For some years the fur of what has been called the “bad wolf” has been tricolor: red, white and blue, like the flag of the Russian Federation.

John Mark Dougan replies from Siberia while transporting a small boat to Moscow by car: “it’s a kind of canoe for an acquaintance of mine: an oligarch.” If you ask who the tycoon is, he replies: “he is neither famous nor known, except in his sector.” Dougan says he loves what he has under his eyes at the moment: Vladivostock, which he will leave soon. The former American policeman speaks calmly from Russia, the country that granted him asylum when he escaped from the United States, escaping an arrest warrant and the handcuffs of FBI agents.

Dougan’s Story

Dougan’s fate has been bizarre and filled with an insane amount of out-of-the-ordinary details, which he swears to be all true. As for his own story, Dougan says of himself that he was born almost 50 years ago in Delaware and was raised “like a cowboy”, but, at the same time, he informs me that he is the son of an airplane pilot who until 1984 transported drugs to South America.

After poor grades in school, he joins the Marine at age 20. After four years, he leaves the corps and sits in front of a computer screen, becoming a computer programmer. Then in 2002 he puts on a uniform again and enlists as a sheriff’s officer in Palm Beach County, Florida. After seven years, in 2009, he decides to denounce some of his colleagues for fraud, abuse of power, violence against members of ethnic minorities arresting people on false charges. Dougan talks about it with his boss: Sheriff Ric Bradshaw – who doesn’t move a finger against them – then starts talking about it with Palm Beach Post journalists.

Dougan leaves the police and becomes a full-time administrator of Pbsotalk, a site where – anonymously – the county police could report without consequences colleagues involved in controversies, racism, corruption, cover-ups and scandals. When Dougan begins to collect sensitive information and secret documents from colleagues, he does so on August 24, 2015 under the pseudonym of “Bad Wolf”. He thus becomes the digital safe deposit box of photos and videos demonstrating excessive power and abuse by departmental officers, but he also becomes the owner of a mine of secrets. Among the policemen who decide to entrust him with files and information, there is Joe Recarey, the detective who will prosecute more than others all the crimes committed by the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Dougan says he met Detective Recarey in 2010: “I took those files, but I never looked at them. He knew that I would not give information, he trusted me, he trusted my silence and like other policemen, he entrusted them to me. On the Epstein case, all the journalists who approached me to interview me did not understand one thing: I was not part of the team that investigated the billionaire, it was Joseph Recarey, a policeman of the Palm Beach police, an agency that often collaborated with ours.”

Sheriff Bradshaw’s office where Dougan was employed, did not investigate Epstein, but was sometimes in charge of his surveillance, and, says Dougan, if you want to facilitate someone and allow them to violate house arrest, – to which the American tycoon who abused dozens of girls was sentenced at the time – you do it by choosing men who, at the right time, will look the other way.

Dougan’s Problems in Florida Intensify

While Dougan is still in America, sensitive information and audio records are leaked in which Florida cops admit of violating the law. The recordings begin to appear on the web and in the local press. American secret agencies blame an alleged non-existent Russian hacker for violating sensitive data. It was false says Dougan: “there wasn’t a Russian hacker, there wasn’t even a hacker”.

One thing Dougan forgets to mention on the phone, but the Daily Beast doesn’t forget to write, is that Dougan used a voice modulator to sound like a woman and flirt with the sheriff on the phone, in exchange for compromising information. He introduced himself as Jessica, a girl from New York. For the newspaper Dougan is not a digital prodigy, but only an expert on “camouflage and lies”.

Dougan’s Escape to Russia

The secret services begin to keep Dougan under observation when they identify him as the “bad wolf”. When 45 FBI agents break into his home to seize hard drives and computers, he begins a daring three-week escape: he takes trains and buses, even small planes, and wears blonde wigs. From Canada he reaches Russia which gives him asylum.

Dougan swears he did all this on his own and to a precise question, repeated three times, he replies for three times the same answer: “they checked my story, they granted asylum, I have no interaction with Russian officers, I don’t know anyone in the Russian government. “.

Dougan, for his meeting with Recarey, will end up in many international headlines when he briefly enters the sights of the British crown and MI6, London’s intelligence service. The Times newspaper speculated that Dougan could have provided the Kremlin men with documents on Prince Andrew’s sexual abuse, a file that the detective Recarey involved in the investigation of the tycoon could have provided the cop.

Dougan: Jeffrey Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself

MI6 has not come to any other conclusions, at least, it has not made them public. For Dougan it is obvious that Epstein did not commit suicide: “I believe that the American secret services were aware of his blackmails against influential men, politicians, members of the elite. Instead of stopping it, I believe they started using it for their own purposes. There’s no other reason Epstein wasn’t arrested earlier. I am not a conspiratorial fool, I just believe that the billionaire has committed enormous crimes, but the intelligence is covering more serious ones ”.

On the rest, Dougan has always been vague: interviewed by many reporters, he said that those documents – including those of detective Recarey – are in a two-byte digital safe of which he has made hidden copies, which remain very far from him and encrypted: “As far as I know the files on Epstein are on the server, they were entrusted to me by Recarey, but I didn’t look at them, I was just the repository of my colleagues’ stories”.

Recarey cannot deny or confirm: he died suddenly at the age of 50 “after a short illness”, the department said. If you ask what was in the files, Dougan replies: “I don’t know, I didn’t watch them.” If you ask again: “Did you receive them and have you ever looked at them?”, he answers: “Correct. Like those who work in the bank do not know the contents of the safety deposit boxes. I was a safe not only for him, but for many policemen ”.

Barred from America

“Bad wolf” in Russia, from a digital alias, has become a profession and the title of a book that has sold many copies especially in America, in which Dougan can no longer set foot. In the land of stars and stripes he left behind, he risks a sentence that would keep him, more or less, almost a century in prison: his estimate is 95 years for illegal wire-taping of law enforcement agencies, a federal crime .

https://youtu.be/g9Qkbc9dGN0

He keeps repeating that his new home, Russia, is beautiful: “I love nature and people, there are very few things I don’t like here”.

How much love Dougan has for Russia is repeated in his videos that sometimes end up on TV. Honored as a “computer genius” and a truth fighter by the government-supported channel RT, Dougan is the protagonist of a popular documentary that many have seen in the Russian Federation.

His version of the story he tells it in a hoarse voice many times, to anyone who asks to repeat it, perhaps out of the love he still has for the American First Amendment. It’s unclear who the villain in the story is, and you never remember that sometimes everyone is.

The Epstein case remains fulls of shadows, Sheriff Bradshaw remains in his post, tips keep coming at Pbso.

L'articolo John, Jessica and the “Bad Wolf” proviene da InsideOver.

There is no doubt that Julian Assange’s release of thousands of secret diplomatic cables sent shock waves through the upper echelons of power that continue to be felt almost 10 years down the line. With great support from the international media, he transformed WikiLeaks from a nondescript website to an important journalistic tool that exposed hidden injustices.

His revelation of human right violations, war crimes, corruption and tax dodging behaviour of the elites, enabled citizens to hold leaders to account and interrogate abuse of power. Assange saw this as the only means through which oppressive and corrupt governments could be disabled.

Nigel Bowles and James Hamilton in their book Transparency in politics and the Media: Accountability and Open Government, noted that Assange, through WikiLeaks, encouraged and gave a strong moral support to the act of whistle-blowing.

To the mainstream journalism and human rights activists, Assange’s revelations were for the common good since they deepened public understanding of the governing process, and also exposed the underhand of the state in human rights violation.

But despite WikiLeaks being a key resource for those who were interested in fighting for societal change and justice, it appears all those who benefitted from the revelations have deserted Assange in his hour of need. His suffering is mainly being investigated and highlighted by independent medics, and not members of the fourth estate as one would have expected.

Very few newspapers talk about his plight, and rarely will you hear human rights activists raising their voices to champion for his release. Even the few stories about his suffering that are highlighted in the press, do not attract much attention from the audiences, making one to conclude that Assange is on his own.

Just last week more than 60 British doctors wrote an open letter to the British Home Secretary expressing fear that that the WikiLeaks’s founder’s health is so bad that he could die in prison. The doctors based their fear on harrowing account of those who saw Assange when he appeared in court on 21 Oct and a recent report by the United Nation special rapporteur who warned that “continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life.”

Assange has been under detention for the last eight months following his forceful eviction from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he had been holed up since 2012. But even before his removal from the Embassy, doctors had begun to question the status of his mental and medical health.

One American doctor who had been conducting several medical and mental checks on him inside the Ecuadorian since 2017, had noted his deteriorating condition and raised the alarm. In a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and the Commissioner for Human for the European Council, said that prolonged and indefinite confinement had seriously affected Assange’s mental health.

“Mr Assange’s situation differs from a typical prisoner in a conventional prison, in fact his position is worse than a conventional prison in many respects. His confinement is indefinite and uncertain, which increases chronic stress and its myriad of chronic physical and serious psychological risks, including suicide. I believe the psychological, physical and social after-effects will be long-lasting and severe,” she wrote.

Two days after the letter was written, Assange was hounded out of the Ecuadorian Embassy and arrested by British police for jumping bail.

Belmarsh prison where Assange is currently being detained is a Category A prison which was once described as Britain’s Guantanamo Bay. It holds hardcore criminals and individuals considered to be of the greatest threat to the public, such as terrorists.

In 2007 the prison was under probe for its large number of suicide cases. A task force was immediately set up to identify and prevent causes of suicide after three inmates killed themselves within just one month.

Although conditions at Belmarsh are said to have improved, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons in his report covering 29 January to 9 February 2018, revealed that the conditions inside the prison “were claustrophobic, cramped and extremely uncomfortable,” adding that, “there is a failure to ensure adequate treatment of and/or conditions for prisoners.” Similar views had also been expressed by a journalist from The Independent who after being granted access to the prison wrote, “The area is desperately cramped and uncomfortably warm.”

Experts believe the situation inside the prison can affect psychological and mental health of an individual, leading to suicide, and according to Samaritans, prisoners are ten times more likely to commit suicide. From this, it is evident that Assange’s condition may become worse and needs a quick response.

But how easy is it for journalists or other interested parties to visit Assange in prison so that the state of his health can be fully understood? According to British Ministry of Justice, any request for “face to face visits from either the prisoner or journalist should be directed to the Governor by written application, explaining why the visit is necessary, its purposes and why it cannot be satisfied by other means.

Approval of a visit request by a journalist will normally be granted where the prisoner can confirm that the matter in question relates to an alleged miscarriage of justice and that the sole purpose of the visit is to allow him/her the opportunity to highlight an alleged miscarriage of justice in his/her own case” Assange’s case has good grounds to meet this criteria as he is still being kept in prison despite finishing his jail term. The only reason for this according to British authorities is that he may run away if freed.

Secondly according to the Ministry of Justice, a request for a visit can be granted “if there is sufficiently strong public interest in the issue sought to be raised during the visit and the assistance of that journalist is needed.” Of course, Assange is a public figure and the status of his health is a matter of great concern to members of the public who still admire him. Therefore a visit by a journalist can help ease some anxiety among those concerned.

The Ministry of Justice further adds that “In respect of either reason for a visit mentioned above, the Secretary of State must also be satisfied that the visit is the only suitable methods of communication. That the journalist intends a serious attempt to investigate or bring to public attention the prisoners case or the other issue with a sufficiently strong public interest raised by the prisoner.”

It is difficult to tell whether an attempt had already been made by members of the fourth state to request for permission to visit Assange. But it is also possible that a request was made but denied. One British journalist once said that she found it easier to visit a military prison in Vladimir Putin’s Russia than to gain access to a British jail. This calls for some persistence from members of the fourth estate to have Assange’s health status be known.

L'articolo The WikiLeaks WikiLoner: Why Julian Assange Feels Abandoned proviene da InsideOver.

Julian Assange mirrored a broken figure as he faced his destiny in court on Monday. Clean-shaven and wearing a blue suit, he clutched a handful of papers as he made his way into court. Upon entering, his supporters – which included former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone and journalist, John Pilger ­- jammed into the public gallery. Some raised their fists above their heads in an act of solidarity and Assange, in turn, returned the gesture to the crowd.

In May, he was charged by the US with colluding with US Army whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, to hack into the Pentagon computers and share secret information under the Espionage Act. Assange faces up to 175 years in prison if he is extradited to the US.

Assange mentally drained

Yet, the toll of his six-month-long detention at London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison was soon evident. His father, John Shipton, had claimed last month that Assange was kept in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours every day in conditions he called “sordid and hysterical”. Shipton said that when he visited his son, he was “a bit shaky, and “suffering from anxiety” and that “the intensity of his treatment has increased over the past year”.

Back in May, Assange was not well enough to appear via video link in court, and it is believed that he was placed in the prison hospital after a “dramatic” weight loss.

On Monday, the previously vivacious WikiLeaks founder stammered to say his name and date of birth in his latest extradition hearing. Fighting back tears, the 48-year-old complained that he was denied access to his computer whilst imprisoned, therefore he was not fully prepared.

Assange’s legal team asked for a delay in the proceedings to collect more evidence, stating that the extradition was “politically motivated” and a “war on whistleblowers”. But District Judge, Vanessa Baraitser denied their request and stated that his extradition case would commence on 25 February 2020. When she questioned Assange about whether he understood what was happening, he responded, “Not really. I can’t think properly.

“I don’t understand how this is equitable. This superpower had ten years to prepare for this case and I can’t access my writings. It’s very difficult where I am to do anything but these people have unlimited resources.

“They are saying journalists and whistleblowers are enemies of the people. They have unfair advantages dealing with documents. They [know] the interior of my life with my psychologist. They steal my children’s DNA. This is not equitable what is happening here.”

What could extradition mean?

Assange – who is originally from Australia – was forcibly removed and arrested in April at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had been living for almost seven years. Following sexual abuse allegations in Sweden, he had claimed asylum at the embassy, but the arrangement began to sore after shifting politics in Ecuador.

The US authorities had been trying to extradite Assange at around the same time in connection with computer hacking involving Chelsea Manning and later allegations that Assange had conspired with Russia in the 2016 election. Furthermore, WikiLeaks had published a myriad of controversial leaks over the years which implicated the US in various atrocities, including war crimes.

Assange’s staunch supporters have regarded him as a hero who sacrificed his well-being to deliver the truth to the public. Many of them argue that to punish him threatens the freedom of the press, and question what a conviction under the Espionage Act could mean for journalists who publish similar stories in the future.

The Guardian, who had worked with Assange and featured pieces around many WikiLeaks documents, argued that despite him not being innocent, his extradition could have serious implications and supported a softer alternative. The paper stated, “From first to last, the Assange case is a morally tangled web. He believes in publishing things that should not always be published – this has long been a difficult divide between the Guardian and him.

“But he has also shone a light on things that should never have been hidden. When he first entered the Ecuadorian embassy he was trying to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape and molestation. That was wrong. But those cases have now been closed. He still faces the English courts for skipping bail. If he leaves the embassy, and is arrested, he should answer for that, perhaps in ways that might result in deportation to his own country, Australia. Nothing about this is easy, least of all Mr. Assange himself. But when the call comes from Washington, it requires a firm and principled no. It would neither be safe nor right for the UK to extradite Mr. Assange to Mr. Trump’s America.”

L'articolo Is it Finally the End of the Road for Julian Assange? proviene da InsideOver.