Mohamed Elmaazi writes 27/12/2019
Investigative journalist Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard have detailed extensive undisclosed links between the Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, her husband, her son and the British national security state.
Niki Konstantinidis, a barrister and supporter of Julian Assange, has filed a complaint with the Judicial Appointments and Conduct Ombudsman (“the Ombudsman”) against England’s top magistrate for alleged violations of conflict of interest rules in the case of the WikiLeaks publisher.
This is Konstantinidis’s second complaint on this issue, having filed her first one with the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO), on 18 November 2019, in which she alleged “serious undisclosed conflicts of interest of Chief Magistrate, Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot”. But after that complaint ‘vanished’ she lodged a further one with the Ombudsman on 27 December 2019.
Konstantinidis, who is qualified in Australia as a barrister and in northern Ireland as a solicitor, said she sought “to expose the dilapidated UK judicial system with its alleged safeguards”.
“[The complaint] is a way of raising the political consciousness amongst the public” Konstantinidis said “so that they understand the real context of the situation–i.e., that there is no hope of getting a fair hearing when big political interests are at stake”.
Konstantinidis explained to Sputnik that after the JACO initially registered her 18 November complaint, it disappeared. “I got an email [dated 6 December] as to the change of status and abracadabrante …complaint gone”, she said.
“I knew that my [original] complaint to the ICJO would hit a dead end”, she said, “but I didn’t think they would do it this way”.
Read full article in Sputnik