RTSat, 13 Apr 2019 21:15 UTC
© Reuters/Russell Boyce /FileJulian Assange is being held at the Belmarsh Prison, London
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is being held at Belmarsh Prison, a
notorious jail in southeast London that's earned the moniker of 'Britain's Guantanamo Bay' as a holding facility for terrorists and other high-profile prisoners.
RT's Ruptly agency live-streamed footage from Belmarsh on Friday, after Assange was apparently taken there. Bloomberg reported the same information later, citing Assange's friend Vaughan Smith. Both Assange's lawyers and the UK authorities are yet to publicly confirm his whereabouts.
Belmarsh is located on the eastern outskirts of London, about 5 miles (8 km) east of Greenwich on the southern bank of the Thames River. The prison opened in 1991, and has been used to imprison high-profile inmates such as Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada and Salafist preacher Anjem Choudary - but also former Labour MP Denis MacShane, convicted of fraud, and former Conservative politician Baron Jeffrey Archer, convicted of perjury.
Belmarsh was also used as the holding facility for around 17 individuals detained under anti-terrorism laws since 2001. Some of them were held in solitary for 22 hours a day, "entombed in concrete" without charges for months, their attorneys told BBC in 2004.Assange spent almost seven years confined to Ecuador's embassy in the Knightsbridge district of London, having sought asylum over spurious charges in Sweden that he argued - correctly, as it turned out - were a pretext to get him extradited to the US over the 2010 publication of classified US military and diplomatic documents pertaining to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
After Ecuador revoked his asylum, Assange was carried out of the embassy by UK police on Thursday and jailed on the US extradition warrant.
Comment: Angel Fox blog provides more
information on Belmarsh. Known to its inmates as 'Hellmarsh', Assange has been housed with some of the most dangerous offenders in the UK.
When I found out where Assange was being kept prisoner, I decided to investigate the facility itself. I found the information very disturbing. One of the links was for a "A tour of the jail within a jail that houses Britain's most dangerous".
According to wikipedia seen here:
"In November 2009, an inspection report fromHer Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons criticised the "extremely high" amount of force used to control inmates at the prison.[5]The report also stated that an unusually high number of prisoners had reported being intimidated or victimised by staff at Belmarsh."
Why are they putting a man in jail for a simple bail breech in a top security prison? I find this very disturbing and unfair. As though Assange did not suffer enough during his 7 year stay at Ecuadorian's "House of Horrors" in the last year, they are placing him in "The Gitmo of England".
Here is a link to a youtube video titled "Inside Britain's Toughest Prison.
According to the Sun it is "Belmarsh prison: Home to terrorists, killers and rapists"
Just the title says more than any words can say. Belmarsh is also known for it's overcrowding and lack of guards.
According to Howard League for Prison Reform
Belmarsh is a Category A prison.
Category A: Category A prisons are high security prisons, holding those individuals considered the most threatening to the public should they escape. Category A prisons should not be overcrowded, given the high levels of security required.
I am still baffled as to why Assange has been placed in a prison full of prisoners who are considered a threat to the public. He is a journalist arrested for publishing war crime documents. Is this how they treat the press in England? Is this how they deal with free speech advocates? Apparently the UK government is terrified by Assange and what he represents.
We as a people need to be outraged they put a man only convicted of a bail breech in such a prison. It is like putting your mother in solitary confinement for scolding you.
Though Assange's health care issues may be treated here, I only pray they keep him out of the general violent population. He is not safe in this prison. If they treat him as they have many others, he will be intimidated and physically assaulted or worse.
Britain is nothing more than a tiny tool that the US is using to destroy a threat to their corruption. If he is treated like this for a bail breech, what will he endure under US jurisdiction? We must fight for no extradition to save Assange, our free speech and our human rights now.
karma, the next life, these maggots will suffer greatly!!