Julian Assange, an Australian investigative journalist is finally freed from several years of ordination of political imprisonment in the UK at the behest of the US. A grave, 14 year-long injustice with restrictions on Assange’s liberty, and facing prior to securing a plea deal, 175 years in US prison in relation to WikiLeaks publications, including the Guantanamo Bay files, the Afghanistan and Iraq War files, and US diplomatic cables, exposing serious war crimes committed by the US.
Leaving aside the draconian measures against press freedoms and whatever alleged conducts Julian Assange may have committed, what is more shocking is the British judiciary’s deeply regrettable role in the miscarriage of justice and a huge waste of resources (running into millions of pounds) by reinforcing many years of political incarceration of Assange at the behest of a foreign state, the US. I’m not sure if the same would’ve been accorded by the English judiciary if in place of the US, another country or territory such as India or Hong Kong was to be the party to the extradition case? This is autocratic abuse of the extradition treaty. The English judiciary knows -- though they may not want to admit it -- that this case has always been more of a political, disingenuous step by a country (US) involved in serious war crimes. That should never have been the case.
Why on earth a foreign non-US citizen should be prosecuted for so-called violation of a US law, the Espionage Act (EA), more so, that so-called violation of EA happening outside the US, and subsequent unforgiving imprisonment be juridically enabled by a foreign state ie the UK judiciary, which is under no circumstances subservient to what the US judicial/executive dictates? The English judges should have thrown out this case long time ago, yet they didn’t. Rather, the UK judiciary was looking over its shoulder, towards Washington, far more than it was abiding by its own statute books.
For too long, English courts have been too deferring to the autocratic, politically corrupt, war crimes-implicated Anglo-American establishments under the preposterous or dubious pretext of so-called “non-justiciable” national security matters and political administrative matters (ie separation of powers with the judiciary giving space or juridical blessings to the executive’s foreign war crimes misadventures), even if it means miscarriage of justice or blatant abuse of both the judicial procedures and human rights of the one who is incarcerated at the behest of a foreign state.
These are the same English common law judiciary and the courts that all too readily lent the judicial weight to colonial era crimes and genocides against the colonized non-white indigenous people under the pretext of its deference to war crimes-laden political colonialist establishments whose corrupt or war criminal political leaders and the members of the judiciary often both share the same close-knit private schools alumni network or private fraternity clubs, all united by the common denominator of a dimmed, elitist, white supremacist world view. This is not separation of powers where illegality or violation of basic human rights is to be judicially tolerated under the flawed so-called “non-justiciable” grounds, which is all but granting judicial cover for the executive’s war crimes, by invoking the judicial tool of “non-justiciability” legal wrapper as a cover-up of the political establishment’s war crimes and injustices. After all, the Nazi-era Germany had judiciary whose courts judicially blessed or judicially condoned the heinous crimes against the European Jews; and of course the colonial Germany had its courts to bless and judicially condone the mass genocides committed by the colonial power in its erstwhile colony of South-West Africa (present day Namibia); and of course Britain’s heinous colonial crimes including genocides committed in her former colonies with the English judiciary being juridically complicit-via-deference in the cover-up of heinous colonial era war crimes and genocides of indigenous natives in the colonies.
By deferring the judicial oversight on the lawfulness or illegality in the substantive matters of (so-called) national security and foreign policy, including state-sponsored war crimes to the executive, under the pretext of (so-called) separation of powers, the English judiciary along with other common law judiciaries in the Anglosphere proved they are just an extension of respective war criminal establishments. This is not separation of powers but rather, collusion of powers in aiding and abetting the executive’s colonialism, war crimes and genocides committed abroad under the banner of so-called national security.
It is high time the English and American judiciaries take note of American-Asian jurist Mark Wu’s advice to the lawyers and judges of tomorrow:
“The law is imperfect. It will soon be in your hands, do your share to bend it towards justice.”
It is equally about time the judiciary exercise its role in overseeing and keeping a check on the excesses of the executive (government) in foreign affairs, as they do in home affairs. The judiciary’s judicial oversight and dispensing justice should be consistent at both home affairs and in foreign affairs (prior to postwar era, the latter was often termed as colonial affairs or colonial policies).
The moment the state crimes and injustices are given a free pass in matters of foreign/colonialist affairs and national security, at some stage such judicial indifference would permeate the citizens’ affairs at home. We have already seen this in the case of British citizen Shamima Begum, of non-white ethnic minority background and a victim of underage trafficking, judicially facilitated to be stripped off her British citizenship.
To rephrase, without judicial complicity or judicial deference insofar as lawfulness and unlawfulness are concerned, the government would not have the courage or legitimacy to engage in its reckless foreign policy and national security related misadventures including state-sponsored terrorism. If erosion of rights, injustices, war crimes, or worse, genocides abroad are to be judicially tolerated abroad, then be prepared that at a later stage either in our lifetime (or if not in our lifetime, then in the lifetime of our future generations) the same injustices, war crimes and genocides would be judicially tolerated and blessed by the spineless or deferring judiciary when committed at home.
Ismail Y Syed is a research scholar in Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern studies and operates a strategic advisory consultancy from London, UK; a contributor columnist for Asian newspapers. The author can be followed on Twitter @IsmailYSyed . The author’s latest writings can also be accessed on ismailysyed.substack.com.
