Washington DC—Prolific political scientist Noam Chomsky and Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg held court along with noted press rights advocates, constitutional lawyers, and journalists over the continuing imprisonment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The Belmarsh tribunal was held Friday, 20 January in the spirit of the Russell-Sartre Tribunals of the Vietnam War era. The Assange Tribunal was held at the National Press Club 13 years after Julian Assange appeared at the National Press to speak about the need for a free press. The event and it was open to the public.
Other noted speakers included Jeremy Corbin, the former Labor Party leader of Parliament in England.
Julian Assange, journalist and founder of the Wikileaks website, which released a trove of classified U.S. intelligence transfered to it by Chelsea Manning, has been credited with turning the tide against the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. The release of the documents was the catalyst that triggered a wave of Iraqi opinion against the Iraqi War and its eventual end.
Assange has been held in solitary confinement at the Belmarsh maximum security prison in London, pending extradition to the United States for trial. The U.S. State Department is seeking Assange’s extradition on the grounds that he violated the U.S. Espionage Act.
The Belmarsh Tribunal brought together a range of expert witnesses from constitutional lawyers, to acclaimed journalists and human rights defenders. Its purpose was to present the evidence of the attack on publishers such as Julian Assange, and to seek justice for the crimes he exposed.
If the U.S. is successful in extraditing Assange, he could face trial in the Northern Virginia, in the same court and with the same judge that prosecuted Chelsea Manning for his refusal to testify in a deposition against Julian Assange.
Political scientist and intellectual Noam Chomsky is one of a growing chorus who disputed any extradition justification on the grounds that the U.S. neither has the legal authority to extradite an Australian national, nor the legal basis to prosecute him. “Why should the United States have the power to control what others are doing elsewhere in the world? It’s an outlandish situation.”
The tribunal also hosted Daniel Ellsberg, an employee of Rand Corporation who in 1971 leaked classified documents known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times revealing the U.S. was much more extensivly involvement in the Vietnam War than the public was led to believe. Reports published in the New York Times and Washington Post about the Vietnam War helped turn the tide of public support against that war and eventually led to the U.S. exit from Vietnam in 1975.
