Julian Assange Hospitalized
Lawyer claims he’s “incapable of conducting a normal conversation”
Caitlin Johnstone
Julian Assange’s Swedish lawyer Per Samuelson has told the press that “Assange’s health situation on Friday was such that it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him.”
This jarring revelation has been reported by a small handful of outlets, but only as an aside in relation to Sweden refusing Samuelson’s request for a postponement of a scheduled hearing regarding Assange’s detention en absentia for a preliminary investigation of rape allegations. The fact that the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder is so ill that he can’t converse lucidly is itself far more significant than the postponement refusal, yet headlines mentioning Samuelson’s statement focus on the Swedish case, de-emphasizing the startling news from his lawyer.
As of this writing I’ve been able to find very few news outlets reporting on this at all, the most mainstream being a Reuters article with the very tame headline “Swedish court rejects delay of Assange hearing over ill-health: lawyer”.
The Sydney Morning Herald also covered the story without even mentioning illness in headline, instead going with “Swedish court rejects effort to delay Assange hearing”. The much smaller alternative media outlet World Socialist Website has been the only outlet I’ve found so far which reports on Samuelson’s statement in anything resembling its proper scale, publishing a good article titled “Despite Assange’s ill-health, Swedish court rejects delay to hearing” a few hours ago.
This news has been so under-discussed and under-appreciated as of this writing that I didn’t find out about it until hours after the story broke, and I’m very plugged in to both alternative media commentary and WikiLeaks-related news. A report that Julian Assange was so sick he could barely speak all the way back on Friday and we still have no news about how he’s doing now should be hugely significant for everyone who cares about Assange, press freedom, government transparency or peace activism.
Another part of this story which has gone completely uncovered in all English-language media as of this writing is the news that Assange has actually been transferred to the hospital wing of Belmarsh prison. This was reported by the Swedish outlet Upsala Nya Tidning, a newspaper published in the same district court Assange is scheduled to call in to for his hearing. The report was also based on a statement to the press by Per Samuelson.
The article reports the following, per machine translation:
“Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s Swedish lawyer wants the arrest hearing on Monday in Uppsala to be postponed. According to the lawyer, who has now visited his client in British prison, Assange is admitted to the medical department and was unable to make a call.
Last Friday, Assange’s Swedish defender, lawyer Per E Samuelson, visited his client in prison. In a letter to Uppsala District Court, the lawyer says that they met for just under two hours. According to the lawyer, Assange’s state of health at the meeting was such that ‘a normal conversation with him was not possible’. Julian Assange is said to have been taken to the prison’s ward, but there is no more detailed information about his state of health.”
This story was picked up from Upsala Nya Tidning by Danish new agency Ritzau and published in the outlet Politiken, with the title (per machine translation) “Weakened Assange hospitalized in London prison: ‘Impossible to have a normal conversation with him’”. These news outlets are to my understanding as reputable as any other mainstream western outlet, yet they remain the only publications I’ve been able to find which are reporting that Assange has been hospitalized. This is absolutely bizarre.
I’ve emailed Per Samuelson with a request to confirm the news that Assange has been hospitalized. I’ll update this article if I hear back.
For Assange’s supporters, one of the many frustrating things about his imprisonment has been the way he’s been cut off from the usual means which used to be used to inform the public about his well being. It used to be that news reports could be easily confirmed or refuted by people who had consistent access to Assange in some way by sources like the WikiLeaks Twitter account, but the people who operate that account don’t have ready access to him anymore.
Now we’re seeing all sorts of rumors circulating about how Assange is faring in prison, and it gets difficult to sort out fact from fiction. It appears that it would be difficult to find a more reliable source on the state of his health than his own lawyer, however.
It has long been an established fact that Assange was in failing health while trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London; doctors who visited him published an article with the Guardian in January 2018 titled “We examined Julian Assange, and he badly needs care — but he can’t get it”. Renata Avila, an activist and author who has worked with and written about WikiLeaks, tweeted in response to the new revelations, “He needed urgent assistance after his expulsion from the Embassy.
Instead, he was not allowed to receive adequate medical treatment. In the case of Emin Huseynov (1 y @ Swiss Embassy) it took at least a month of treatment to go back to normal. Imagine after 7 years! Brutal.”
We have been watching the slow-motion assassination of Julian Assange. They have been choking him to death by tactical psyops, siege tactics, and wilful neglect as surely as if they placed a noose tied around his neck, not just in Belmarsh Prison but in the embassy as well.
The only difference between his execution and someone on death row is the same as the difference between covert and overt warfare, which makes sense because the intelligence, judicial and military agencies who are carrying out his death sentence operate within the same power structure which carries out war. First came the smears (propaganda), then came the siege (sanctions), and they staged their coup (dragged him out of the embassy) and now they’ve got him in their clutches and they can do what they want behind closed doors. That’s how you kill a nation while still looking like a nice guy, and that’s how they’re killing Assange.
Shout this from the rooftops. Whether this media blackout is self-imposed or perhaps the result of the malicious use of a D-notice, we have to use everything in our power to get this information into the mainstream, and get people asking questions of the press and their local members about what the Dickens is going on in Belmarsh prison right now. Assange’s life may depend on it.
EDITORS NOTE: Does this development offer new evidence on the controversial allegation that Julian Assange was “chemically tortured”? Read our piece on that here.
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yeah they got him drugged up
This news has just become available. Off-Guardian commenters might like to read it and comment on it as to whether it rings true.
Cassandra Fairbanks, “EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Belmarsh Prison Inmate Provides Photos of Julian Assange, Says the ‘Internet is the One Thing They Can’t Control’ ” (Gateway Pundit, 6 June 2019)
The Gateway Pundit is a politically conservative US news outlet.
One of my former usernames was banned from the Guardian for arguing that the Swedish charges were a variation on the honey trap, and that the America’s wanted to bang him up for life.
The Guardian never allowed comments on Assange since then (I allow myself the vanity that I have changed Guardian policy).
Writ large, Assange is an exemplar of the Guardians view of free speech. Shut it down.. Assange isn’t free to speak anymore, and even if he were, his audience has been poisoned against him.
As always the UK Govt is just sticking its fingers in its ears and screaming “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah etc” like a petulant child. Their response to the comments and formal letter from UN torture expert Nils Melzer are lifted from the Gavin Williamson school of diplomacy. Mr Melzer doesn’t mince his words. The UK seem to be making a habit of disputing UN verdicts about their behaviour and think that is sufficient to get them off the hook.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48473898
Well, well:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/31/julian-assange-shows-psychological-torture-symptoms-says-un-expert
Who’da thort it?
‘EDITORS NOTE: Does this development offer new evidence on the controversial allegation that Julian Assange was “chemically tortured”? Read our piece on that…’ Nothing controversial about that allegation–at least not in the fake brouhaha about it screeched here (in the O-G BTL comments on it) and rescreeched by socially hypnotized twats who have swallowed the verification kool-aid of the impartiality gordian knot that is used to knacker (i.e. to castrate or spay) all gainsayers of the stateus quo or the disingenuous shit spreaders who, in the service of that stateus quo, spread it around here to trigger the aforementioned screeching response. Fall for it at y/our peril. Citation and verification are powerful tools in the establishment of accurate accounts of underlying reality, but they are only tools: those of malicious or unconcious acculturated/acculturating intent can and do mis use them to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt as a permanent state… Read more »
There is no doubt that the british regime is involved in the state murder of Julian puts treasnMay’s comment about ‘nobody above the law’ in its real perspective
Jonathan Cook provides the definitive take down of how the law is being abused to persecute Assange. (Jonathan Cook blog – Abuses show how Assange case was never about law) https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2019-05-27/abuses-show-assange-case-was-never-about-law/ One reason ill-informed commentators (including 70 British MPs led by Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips) say he ran away from Swedish rape charges by hiding in Ecuador’s embassy is because they have been told this for years by the Guardian: an outlet more than any other at the forefront of lying about the case, and one seemingly determined to make it easier for the US to torture him. James Ball, Luke Harding, Suzanne Moore, Nesrine Malik, Marina Hyde, Hadley Freeman – the list goes on and on, all seem to have arrived at identical opinions while strenuously denying that groupthink has not become the order of the day – anyone who says otherwise will be moderated for failing to… Read more »
you can always ‘discuss’ issues with Fraudian CENSORS via the ‘report’ portal.
howerver, for some reason they just don’t like ‘criticism’ and can be known to disable the ‘report’ portal.
just change servers and tickle their stasi fancies at your leisure.
What appears to be going on, as Ms Johnstone adverts to, is the slow assassination of Julian Assanage. Political murder – which is what it is – has been the usual method of silencing critics of the Anglo-Zionist empire: the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and heads of state of naughty countries including, Saddam, Gaddaffi, Allende and so forth. In Mafia terms i.e., the Anglo-Zionist state, these people were ‘whacked’, or Stalinist terms ‘liquidated’ as required. The ‘elites’ or PTB as we refer to them are an unholy alliance of the corporate, media, and political wing and the underclass of the mafia. A secondary aspect of this affair is the degree to which the US zio-con regime controls Europe. Europe, the EU, is basically a Petainist/Vichy regime, totally controlled by the US through the European of NATO. These states have no independence in terms of foreign policy and… Read more »
Assange has only himself to blame for his current predicament. He skipped bail to avoid facing justice for alleged rape and sexual assault. The judicial system makes generous allowance for health issues, to the extent that many defendants abuse the system to avoid facing trial and (if found guilty) the sentence. It is hardly surprising that, after being kept waiting for several years, the Swedish courts are inclined to assume that Assange’s purported illness may be yet another ploy to delay justice. Running a public-interest whistleblowing website is not a carte blanche to commit sexual crimes with impunity. Why is nobody talking about the wellbeing of the women whom Assange is alleged to have abused?
So what planet do you live on?
— the planet where government disinfo shills are well-paid for their services. Amoral scum walk among us. Sometimes you can even manage to recognize them; they pretend to be human, but they’re really not, in the same sense that most people are.
https://justice4assange.com/Note-to-editors-Sweden.html
Your much vaunted “justice” system is rotten to the core, a corrupt, politicised, barbaric travesty unworthy of the most degenerate third world tyranny, used for the purposes of political oppression and intimidation. Assange failed to answer bail following numerous credible threats from the most senior politicians and officials of the US terrorist gangster regime to have him murdered in revenge for telling the truth about its endless catalogue of war crimes and atrocities of a Nazi character committed on a Nazi scale. There was every reason to believe these threats would be carried out, given the blatantly Mafia character and track record of the US Regime, and the sordid complicity of US satellite states like Sweden and the UK in its kidnapping, torture and murder on an industrial scale in a global Gulag of concentration camps and torture chambers. The US is the leading torture state in the world, which… Read more »
“young black men imprisoned for years and decades for trivial offences…” The US is not alone in this. My eyes were opened a few years ago – by the BBC to their credit – to the doctrine of “joint enterprise” in UK criminal law. Not many people even know this law exists. Because of the way in which gangs of youths – usually, but not always of course, young black men – hang around together, this law means that if one of them commits a crime the others can be held liable for that crime. The attached link explains how it works and refers to many of the injustices resulting from this “lazy” law, as one of the mothers of a convicted boy accurately calls it. It doesn’t necessarily apply to gangs, a small group is equally liable to fall foul of this law. Periodically, someone stands up in Parliament… Read more »
With reference to my post at 11.25, further relevant link:
http://www.jointenterprise.co
Glad to see someone else mention this. Without going into too much detail this is a particular injustice I’ve got a real issue with. Various Police forces have colluded over the last 2 decades to massage their statistics with this piece of lazy, and ultimately racist, legislation. Certain senior officers in the Met and the Transport Police and civil servants in the CPS were instrumental in moving to ‘joint enterprise’ charges. It’s really scary how easy a minor charge for a single individual’s petty crime can be built into a joint enterprise conspiracy case that sends multiple people to prison for years on the flimsiest of evidence (or lack there-of), if the prosecution so desires. Alas, as you mention, nothing will be done. The classes of people targeted by this legislation are invariably not in a position to effectively challenge it so bar the odd member of the public managing… Read more »
From the time I saw this originally on Panorama the memory and impact of hearing about the injustices has never left me. You, Northern, are obviously familiar with it, but for the benefit of other readers…Some of the youngsters weren’t even in the vicinity of the offence, they just happened to be known members of the same gang so by implication were regarded as complicit and equally culpable, simply on the basis that they must have been aware of what type of crimes their fellow gang members were capable of and failed to report them or distance themselves from them. As YOU know, this law obviates the need for the police to put themselves to the trouble and expense of investigating in depth and reduces the number of (to their way of thinking) ‘undesirables’ on the streets. As far as they’re concerned it’s a ‘win, win’ situation. It is definitely… Read more »
In case you haven’t noticed, the Swedish authorities did interview Julian Assange twice: the first time way back in 2010 when he was in Sweden, and after which interview the rape charges against him were dropped; and a second time in 2016, when he was still at the Ecuadorian embassy, after which interview the remaining allegations against him were dropped. Also the way in which the Swedish prosecuting authorities keep opening and reopening the rape charges against Assange, the prosecutor in 2016 (Marianne Ny) apparently destroying the documentation after the second time the allegations were dropped, and now a third prosecutor (Eva-Marie Persson) being asked to reopen the case, is very smelly. The Swedish case against Assange looks more and more like the patch-up job it is the longer it carries on. It is not hard to conclude that the Swedish authorities are being pressured to keep this rotten fish… Read more »
”It is not hard to conclude that the Swedish authorities are being pressured to keep this rotten fish afloat to make the handover of Assange to the US easier.”
Quite. It is axiomatic.
Assange has not denied having had a sexual encounter with the two women. That does not prove the allegations against him, but it certainly renders them credible enough to merit serious investigation through judicial due process. Assange claims that his refusal to co-operate with such due process is because he wanted guarantees against being extradited on unrelated charges. Nobody has the right to decline to face justice on a given charge because the UK and Sweden, quite reasonably, refuse to give unconditional undertakings regarding a hypothetical extradition request on a hypothetical totally unrelated charge. Jen’s argument seems to imply that it would be acceptable to rape a woman alleged to have CIA connections. No matter how bad the CIA is, this is a despicable idea, and a very slippery slope to becoming just as evil as the military-industrial complex (whose rank-and-file justify war crimes against people in their power on… Read more »
My comment has made no such implication that raping a woman with CIA connections would be acceptable. That you would make such a statement about my comment or anyone else’s comment here does you no merit at all. The issue is that the Swedish prosecuting authorities have already interviewed Julian Assange twice and on both occasions the rape allegations against him were dropped. The second time that they were dropped, the prosecutor Marianne Ny apparently had the documentation destroyed. Reviving the allegations and wanting to question Assange a third time, given the history behind these allegations, make a mockery of the Swedish judicial system and suggests the Swedes are being pressured to have Assange brought over to Stockholm – perhaps because once he is physically on Swedish soil and he is questioned, the allegations can be dropped a third time, he would then technically be free and the way is… Read more »
As I understand it, the reason the charges were dropped the first two times was that the Swedish authorities were unable to complete their investigations on account of Assange’s lack of co-operation with judicial due process. In other words, they dropped the charges not due to any lack of credibility, but because Assange “ran down the clock” by staying in the Ecuadorian embassy. Assange’s means of evading justice are unusual (most of us cannot just roll up to an embassy and expect to be sheltered there for several years), so it is hardly surprising that the investigations ran out of steam, for a time. Any claim that Assange would be more vulnerable to extradition to the USA from Sweden than from the UK is preposterous. In contrast to the UK, Sweden is not a member of NATO, not in a “special relationship” with the USA, and not a member of… Read more »
“Why is nobody talking about the wellbeing of the women whom Assange is alleged to have abused?”
Yes we should be talking about them – those women that should be on trial for lying and they should be the ones in prison.
I’m not condoning Weinstein style abuse, but I think women will be the losers from bogus sex allegations like these.
People like Pence in the US refuse to be alone with a woman under any circumstances.
And this is becoming more prevalent in society generally, particularly in the US. Ordinary men doing ordinary jobs in ordinary factories and offices are refusing to train or mentor women, work with them, speak to them, or even look at them, unless absolutely necessary. It simply isn’t worth the risk when they can be sacked for looking at someone, or coughing, “in a sexist way.”
One of the two women in Sweden wrote a revenge manual for women who have been “dumped”, advising them to make malicious complaints of sexual offences.
Maybe the answer is to give up on romance entirely and buy one of those sex doll robots the Japs are working on.
Questions: anon, did you seriously expect to get away with that pathetic piece of trolling ? Are you just a plain disinterested boring selfish self-centred Serf of limited GCHQ intelligence, who only just got out of bed, after 3 years hibernation in a coma: or a female subject of societal propaganda, whose brain has been thoroughly washed with bleach ? ! Either way, seriously, your brain needs nourishment bigly, urgently 🙂 https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/gchq-boss-left-in-2017-after-obama-ordered-project-fulsome-spy-ring-against-trump/230121 https://www.neonrevolt.com/2019/05/24/operation-charlemagne-the-silent-ones-and-eyepyramid-italys-role-in-framing-trump-spygate-qanon-greatawakening-neonrevolt/ Assange’s good health !? Invaluable for Trump . . . to Make News 😉 in many ways 🙂 Bad news for all the trolls, coz’ you’ll be looking for a new job, very damn soon 😉 There is a fundamental difference in law between alleged faked & fabricated charges & evidence with proof of Mens Rea ! (Hannigan’s request to Boris Johnson linked ! ). I was just wondering how people like you, anon, sleep at night,… Read more »
”Running a public-interest whistleblowing website is not a carte blanche to commit sexual crimes with impunity. Why is nobody talking about the wellbeing of the women whom Assange is alleged to have abused?”
Let’s unpack this . 1) Who exactly has ”committed sexual crimes with impunity.”? Assange has never even been charged let-alone tried and convicted of any sexual crimes. And 2) ”Why is nobody talking about the wellbeing of the women whom Assange is ALLEGED (my emphasis) to have a abused?” I have no idea of the wellbeing of the said women; and I suspect neither have you. But assuming their ‘wellbeing’ has been upset by something like a sexual assault which no-one to date has provided evidence for is simply bizarre.
This is simply pathetic.
anon posted:
“Assange has only himself to blame for his current predicament. He skipped bail to avoid facing justice for alleged rape and sexual assault. … … … …”
Very unusual for anyone to get their own name wrong, even when it’s only a pseudonym, but you’ve left out multiple ‘d’s, spaces and distinguished-personage hyphenations. Here, I’ll fix it for you:
and on and-on and-on and-on and-on and-on and-on and-on and-on and-on and-on … … … … posted:
“Assange has only himself to blame for his current predicament. He skipped bail to avoid facing justice for alleged rape and sexual assault. … … … …”
BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS
What I would like to have explained to me by TPTB is how can someone who was arrested seven weeks ago to the day on a very nebulous charge and not in the best of health at that time (as stressed by his allies and family) be, presumably, given a thorough medical check and given the all clear for imprisonment at that time. And now seven weeks on after incarceration in what one would presume should be reasonably civilised conditions (??) in a civilised country (??), including medical support permanently on standby especially for someone regarded as in a delicate condition, he ends up in the serious state of health he is now in. There has to have been a significant degree of negligence for which many people must be called to account.
To say I am appalled and disgusted is an understatement.
The United Kingdom is no longer a civilised country. Bastards.
The United Kingdom power base has always lurked behind a cloak of civility to hide its murderous intentions.
The british regime has killed over 20,000 disabled people in the last 9 years so it is very good at removing those it does not want
Bob,
I agree. I know from personal experience and observations that the cases highlighted by the Gosport scandal are just the tip of the iceberg and appear to be part of a much wider institutionalised programme, presumably aimed at reducing financial pressures on the NHS and social services.
The people who rule over us are absolute filth. They have no moral scruples whatsoever and are capable of anything. There are no depths they would not plumb. They have done this before with David Kelly, and probably the Princess of Wales. They routinely conduct criminal wars of aggression based on lies killing millions, and orchestrate the operations of Nazi scum in the Ukraine and cannibal throat slitters in Syria. They are quite capable of poisoning Assange if they have not done so already. Just as they did with Hugo Chavez and Yasser Arafat. I have been half expecting him to be diagnosed with some mystery untreatable illness mimicking the symptoms of cancer or AIDS for some time.
I can say in all seriousness, and no attempt at hyperbole, that the UK is fast becoming the scum of the world if it hasn’t achieved it already. Probably only beaten to the post by the US, but not for want of trying. It’s definitely a close run competition.
This “raging commentator” has a lot of “concern trolling” still left to use before it’s ‘best before end’ expires. Or is this hospitalisation of Julian the end result of his “chemical interrogation” by US security services being given get into, and get out of jail free cards; allowing them into the UK’s maximum security prison? Why was it necessary for Consortium News to cover up the outrageous behaviour of former USAF Lt.Col. Karin (retired) Kwiatkowski, a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, who made unsubstantiated claims of such activities. Now we have Julian invalided in hospital, with as yet unknown ailments, and the propagandists against him can easily turn round and say “don’t believe the apologists for Assange, they had been claiming he was chemically interrogated. It’s just a ruse to get sympathy” etc., etc.. And I get labelled a “concern troll” by administrators here. In a funny way… Read more »
You should not be fond of the term, it’s a low grade and despicable thing to do and to be. Try to aim higher.
In non-troll world the fact Assange is now declared to be sick lends potential new credence to the claims of torture, not, as you absurdly pretend, the opposite.
Of course you know that, which is why you’re here, wasting your life and our time.
It is sickening. What disturbs me more is the attitude of many ordinary people – that he deserves all this. If it wasn’t for him all the crimes would never have been revealed. Less directly thanks to him we are seeing other narratives unravel – OPCW and the staged Douma incident, RussiaGate. You have people like Peter Hitchens on the case digging. Just today I was reading in one mainstream paper that the death of David Kelly was most likely not suicide. So all this stuff is getting circulated day by day. The classic you hear from people half way there is ‘I think Assad is brutal, but the West is to blame’. There is no evidence of brutality, and if there was, this would not be relevant. But people have to qualify everything as if to come across with a respectable opinion. People need to get real and not… Read more »
Ordinary people are only informed by the MSM in whom they trust.
No ordinary person would condone Julian’s treatment if they fully understood what is happening to him.
Fully agree Loverat, particularly your first 4 lines. Most people either don’t care, or they regurgitate MSM soundbites at you, believing them to be their ‘own thoughts’.
Assange is a political prisoner and is – effectively – being tortured by denial of appropriate medical care.
The International Red Cross should be granted access to him. He is being slowly murdered by the British state and their US accomplices.