Rights activist Julian Heicklen flees US, takes refuge in Israel
The Libertarian News Examiner has confirmed that longtime libertarian rights activist Julian Heicklen fled the United States on May 22 for Israel where he was granted political asylum and Israeli citizenship.
Responding to an inquiry from the Libertarian News Examiner, Heicklen said, “I decided to leave the US on January 1, 2012, when Obama signed the NDAA of 2012, which gave him the authority to arrest and detain indefinitely any person without charges or a trial.”
Heicklen informed his supporters of his action in an email titled “For Immediate Release” dated May 23.
“I have no plans to return to the US as long as Hitler is in the White House,” Heicklen told the Libertarian News Examiner. “Even if Obama gets defeated, Romney has endorsed the same program, so a different Hitler will be in the White House.”
Since Heicklen is well known for his droll humor and sardonic turn of phrase some of his followers were unsure whether to take him seriously or not.
However, his original message went on to recount the numerous abuses he suffered at the hands of American authorities over the years for doing nothing more than peacefully distributing Fully Informed Jury Association pamphlets outside of courthouses around the country in accordance with what he saw as his Constitutional right to do so unmolested.
His chronicle of harassments, arrests, indictments, trials, and subjection to painful and unauthorized medical abuses which Heicklen described as "kidnapping" and “torture” lent credence to the seriousness of his announcement of self-imposed political exile.
His full statement can be read at the Tyranny Fighters website, and the Libertarian News Examiner has documented much of his legal and personal ordeals in over 30 articles since 2009. Recent articles are listed below.
Asked whether he would be back to fight on against injustice or whether he would be staying in Israel permanently, Heicklen told the Libertarian News Examiner, “I am now in Israel as a citizen of Israel.” But then he added, “I also kept my US citizenship.”
Heicklen concluded, “I fear that the country we knew and loved has vanished from the earth.”
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