Assange and the European Court of Human Rights was, in John Kiriakou’s 2022 assessment, the last route left to Julian Assange — and the one he had, on reflection, been too hopeful about.
Where the case stood
Kiriakou described the extradition as having reached the political stage. It “went to the home secretary uh yesterday uh preeti patel uh she is likely going to sign it.” The remaining domestic step he treated as a formality: “julian’s attorneys have 14 days to appeal to the uk supreme court they probably will but all it’s going to do is delay things for 14 days.”[1][2]
The Strasbourg argument
He then set out what he had previously offered as grounds for hope, prefacing it with a self-criticism: “the only other thing and i i’ve like i said the other night at the event i’ve been accused of being overly optimistic and i realize now that i i was.”[2]
The argument itself rested on precedent. “julian can still apply to the european court of human rights he can apply for relief uh there are three count them three precedents where the european court of human rights refused to allow the uk to extradite to the u.s people who had um mental illnesses.”[2]
Assange’s own position fitted the line of cases: “now julian is mildly autistic and he suffers from chronic depression and anxiety other prisoners were not extradited because they had the same maladies.”[3]
What had persuaded the court in those cases was American prison conditions: “the european court of human rights believed that the us practice of solitary confinement was enough to push them to attempt suicide.”[3]
The trap
The defect Kiriakou identified was not in the argument but in its timing. “the problem that julian has now is that the uk government said he’s perfectly free to appeal to the european court of human rights that doesn’t mean that we have to put the brakes on the extradition while his appeal is being heard so that defeats the whole purpose of the appeal.”[3][4]
A remedy against extradition that does not suspend the extradition is, on Kiriakou’s reading, no remedy at all — leaving the case to proceed to the trial he describes in the jury consultant’s advice and sealing the courtroom.[4][5]