As the Julian Assange case took a turn for the dramatic with his asylum request to Ecuador, in an exclusive interview to RT Christine Assange called the Australian government a puppet of the US that aided and abetted the persecution of her son.
RT: Now Julian hasn’t been charged yet, but he’s already seeking political asylum, so why now? Is it too early to take such a step?Christine Assange: Julian not only hasn’t been charged, he hasn’t even been questioned despite asking the Swedish government to do so for the last two years. The concern is of course that given the flagrant abuses of his human and legal rights in the Swedish case for two years, their refusal to adhere to their own police procedures and their own prosecutorial standards, that were he to go to Sweden, where he would be jailed straightaway, uncharged and unquestioned, he would not have the opportunity then to seek political asylum. RT: Ecuador has an extradition treaty with the United States, so even if the Latin American state gives the green light and shelters your son, do you think he’s going to be 100% safe there?CA: Ecuador I believe does have an extradition treaty, but if it’s ascertained from the investigation that the person seeking asylum is actually a political prisoner, then they don’t hand that prisoner over. Now this is something that many nations have signed up to, but a lot of them aren’t actually acting upon it, including the UK. They should have turned down that European arrest warrant coming from Sweden, because Julian had made himself very much available for questioning in Sweden, contrary to what the mainstream media and our own attorney general is saying to the public. He could not get the Swedes to actually question him on the second rape allegation; the first time it was raised it was quashed within 24 hours by the chief prosecutor of Stockholm, it was then resurrected ten days later by a politician lawyer running for election. The woman submitted a condom which she said Julian had torn, but upon investigation by the forensics department, there was no DNA evidence, it was appealed to the prosecutor, they shopped around until they found one, and the prosecutor upheld the appeal, and Julian was not even told about the hearing, and so these abuses of his human rights and legal rights in Sweden, they go on and on and on.He was then given permission to leave Sweden on the 15th of September by the prosecutor Marianne Ny. He offered to fly back because he had some business arrangements with his partners in publishing ‘Cable Gate’. He then offered to fly back in on the 9th and 10th of October, they said “we can’t do that because it’s the weekend.” Then he offered to fly back in on the 11th of October, “we can’t do that because it’s too far away.” He then stayed at the journalists club in London while he was releasing the Iraq war logs and preparing for ‘Cable Gate’, and he offered during this time to be interviewed via a protocol that Sweden and the UK are both signatories to, which is called mutual legal assistance, and that would mean that he would interviewed by video-link or Skype. The Swedish prosecutor refused this as well for two months. Just before ‘Cable Gate’ was published, she obtained a European arrest warrant for questioning.Then, once Julian had been detained in Britain for seventeen months, she has continued to refuse to question him either at Scotland Yard, or the Swedish Embassy, and my son says the reason for this is that once he’s questioned, then they have to either let him go or charge him, and obviously they have no evidence to charge him.That’s why they’re not questioning him, and people who have studied this case believe it is nothing more than a holding case for a US extradition.RT: Let’s now talk about the reaction to this in Canberra, In Australia his home country. Earlier Julian said he was abandoned by his own country, so what reaction would you like to have seen from Canberra at this point? CA: Well unfortunately we have a puppet government in Australia, it’s run by the US, but I would have liked to have seen the Australian government stand up and have some independence from US foreign policy, and say “no, what you’re doing is persecuting a journalist who has not been charged with anything and under your own first amendment has done nothing wrong.” They didn’t stand up, they should have stood up. They should have protested vehemently to the UK government for its disgraceful display during the hearings. It is unheard of in the last hearing that a court of appeals would introduce new evidence at the appeal, it’s absolutely unheard of. They should have protested to the US that calls are being made to incite murder upon my son. They should have protested that the grand jury being run by the US is not a due legal process, it has no judge or prosecutors, no defense material is allowed, and the jury comes from a pool of military contractors. They should have protested all of those things, and they’ve done nothing. In fact, they’ve aided and abetted the US in persecuting my son.