Another Take: The trial of Julian Assange
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 29 June 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every Saturday, we revisit a story from the archives. This originally aired on January 26, 2022. None of the dates or references from that time have been changed.
Julian Assange has waged a long fight against extradition from the UK to the US, and after years, a final decision is imminent. But when UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer was asked to look into his case in 2018, he found himself surprisingly uninterested. One allegation after another had come to cloud the narrative of Assange, liberator of state secrets. But Melzer has since investigated them all – and he discovered that the level of deception is staggering.
In this episode:
Nils Melzer, (@NilsMelzner) author of “The Trial of Julian Assange”
Episode credits:
This episode was updated by Sonia Bhagat with Tamara Khandaker.
The original production team was Alexandra Locke, Amy Walters, Negin Owliaei, Priyanka Tilve, Ruby Zaman, Ney Alvarez, Tom Fenton, Stacey Samuel, and Malika Bilal.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik. Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer.
Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hi, it's Sonia Bagat, producer at the take, with another take, where we revisit episodes from the past. |
| 0:19.0 | This week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reunited with his family after more than five years of detention in the United Kingdom. |
| 0:30.1 | Assange landed in his home country of Australia under a plea deal with the United States, ending a 14-year legal battle. |
| 0:39.9 | But why was he arrested in the first place? |
| 0:43.2 | Niels Melzer, the former UN special rapporteur on torture, answered that question for the |
| 0:48.6 | take two years back. |
| 0:50.9 | The episode originally aired on January 26, 2022. |
| 0:56.3 | None of the dates or references have been changed. |
| 1:07.5 | Assange? No, I certainly would not be manipulated by this guy. After all, I had more important things to do. I had to take care of real torture victims. |
| 1:20.5 | Nils Melzer is the UN special repertoire on torture. But when he was asked to take on the case of Julian Assange back in 2018, he found himself |
| 1:30.3 | hit with what he called almost reflexive feelings of rejection. I immediately had this image |
| 1:37.4 | popping up of, oh, isn't this this guy with the white hair and the black leather jacket, |
| 1:46.6 | this coward that's hiding in an embassy. |
| 1:50.1 | For Melser back then, it was hard to imagine that Assange's years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London |
| 1:53.1 | could merit UN involvement. |
| 1:56.2 | Like many of us in the public, |
| 1:58.5 | he had lost the thread of Assange |
| 2:00.6 | and his organization WikiLeaks, |
| 2:02.9 | the publisher of the biggest military leak in U.S. history. But the subjects of those leaks, |
| 2:09.7 | governments like the U.S. and the U.K., didn't forget Assange. And they've spent over a decade |
| 2:16.4 | pursuing him. For now, Assange is meant to be |
... |
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