Shouts of ‘shame on you’ from public gallery as Julian Assange is jailed for 50 weeks for seven-year-old UK bail offence

LONDON: WiKiLeaks founder Julian Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks in jail on Wednesday after a UK judge ruled his seven-year stay in the Ecuador embassy was a “deliberate attempt to evade or delay justice”.
The 47-year-old, who is being held at London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, had been convicted at Westminster magistrates’ court on April 11 of failing to surrender to custody without reasonable cause.
Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19, 2012 after losing his battle in the UK against extradition to Sweden, where he faced sexual offences charges. He failed to report to police on June 29, 2012 to be extradited to Sweden, thus committing an offence under Section 6 (1) of the Bail Act of 1976.
Sentencing Assange, who arrived in a prison van, judge Deborah Taylor said: “By entering the embassy you deliberately put yourself out of reach and remained there for nearly seven years exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and advertise disdain for this country’s laws. Sixteen million pounds (Rs 145 crore) of taxpayers’ money was spent in ensuring when you did leave you are brought to justice. It is essential for rule of law that no one is above the law and courts are obeyed. Whilst you may have had fears, you could have left the embassy at any time.”
Assange supporters at Southwark crown court chanted “Shame on you!” at the judge. A hundred more stood outside holding banners saying “Don’t shoot the messenger” and “Whistleblowers speak the truth” and chanting “Free Julian Assange” and “US, UK, hands off Assange!”
On August 16, 2012 Assange was granted diplomatic asylum by Ecuador.
Mark Summers QC, who represented the Indian government in Vijay Mallya’s extradition trial, was mitigating for Assange He argued the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled in 2015 that a failure to recognise that asylum by the UK and Sweden was wrongful and his embassy stay was “not his free choice”.
But Taylor said the UN decision was “not binding of this court” and “underpinned by misconceptions of fact and law”.
“We believe there is a reasonable excuse, an extraordinary one. The background for this breach of bail is the act of seeking and claiming asylum, itself a lawful act,” Summers said.
“He took the decision to seek refuge in the Ecuador embassy and apply for asylum on grounds of his fears of being refouled by Sweden to the US, being persecuted, subjected to solitary confinement, sent to Guantanamo Bay and death in the US. He believed he was exercising his legal rights.”
Summers highlighted the torture former army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who leaked hundreds of thousands of sensitive US documents to WikiLeaks, has undergone in the US.
“She was charged with offences that could get the death penalty, put in military detention, forced to sleep naked and parade as such in front of military personnel. There were suggestions Assange could be kidnapped in whatever country he was in and brought to the US. In 2012 the UN special rapporteur on torture confirmed Manning had been subjected by the US to inhuman and degrading treatment,” he said.
“In December 2010 US politicians called for Assange to be executed, kidnapped and delivered to the US,” Summers said, adding, “Sweden at that time had a well-documented history of sending people to places where they are at risk of torture and death. A rich array of international tribunals has condemned Sweden of this practice.”
Summers stressed it was not onward extradition to the US from Sweden Assange feared but “refoulement” — sending him into US diplomatic custody, without any extradition hearing, outside the legal process.
Summers gave examples of previous such cases when Sweden had “rendered” people to the US. “Handcuffed at Stockholm airport, a private jet from the US landed, they were handed over to a group of special agents, stripped of their clothes, hooded and blindfolded and chained for transit. All of this was condemned by UN human rights tribunals.”
Summers handed the judge a letter Assange had penned that morning which read: “I apologise unreservedly to those who consider I have disrespected them by the way I pursued the case. I was struggling with terrifying circumstances which neither I nor others could see a way out of. I did what I thought was best which I hoped may lead to legal resolution between UK and Ecuador. I regret the course it took.”
Assange’s stay in the embassy was akin to being held in prison, with no courtyard, garden, medical care or privacy, Summers said, adding that different doctors had assessed him as being “depressed, introverted and insecure”, and he had various physical ailments. He rebutted claims that Assange had “caused the Swedish investigation to terminate”.
Assange may only have to serve half his sentence and his time on remand will count towards it.