Edward Snowden says Julian Assange ‘wont bend’ as the Australian faces a US extradition court appeal

An ex MI5 spy says Trump dossier author Christopher Steele was being treated differently to Julian Assange.

Protesters hold placards during a march calling for the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange who is on remand and fighting extradition to the US, in central London. Picture: AFP

One former British spy has claimed another spy, the ex-MI-6 agent and author of the Trump dossier, Christopher Steele, has enjoyed special First Amendment rights in the United States, saying it was “something denied to Julian Assange’’.

This comes as the former CIA computer analyst Edward Snowden who fled to Moscow after leaked highly classified documents, said of the US legal pursuit of Assange: “what we are witnessing is a murder’’.

Snowden was one of several activists, academics, politicians and Assange supporters, speaking via video link to a two and a half-hour “Belmarsh Tribunal”, a peoples’ court held in at Convocation Hall, Westminster, about the predicament facing Assange, and named after his current high security prison abode.

It was held just days before the Royal Courts of Justice in London will hear a US government appeal on Wednesday and Thursday seeking to extradite Assange to the United States to face espionage charges for releasing hundreds of thousands of classified US documents in 2010 and 2011.

Supporters also embarked on a march through central London to highlight that Assange was still being held in Belmarsh prison.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Snowden said “Everywhere we look, from Afghanistan to economics, from pandemic to pervasive surveillance, the obvious has been made unspeakable.’’

He said that speaking up would make people criminals like Assange because he was charged for “the transgression of choosing the wrong side”.

Snowden said that Assange “didn’t bend”, warning he will die before he does.

Annie Machon, who worked for the British domestic intelligence agency MI5 before going on the run in 1997 with her then partner David Shayler, because he wanted to expose wrongdoings in the spy agency, told the Belmarsh tribunal that Assange was being “persecuted’’ for trying to protect whistleblowers.

She said Assange was also not being accorded the same respect as more mainstream journalists.

Machon said that Steele, who created the 35 page dirty dossier on Donald Trump’s visit to Russia, later discredited, has been accorded US rights.

“He (Steele) has been accorded US rights, even though he is a UK citizen and resident in UK he can have first amendment rights under US law, yet this is specially denied to Assange if he is extradited to the US,’’ she said, adding “it is disgusting”.

Steele was granted the First Amendment rights when three Russians sued him for defamation.

Assange’s partner Stella Moris said of the US action: “This is just a naked political persecution” and highlighted a recent report of how the CIA had discussed kidnapping and even killing Assange when he was in the Ecuador embassy in London. “Julian is holding back a tide of authoritarianism, and if we win this, we can push back,” said Moris. “If he loses this, we all lose.”