Tuesday 21 May 2013
Jeremy Hammond faces life term for WikiLeaks and hacked Stratfor emails. A federal judge has refused to recuse herself from the closely watched trial of jailed computer hacker Jeremy Hammond, an alleged member of the group "Anonymous" charged with hacking into the computers of the private intelligence firm Stratfor and turning over some five million emails to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin.
“He’s known as the Electronic Robin Hood. He’s a 28-year-old man. He’s currently in federal prison here in New York. His name is Jeremy Hammond. In my view, Jeremy Hammond is a very important whistleblower and he should be a hero to many. Jeremy Hammond is the equivalent of an electronic Robin Hood if he did what the Government alleges. So he is really part of the attack that you’re seeing right now on what are called hacktivists. These are really political people, whom are obtaining Government and private documents and exposing the corruption, the venality, and the criminality of not just private companies but Governments as well.”
The Center for Constitutional Rights and myself are the lawyers in the United States for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has two very big sources of documents. One of them are the documents allegedly that Bradley Manning uploaded, which include of course the Iraq war logs, Afghan war logs, the videos, etc., and that’s Bradley Manning, allegedly. The others are the Stratfor documents, which is the private intelligence company, which are some five million documents, that again were uploaded to WikiLeaks. So, if we talk about our client, Julian Assange, two of the alleged sources are Jeremy Hammond, Anonymous and Bradley Manning. So we’re very concerned. WikiLeaks, I know, is very concerned that its sources get protected in all the support they can get.
So, as part of that, I have been monitoring and going to various hearings with Jeremy Hammond, and I went into the prison and I met Jeremy Hammond. And I was at his recent bail hearing in federal court, where even though he’s been in prison some nine months and needs to prepare for his upcoming criminal case on his alleged hack into the Stratfor emails, the judge, Judge Loretta Preska, denied him bail. It was a one-and-a-half-hour hearing. There were a number of supporters in the courtroom who came from all over the country, with Jeremy Hammond — "Free Jeremy Hammond" shirts on. And it was, in my view, a very hostile hearing to Jeremy Hammond.
Considering the locations of all of the supporters of Jeremy Hammond, we have started this project not only to increase mail to Jeremy but to show Jeremy that he has support from all over the world. Please join us in getting a postcard and sending it to Jeremy. Jeremy has expressed many times that he loves receiving letters and his lawyers have expressed to us the prison’s frustration with having to sort through all of his mail. So, lets make Jeremy very happy and piss off the prison by sending Jeremy a postcard from wherever you live.
Donations to his commissary fund are also appreciated.
This fund will help support whistleblower Jeremy Hammond while he serves his 10-year prison sentence.
Letter writing campaign / Mail to the Jail
AnonOps IRC channel #FreeAnons - Official website: FreeAnons.org