Julian Assange and Raymond A. Davis

Julian Assange and Raymond A. Davis

America wants them both – who should be released?
By Christopher King

25 February 2011

Christopher King considers the cases of two men the USA wants to extradite, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and CIA spy “Raymond A. David”, on remand in Pakistan for murder. He argues that the murky case of “Davis” underlines the need for whistleblowers like Assange.

The US desperately wants to extradite both Julian Assange and Raymond A. Davis but for different reasons.
Julian Assange
Julian Assange has not broken any laws. He has assisted democratic debate by transmitting material showing how the US terrorizes other countries and routinely murders people in course of its illegal wars. He acts to reveal corruption and government crime. President Obama asserts vaguely but with a demagogue’s conviction that Mr Assange “puts lives at risk” but has never put any evidence forward. Rather, Mr Assange’s work saves lives. He says he wants to reveal the truth and that is what he does. As the US Central Intelligence Agency’s motto goes, “...the truth shall make you free”. The fact is that the United States and the CIA hate truth.
“It is clear that the Swedish government is acting on behalf of the US government and Mr Assange will next be extradited to the US.”

American law has failed Mr Assange. The US government has cited no law that he has broken but wants him in prison nevertheless and has been torturing and offering plea-bargains to the whistleblower Bradley Manning, who leaked tens of thousands of diplomatic cables, to have him say that Mr Assange solicited the leaked cables.
Swedish law has failed Mr Assange. Sweden has issued an international arrest warrant against Mr Assange for patently false rape allegations – not even charges – that would not be crimes in any other European country even if the events on which they are based were true. It is clear that the Swedish government is acting on behalf of the US government and Mr Assange will next be extradited to the US.

British law has failed Mr Assange. He is being extradited to Sweden. Sweden has no case in British law and the whole country knows that Mr Assange is being persecuted by malicious women with whom he had enjoyed a poisoned sexual chalice, a self-promoting Swedish prosecutor and a government that will do anything for the US. The Swedish prosecutor merely wants to question Mr Assange – she says. She had the opportunity when Mr Assange was in Sweden, she could come to Britain to question him or she could question him by videophone. It’s all lies.

If the British legal system cannot prosecute Anthony Blair for enriching himself over the bodies of hundreds of British servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans, the least it could do would be to protect the man who revealed a small fraction of the reality of those events. British law is discredited. It is something now to be ashamed about as we are shamed by our politicians.

Raymond A. Davis
United States citizen Raymond A. Davis, who shot two Pakistanis in the back on a crowded street in Lahore, has diplomatic immunity, according to President Obama himself. Obama is trying both threats and bribes to get him released and insists on his immunity. Davis’s car contained two handguns, a large quantity of ammunition for his guns and other weapons as well as other military equipment. An American embassy vehicle associated with this incident crushed another man to death and sped away. Its two occupants have fled the country and the US embassy refuses to cooperate with Pakistani police enquiries.

The Pakistanis are holding Davis as a murder suspect and they are legally correct in doing so. President Obama is wrong. Raymond A. Davis has no diplomatic immunity because he is carrying a false passport and applied for a visa in a false name. The man who killed two Pakistanis and whose accomplices killed another is not Raymond A. Davis. US State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said so on 27 January. The barrister prosecuting the man who calls himself Davis told the Lahore High Court that no immunity obtained fraudulently is valid anywhere in the world.
You don’t believe it? If you view the video of Philip J. Crowley’s press briefing of 27 January you will see a room full of reporters and hear him tell them that the name being used in the media for this man is wrong. In the next briefing of 31 January (from point 46.00) he is asked to confirm Davis’s name and says that he is not at liberty to discuss it.

Now, here’s a really incredible thing. You can search the whole United States on Google to try to find a reference to Davis’s alias and false passport and you won’t find one. Try searching the New York Times and Washington Post. For some amazing reason not one of that roomful of reporters has bothered to publish the story – or get it published.

You could try the BBC website too and even the trusty Guardian and you will not find it. Well it’s in the Pakistani papers. The Guardian has revealed the amazing news that “Davis” is a CIA operative. No! Surely not! I was innocently indignant that the backward Pakistanis, ignorant of the fine nuances of international law, should wickedly persecute an upstanding diplomat, doubtless preoccupied with peace negotiations, caught unawares by criminals.

The man calling himself Raymond A. Davis isn’t a diplomat. He isn’t even a spy who can be quietly swapped for a Pakistani spy if the Americans should happen to have one. Spies blend in. That’s what spying is all about. Spies don’t drive around in cars filled with arms and military gear. That’s what terrorists do and once they kill people they are murderers as well.

You can see why we need whistleblowers and the Julian Assanges of this world. Not only are appalling government crimes being committed in secret, they are being covered up from the highest offices in the world and the mainstream media are being silenced. The conspiracy is bigger than you think – and I don’t care if you call me a conspiracy theorist. It’s so big we only snatch glimpses of it.

The Pakistanis should hold their nerve, try “Davis” for murder, which would be a slam-dunk case I would think (to borrow a phrase) and interrogate him. They’ll find out what the United States is really doing in their country behind the smokescreen of fine rhetoric that got Obama his job as a CIA front-man. They would do well to forget all the bribery of American aid and make alliances aimed at getting rid of all Americans on their soil. They don’t seem to have realized it yet, so let me be the first to tell Pakistan: You’re under invasion!

It’s too depressing to do more than mention the conspiracy that permits the United States to run NATO and essentially occupy Europe, with collusion from corrupt Europeans. I will return to it another time.

ENDS

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