Barraitser's 'compassion' towards Julian Assange a ploy to avoid judicial scrutiny of the United States' illegal war on journalism?

The following is from Assange vs the violence of imperial 'humanitarianism' (24/1/21) an Al JAzeera opinion piece:

In the United Kingdom court decision sparing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from extradition to the United States (for now, pending appeal), the intimately symbiotic relationship between humanitarianism and violence was evident once again.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that it would be “oppressive” to extradite Assange – but not because of the injustice of the US government’s campaign of retribution against him for exposing its massacres, misrepresentations and manipulations, but rather due to the fragility of Assange’s mental health.

The same “justice” system that has eviscerated Assange’s mental wellbeing with prolonged psychological torture, in the assessment of the UN special rapporteur on torture, now poses as his hope for salvation.

Like a large-scale governmental version of Munchausen by proxy, the state mystifies its own role in producing the pathology in question, then attempts to extract moral capital from exhibiting a modicum of care. Structural violence creates the need for humanitarianism, which mitigates some of the excesses of violence, ensuring the flourishing of both violence and humanitarianism.

Judge Baraitser not only declined to find that the US’s prosecution of Assange is for political “offences” – and therefore barred by the UK-US Extradition Treaty – but held that there is no judicially enforceable barrier against political extraditions at all: “the defence has not established that the UK-US treaty confers rights on Mr Assange which are enforceable in this court” since the treaty is “not yet incorporated into domestic law”. Perversely, according to this judgement, Assange (and other extradition targets) are subject to the treaty, but precluded from invoking its protections.

The fact that Assange revealed damning truths about state atrocities that would otherwise have remained concealed was also dismissed as irrelevant. “The defence have not established that the principle of the ‘right to truth’ is a legal rule that is recognised in either international law or domestic law.”

…