessly obey what you thought of as authority. You have no thoughts or opinions of your own, only ideas that have to be fed to you via the Mail the Express or the Sun! Your mind is a vacuum that is open and receptive to all the filth that our disgusting media pour out. You are brain dead.

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        1. I should like to say that I absolutely agree with the cogent and just comments made by jay henderson and by the other posters herein who were also shocked, but doubtless not surprised, by the vile ‘Daily Mail ad hominem expert’ Dianesrightshoe’s quite disgusting comment, which arch Troll is one of the many ‘great unwashed’ (morally, not hygienically) who absolutely fail to acknowledge that as a direct consequence of, and shocked response to, the ‘Very, very, close to a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government.’ result of the 2017 general election (only 2,800 votes – in the right places – away in fact!) it was the case that between that general election and the December 2019 general election a fully-panicked and very rattled ‘Establishment’ sent out ever-more urgent and ever-more frequent wicked instructions to their slavering ‘attack dogs’ (such as the Daily Mail, the Express, and so on) to so ludicrous ramp up the daily vicious lying attacks on Jeremy Corbyn that large numbers of the voting public at large, and not, sadly, only Trolling lumps of Boris’ toy box plasticine such as Dianesrightshoe, from the likes of which one could hardly expect any better, would eventually become absolutely brainwashed into actually thinking that Jeremy Corbyn is more like Boris Johnson’s true persona than his own ‘actual reality’ persona which is, of course, the absolute polar opposite of that which the likes of the Mail and the Express love to serially paint a wickedly disingenuous picture of since in reality Jeremy Corbyn is, in fact, the most honest, the most compassionate, the most committed, and actually the greatest Anti-anti-Semitic MP, in parliament since the time of the great 1945 Clement Attlee-led reforming Labour government!

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