International
Assange will not yet be extradited to the United States when the London High Court postpones his decision
The High Court of London chose on Tuesday to postpone its final decision on the appeal of the case of the Australian journalist Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks portal, so he will not be extradited to the United States immediately.
Judges Victoria Sharp and Adam Johnson, who evaluated the parties’ arguments for several weeks, considered that an eventual appeal by Assange could partially prosper, so they offer the United States Government the opportunity to “offer guarantees” against those arguments.
According to the ruling, the court has given the U.S. Government three weeks to give satisfactory guarantees that Assange will be able to argue in his defense the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, relating to the protection of freedom of expression.
Guarantees will also be needed that the Australian will not be harmed in the trial because of his nationality, that he will be granted the same protections of the First Amendment as a U.S. citizen and that the death penalty will not be imposed.
If those guarantees are not given, then Assange will be granted authorization to appeal, but if they are offered, the parties will have the opportunity to present new observations at a hearing on May 20, in order to make a decision on the appeal.
However, the judges dismissed some of the grounds for the appeal, including Assange’s arguments that his case responds to his political opinions.
The magistrates had to evaluate the arguments presented by the parties at two court hearings last February in order to decide whether to support or revoke the ruling issued on June 6, 2023 by Judge Jonathan Swift.
That magistrate denied Assange the possibility of continuing to appeal in the United Kingdom last year and gave his approval to the delivery of Assange to the United States.
Assange’s extradition was signed in June 2022 by the then British Minister of the Interior Priti Patel.
The United States requests that Assange be extradited for 18 crimes of espionage and computer intrusion, after his explosive revelations from his portal, which between 2010 and 2011 revealed alleged U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to Assange’s defense, these crimes are punishable by 175 years in prison in the United States.
After the ruling was heard, the journalist’s wife, Stella Assange, said at the gates of the court, before a crowd of followers, that her husband is a “political prisoner.”
“He is a journalist and is persecuted because he exposed the true cost of war in human lives” and this case “is a sign to all of you that if you expose the interests that drive the war, they will come for you,” he added.
Assange was arrested for the first time in 2010 at the request of Sweden for a case that has been closed. In 2012 he took refuge at the Embassy of Ecuador in London, but was arrested in 2019 by the British Police, once that country withdrew his asylum status, and since then he has been in prison.
International
Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday the appointment of actors Sylvester Stallone (‘Rocky’) and Jon Voight (‘Midnight Cowboy’), as well as actor and director Mel Gibson (‘Braveheart’) as special ambassadors to the “very problematic” Hollywood.
“They will help me as special envoys to make Hollywood, which has lost many overseas businesses in the last four years, COME BACK BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER,” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The Republican lamented all the “problems” he claims Hollywood faces and created this role with the aim of improving the situation from a business perspective.
“These three talented men will be my eyes and ears. I will do whatever they suggest,” he said.
Stallone had previously described Trump as the second George Washington, the first U.S. president (1789–1797) and one of the nation’s founding fathers, during a dinner after his victory in the November presidential elections, where he served as the master of ceremonies.
Meanwhile, Gibson attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing her of having “the IQ of a fence.”
The Republican leader will be sworn in as president on January 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden.
International
Latin American and Caribbean diplomats voice concern over U.S. mass deportation plan
Diplomatic chiefs from ten Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed their “serious concern” over the announcement of a mass deportation of migrants, a measure they consider incompatible with human rights, according to a joint statement released this Friday.
The statement, which does not attribute the measure to any specific country, refers to the announcement made by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to carry out the largest foreign deportation operation in the history of the nation once he takes office next Monday. “The announcements of mass deportations are a serious cause for concern, especially due to their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of human rights and their failure to effectively address the structural causes of migration,” the statement said, released by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).
The signing countries—Brazil, Belize, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela (almost all migrant-sending nations)—also committed to “defend the human rights of all migrants.”
This includes “rejecting the criminalization of migrants at all stages of the migration cycle” and “protecting them as a priority from transnational organized crime that profits from migration,” the document adds.
International
Noboa once again entrusts the Vice President of Ecuador to the vice president he appointed by decree
The President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, returned this Thursday to delegate – for the second time – the Presidency to the Secretary of Public Administration and Cabinet of the Presidency Cynthia Gellibert, whom he himself appointed by decree vice president in charge, in the face of the open confrontation he maintains with the vice president, Verónica Abad.
As he did last week, Noboa again issued a decree in which he announces that he is absent from the Presidency from Thursday to Sunday, to make an electoral campaign in search of his re-election in the elections of February 9, and during that period of time it will be Gellibert who will be in charge of the head of the State.
This action of the president of Ecuador is a matter of evaluation by the ordinary and constitutional justice at the request of the vice president, Verónica Abad, who claims to assume the presidential functions during the full period of the electoral campaign, in which according to the Constitution the head of state must ask for leave for being a candidate for re-election.
In his decree, Noboa argues that, although the Constitution determines that the Vice Presidency must assume the head of State in the event of the absence of the president, this “is not limited to the elected vice-president, but to the person who to date is exercising the functions of the Vice Presidency.”
Before appointing Gellibert as vice president in charge by decree, Noboa sent Abad to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Turkey, after a judge annulled the five-month suspension that the same Government had imposed on him. Until now, the vice president remains in Ecuador to claim to be the one who temporarily assumes the Presidency.
The new period of Gellibert with presidential powers began at 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) this Thursday and is scheduled to end at 22:00 (03:00 GMT) next Sunday, time at which the debate between presidential candidates is expected to end where Noboa is summoned to participate.
After the debate, Noboa plans to travel to Washington to attend Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, according to the Ecuadorian Presidency.
After the first assignment of the Presidency to Gellibert, Abad denounced a “coup d’état” and urged the Organization of American States (OAS) to apply the Democratic Charter, considering that the constitutional order had been broken because it had not received the presidential powers, as contemplated in the Ecuadorian Constitution.
In addition, he filed a protection action with which he seeks that the Justice annul the decrees in which Noboa appointed Gellibert as vice president in charge and delegated the Presidency to him. A court admitted the appeal on Friday, but did not accept some precautionary measures that Abad also asked for to suspend those effects immediately.
Controversies like this will be part of the analysis and evaluation of the electoral observation mission (EOM) of the European Union (EU) for the Ecuadorian elections, as anticipated on Wednesday by its leader, Spanish MEP Gabriel Mato.
The confrontation between Noboa and Abad began in the electoral campaign for the second round of elections for the extraordinary elections of 2023, and was reflected when he assumed the charges, when in one of his first decisions, the president sent the vice president to Israel as ambassador, with the mission of seeking peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Abad has denounced Noboa for alleged political gender violence and has accused her of leading a harassment against her to force her to resign and thus avoid having to delegate the Presidency to her during the electoral campaign period, which runs from January 5 to February 6.
The titular vice president has also accused the Government of being behind the corruption investigation in the offices of the Vice Presidency that involves her son in a case where the Prosecutor’s Office also sought to indict Abad, but the National Assembly (Parliament) voted mostly against lifting the jurisdiction, although the ruling party voted in favor.
The general elections in Ecuador are called for Sunday, February 9 and, according to the polls published so far, Noboa and the candidate of the correismo Luisa González appear as prominent favorites to move on to the second round.
Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood
Latin American and Caribbean diplomats voice concern over U.S. mass deportation plan
Noboa once again entrusts the Vice President of Ecuador to the vice president he appointed by decree
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
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