WikiLeaks Founder Ordered Freed as Court Rejects Appeal
is the headline on the story in the New York Times, but "Freed" is relative. He's on house arrest, or "mansion arrest" as his lawyer calls it.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Bail was granted on Tuesday after a friend of Mr. Assange’s offered to allow him to stay at a lavish country mansion in Suffolk, in eastern England, an hour from London. According to the bail conditions, Mr. Assange must spend every night at the mansion, Ellingham Hall, a 10-bedroom Georgian home on a 650-acre estate owned by Vaughan Smith, the wealthy founder of the Frontline journalists’ club in London.
-- snip --
Geoffrey Robertson, one of Britain’s most prominent lawyers, who is assisting Mr. Assange’s defense team, described it in court as less house arrest, more "mansion arrest." But Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, will also be electronically tagged to track his movements and must agree to curfews — from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Additionally, he will be stripped of his passport and will be required to present himself to the police every evening.
So unless he rotates among the ten bedrooms, Julian Assange will be sleeping in the same bed every night for weeks, or months, or maybe even years. (Former Chilean dictator Augustin Pinochet fought extradition from Britain to Spain from October 1998 to March 2000, a total of 503 days. He eventually won and was returned to Chile on questionable medical grounds. http://globalpolicy.org/... A British aristocrat fought extradition from Britain to the US on charges of smuggling marijuana for eight years. http://www.uk420.com/... )
Will it be oppressive for Julian Assange to have to live at a permanent address? I wouldn't feel oppressed under those conditions, but I never got used to a nomadic life. Perhaps more to the point, will Assange be able to resume running WikiLeaks? It sounds as though he will be able to have private visits with people, but I'd bet the CIA and/or British intelligence are already trying to bug Ellingham Hall. They may not be able to eavesdrop on his conversations, but they'll probably be able to keep track of who visits him.
It's appealing to imagine messengers from WikiLeaks trying to sneak undetected past the CIA's electronic barriers onto the 650-acre grounds of Ellingham Hall to take messages to Mr. Assange. The combination of espionage, secrecy, and all the trappings of luxury evokes the settings of James Bond movies. It's a shame the other main figure in this, Bradley Manning, is being held under conditions that are tantamount to torture, as Glenn Greenwald rightly points out. ( http://www.salon.com/... ) Both Manning and Assange are political prisoners, when you boil it down, but the tradition of jailing political prisoners in the lap of luxury seems to apply to only one of them.
This development could end up being good for WikiLeaks as an organization. The founder can give advice and general instructions, but he'll have to delegate the day-to-day operation to others. That sounds like good preparation for the day when WikiLeaks will have to continue without its founder, for whatever reason.