Thread by @ElizabethleaVos

Power Versus the Press: The Extradition Cases of #Pinochet & #Assange

consortiumnews.com/2019/06/28/pow…

This article is an updated take on a piece published last year.

"Citing the aging Pinochet’s inability to stand trial, the UK in 2000 ultimately prevented him from being extradited to Spain where he would have faced prosecution for human rights abuses."

"At an early point in the proceedings, Pinochet’s lawyer, Clare Montgomery, made an argument in his defense that had nothing to do with age or poor health."

"Montgomery’s immunity argument was overturned by the House of Lords. But the extradition court ruled that the poor health of Pinochet, a friend of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, would prevent him from being sent to Spain."

"Montgomery reappeared in the Assange case to argue on behalf of a Swedish prosecutor’s right to seek a European arrest warrant for Assange. Garzón, the Spanish judge, who had requested Pinochet’s extradition, also reappears in Assange’s case. He now leads #Assange’s legal team."

Few elected officials have defended #Assange. #Pinochet, by contrast, had friends in high places. #Thatcher openly called for his release. Similar affection was also documented between Pinochet and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry #Kissinger.

"Pinochet rose to power following a U.S.-backed, violent coup by the Chilean army on Sept. 11, 1973, which ousted the country’s democratically-elected president, the socialist Salvador Allende. The coup has been called “one of the most brutal in modern Latin American history.”

"The #CIA funded operations in Chile with millions of U.S. tax dollars both before and after Allende’s election, the 1975 U.S. Senate Church Committee reported."

Although the Church Committee report found no evidence of the [CIA] directly funding the coup, the National Security Archive noted that some of Pinochet's officers were "agents or contacts of the CIA or US military."

archive.is/VOOBu

"The violence #Pinochet inflicted spilled over the borders of Chile. His orders for murder have been linked to the killing of an exiled Chilean dissident, Orlando Letelier, in a car bomb blast on U.S. soil. The attack also killed Ronni Moffitt, a U.S. citizen."

"More than 40,000 people, many only tangentially tied to dissidents, were “disappeared,” tortured or killed during Pinochet’s 17-year reign of terror."

"By contrast to these crimes and corruption, #Assange has published thousands of classified documents showing U.S. and other nations’ officials engaged in the very acts of crime and corruption."

"Yet it is far from certain that #Assange will receive the leniency from the British extradition process that Pinochet enjoyed."

Given the longstanding difficulties he has had accessing justice, it’s fair to say that the U.K. and the rest of the Western world are committing a slow-motion “enforced disappearance” of #Assange.