Julian Assange is the subject of an experiment in legalised brutality

In Franz Kafka’s classic dystopian novel, The Trial, Josef K., a hitherto anonymous bank cashier, is arrested for a crime he knows not what and thereafter prosecuted by a remote and impenetrable authority. As the story unfolds, K.’s repeated attempts to get to the bottom of his predicament meet with failure at the hands of a bureaucratic machine that is intent on crushing…