Ep. 5438 – Kevin Gosztola on the Rejection of Julian Assange’s Extradition – 1/4/2021

Scott interviews Kevin Gosztola about the breaking news that a British judge has denied the request to extradite Julian Assange from England to the United States. The prosecutors will appeal, says Gosztola, but this ruling opens the possibility that Assange could be released within a few days. Although the decision is a big victory for Assange and his supporters, it is not necessarily a victory for press freedom. The problem with the judge’s ruling, Gosztola explains, is that it sides with Assange as an individual without addressing the precedent of charging journalists for doing the kind of work Assange did at Wikileaks. In other words, the extradition request was denied only because Assange was deemed a suicide risk in the inhumane American supermax prison conditions, and not because the judge believed the claims of his wrongdoing to be unfounded. In fact she seemed to agree with almost every point in the case the American prosecutors laid out. This could be a problem both for Assange’s appeal and for similar cases in the future.

Check out the interview page here: https://libertarianinstitute.org/scotthortonshow/1-4-21-kevin-gosztola/

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