Former diplomat Craig Murray's account — of the torture and kangaroo-courting of Julian Assange

22 October 2019

And you thought Bolsheviks and Maoists were evil

The Deep State caboodle (of so-called Western democracy) is essentially indistinguishable from a torturing tyranny.

Former British diplomat Craig Murray had the following to say about Julian Assange's recent appearance in extradition court:

I was deeply shaken while witnessing yesterday’s events in Westminster Magistrates Court.

Every decision was railroaded through over the scarcely heard arguments and objections of Assange’s legal team, by a magistrate who barely pretended to be listening.

Before I get on to the blatant lack of fair process, the first thing I must note was Julian’s condition.

I was badly shocked by just how much weight my friend has lost, by the speed his hair has receded and by the appearance of premature and vastly accelerated ageing. He has a pronounced limp I have never seen before. Since his arrest he has lost over 15 kg in weight.

But his physical appearance was not as shocking as his mental deterioration. When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both.

Until yesterday I had always been quietly sceptical of those who claimed that Julian’s treatment amounted to torture – even of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture [see that here] – and sceptical of those who suggested he may be subject to debilitating drug treatments.

But having attended the trials in Uzbekistan of several victims of extreme torture, and having worked with survivors from Sierra Leone and elsewhere, I can tell you that yesterday changed my mind entirely and Julian exhibited exactly the symptoms of a torture victim brought blinking into the light, particularly in terms of disorientation, confusion, and the real struggle to assert free will through the fog of learned helplessness.

I had been even more sceptical of those who claimed, as a senior member of his legal team did to me on Sunday night, that they were worried that Julian might not live to the end of the extradition process.

I now find myself not only believing it, but haunted by the thought.

Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of our times is being tortured to death by the state, before our eyes.

To see my friend, the most articulate man, the fastest thinker, I have ever known, reduced to that shambling and incoherent wreck, was unbearable.

The moral? — Western democracies' pretense at being conceptually separable from pillaging tyranny is often laughable

Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning's government-sponsored ordeals are immorally the same, as those generated by rabid communist and murderous Middle Eastern regimes.

A further take-away from Murray's account is its confirmation of Naiveté's complacence. Despite opportunities provided by trustworthy people to correct his lassitude, Murray only came to believe what those reliable sources had reported, when his own eyes saw the evidence clearly displayed.

Easily manipulated, sheep-like complacence is what keeps institutionalized immoral butchery in power.

Hannah Arendt's writings about evil's relationship to the everyday continue their pertinence.

PeteFree.com

Former diplomat Craig Murray's account — of the torture and kangaroo-courting of Julian Assange