The Official Australian Website in Support of Julian Assange
Articles relating to Torture of any kind including psychological torture being the most commonly referenced in regard to Julian Assange’s case
On the 6th June 2020, Don’t Extradite Assange Campaign posted this video on YouTube Dr. Lissa Johnson – Psychologist Dr. Derek Summerfield – Senior Lecturer at London’s Institute of Psychiatry Dr. Bob Gill – NHS Dotor
On the 6th June 2020, Don’t Extradite Assange Campaign posted this video on YouTube
Dr. Lissa Johnson – Psychologist
Dr. Derek Summerfield – Senior Lecturer at London’s Institute of Psychiatry
Dr. Bob Gill – NHS Dotor
On the 9th May 2020, Nils Melzer tweets He showed clear signs of prolonged psychological #Torture. First I was shocked that mature democracies could produce such an accident. Then I found out it was no accident. Now, I am scared to find out about our democracies… Coverage in RT News
On the 6th May 2020 Chris Sweeney wrote this article The British government allowed IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands to starve to death in 1981. It is showing the same lack of judgment today on what is right and wrong, by callously letting another political detainee die needlessly. Insanity is often defined as doing the same … Continue reading “Bobby Sands died in jail 39 years ago. Julian Assange is his modern equivalent and will one day also be hailed as a martyr”
On the 6th May 2020 Chris Sweeney wrote this article
The British government allowed IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands to starve to death in 1981. It is showing the same lack of judgment today on what is right and wrong, by callously letting another political detainee die needlessly.
Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. On that charge, Britain is guilty.
39 years ago, on May 5, 1981, Bobby Sands died after refusing food for 66 days at Her Majesty’s Prison Maze in Northern Ireland – even a visit from Pope John Paul II’s personal envoy couldn’t persuade him to desist.
Sands was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and had been sentenced to 14 years for possession of a gun, having been arrested near the scene of an IRA bombing.
During his time in jail, Sands campaigned, along with other IRA members, to have their special category status restored. It had been removed by the British government, who had decided to no longer view them as political prisoners. They were categorised as common criminals.
The IRA detainees sought demands such as the right to wear their own clothes, the right not to do prison work, the right to mix freely and the right to one visit per week. A hunger strike was started, but ended after 53 days when one prisoner slipped into a coma.
But with no sign of their political designation being returned, Sands began another strike, taking only taking water and salt. After a few weeks he weighed just 95 pounds, down from his normal 155.
In the midst of this, he was elected in absentia to the British Parliament as the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
The following month, May 1981, he died aged 27. The hunger strike continued, with a further nine men perishing before it ended in October 1981.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher then agreed to their demands, but refused to recognise them as political prisoners.
Sands became – and still is – a folk hero to millions. It is estimated that around 150,000 people lined the streets for his funeral. There are streets named after him in Nantes, New York and Paris.
In Tehran, Winston Churchill Boulevard – one of the roads on which the British embassy lies – was renamed in his honour.
Sadly, it appears as if Britain has learned nothing from its brutal and oppressive handling of the IRA, as it’s set to create another Bobby Sands.
Julian Assange is currently in extremely poor health, according to numerous reports, with his partner fearing he could die imminently.
He is being held in Belmarsh Prison, which has already suffered a Covid-19 death – and by definition, the enclosed nature of a jail makes it the optimum breeding ground for the spread of a pandemic.
But Britain’s arrogant and dismissive government refuses to get off its high horse.
They are holding a man against his will, who has committed no crime. He is only being held at the request of the US government, which has charged him with espionage and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, better known as hacking.
The truth is, they are embarrassed and furious that the details of their murky dealings in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen were laid bare for the world to see.
At one point, Assange dumped a quarter of million American diplomatic cables online – making every news outlet on the planet aware of the type of dubious conduct the US military and its operatives had been indulging in.
How does this equate to being locked up on the same terms as killers, paedophiles and rapists?
If we close our eyes and change the names of those involved, we could be back in 1981.
Britain’s establishment has failed to learn the lessons of criminalising those with opposing political views who make life uncomfortable for them.
It’s an atrocious state of affairs for a democracy like Britain to not have evolved and progressed.
Bobby Sands was no ordinary criminal – and neither is Julian Assange.
The irony is that the spineless politicians who took both of their freedoms have more to answer for.
In Sands’ case, it was the occupation of another country, and discriminating between people based on religion – Catholic or Protestant.
In Assange’s case, it’s the money-hungry excuses for public servants who sell British arms to countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain to use in illegal foreign wars or against their own people, on top of the litany of unethical military incursions of our own.
Britain has now claimed second spot in the global Covid-19 death toll, and there’s no sign of the line of corpses stopping any time soon.
Our prime minister and his cabinet are the ones who should be looking at the inside of a cell, because of the criminal way they’ve handled Britain’s Covid-19 response.
Healthcare workers are being forced to use swimming goggles and paper aprons as protection, and the emergency 4,000-bed hospital (which has treated 54 patients in total) in London is closing due to there not being enough staff available to operate it.
Then there’s the botched order of 17.5 million faulty antibody tests, and the foolish plan to attempt to achieve herd immunity – before panicking and deciding to backtrack and go into lockdown, weeks too late to prevent so many deaths.
The litany of heinous misdemeanours is lengthy.
But what’s also clear is how our political leaders bend with the wind; they have no backbone or spine.
How many of the British government have risen up above the parapet and called out what’s going on? A shambles. A travesty. A complete failure.
None of them.
Sands and Assange were, and are, composed of better stuff. They stood up for something of importance; they drew a line and refused to back down due to the conviction of their beliefs. Britain should stop demonising them, and instead copy them.
Sands famously said: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” Thirty-nine years later, we’re still waiting to hear it.
Read original article and more on RT News
On the 12th March Dr Lissa Johnson writes Australian journalist Julian Assange remains locked up in a UK prison facing no British charges, having endured years of arbitrary detention and psychological torture. His extradition hearing to the United States is more of the same, writes psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson. During Senate Estimates Hearings in the Australian Federal … Continue reading “The Julian Assange Show Trial, And The Not-So-Subtle Art Of Normalising Torture”
On the 12th March Dr Lissa Johnson writes
Australian journalist Julian Assange remains locked up in a UK prison facing no British charges, having endured years of arbitrary detention and psychological torture. His extradition hearing to the United States is more of the same, writes psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson.
During Senate Estimates Hearings in the Australian Federal Parliament earlier this month, The Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Marise Payne and her Foreign Affairs colleagues were questioned about the treatment of Julian Assange during his recent extradition hearing in London.
The Minister and her two advisors explained to Tasmanian Senator Peter Whish-Wilson that Julian Assange’s treatment in London was “no different” than that of other UK prisoners.
There was nothing to worry about, she assured her parliamentary colleagues.
”Standard” was the word repeatedly used, as though it had been decided well in advance. Routine, in other words. Normal.
What the minster and her colleagues failed to explain, however, is that Julian Assange’s treatment at the hands of Belmarsh prison authorities and Belmarsh Magistrates Court is only “standard” and normal for prisoners charged with terrorism and other violent offences.
What is not “standard” or normal is for Walkley Award-winning Australian journalists to be prosecuted as spies by the United States, and subjected to maximum security conditions as a result.
What is not “standard” is for someone charged with nothing whatsoever under United Kingdom law to be treated exactly like someone charged with terrorism.
It is not standard, nor remotely normal, for journalists with no criminal history, no custodial sentence, and no history or risk of violence to be detained under the harshest and most punitive conditions that UK law enforcement has to offer.
Nor is it standard for publishers to be held behind bullet-proof glass while on trial for their journalism, thereby preventing them from sitting with their lawyers, as if their journalistic skills might break loose and terrorise the court.
In fact, all of this is so far from normal that the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) issued a statement this week joining “the widespread concern over the ill-treatment of Mr Assange” during his extradition hearing, describing it as “shocking and excessive.” The Institute added that Julian Assange’s treatment was “reminiscent of the Abu Graib Prison Scandal”, adding that “with this extradition trial we are witnessing the serious undermining of due process and the rule of law.”
So much for “usual”, fine and normal.
…
Read whole article in the New Mattilda
On 16th June 2019, posted to Catherine Brown’s blog Two events entitled ‘Imperialism on Trial – Free Julian Assange’ were held at the Crypt on the Green and St James’s Church, Clerkenwell, London, on Tuesday June 11th, and Wednesday June 12th, 2019, 7-10 pm, organised by Greg Sharkey. Summary of Proceedings with presentations by: Chris … Continue reading “The Character Assassination of Julian Assange”
On 16th June 2019, posted to Catherine Brown’s blog
Two events entitled ‘Imperialism on Trial – Free Julian Assange’ were held at the Crypt on the Green and St James’s Church, Clerkenwell, London, on Tuesday June 11th, and Wednesday June 12th, 2019, 7-10 pm, organised by Greg Sharkey.
Summary of Proceedings
with presentations by:
Chris Hedges (Pulitzer Prize Winner and Presbyterian Minister)
Fidel Navaez (Former Senior Diplomat at the Ecuadorian Embassy)
Vivienne Westwood (Fashion Designer and Campaigner)
Lauri Love (Former US Extradition Defendant)
Tommy McKearney (Former Irish Hunger Striker)
John Wight (Journalist)
Ahmed Kaballo (Journalist at Press TV)
George Galloway (Politician and Campaigner)
Ogmundur Jonasson (Former Icelandic Interior Minister)
Patrick Henningsen (Journalist at 21st Century Wire)
Clare Daly (Irish TD & MEP)
Alexander Mercouris (Journalist at The Duran)
Neil Clark (Journalist)
Catherine Brown (English literature academic)
Catherine Brown’s speech
I want to talk about character assassination. Of course, people’s characters – their reputations – are harder to kill than their bodies. And, unlike with bodies, it is rarely done by just one or two assassins. Often many people collaborate in trying to kill a reputation by a thousand cuts, or at least, to weaken it to the point where people who do not know what has gone on will no longer want defend the victim from any other kind of injustice.
Character assassination consists of ad hominem and public attacks in bad faith, with the aim of discrediting someone, and therefore depriving them of sympathy, perhaps liberty, perhaps life. Character assassination can smooth the path to physical assassination, or it can be used in retrospect to justify it. It can harm its subjects directly as well as indirectly, since they may have nervous breakdowns because of it.
Character attacks have been made on Julian Assange more or less constantly since at least 2010, when Wikileaks released the Chelsea Manning evidence of US war crimes, but particularly around the time of the issue of the Swedish arrest warrant in relation to rape allegations; at the time of Assange’s entry to the Ecuadorian Embassy; at the time of his arrest this April; after the first US extradition warrant regarding conspiracy with Chelsea Manning; after the Swedish prosecutor announced that she was reopening her investigations; after the second US extradition warrant on indictments under the Espionage Act; and after the Swedish court’s decision not to issue an arrest warrant.
Character assassination is crucially not the same as the death of a reputation through as it were suicide – damage people do to their characters by their own actions. Wikileaks, for example, does not, through its leaks, assassinate characters. What it does is reveal evidence that certain powerful people’s characters are in a critical condition. It does not even editorialise to the effect that these people are ill. It, as it were, leaks their moral medical records, which, given the power that those people have, it is emphatically in the public interest to do.
It can be used against individuals, or against groups – like the blood libel against European Jews from the Middle Ages onwards. Individuals can be attacked to discredit the movement which they represent, as the rumour was spread by the British that Gandhi slept with children in order to undermine the Indian Independence movement, or indeed like Assange, whose damaged reputation extends in the first place to Wikileaks, and in the second to whistleblowers and their publishers in general.
Its effects are often permanent. Even if someone’s reputation doesn’t die it may, as it were, spend the rest of its life in a wheelchair, as people often remember accusations more vividly and permanently than any eventual exoneration. It can last for centuries.
What do we remember about Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell? That he had an affair with Kitty O’Shea. And he did. And opinions of the badness of adultery vary between people. But it was weaponised by the opponents of Home Rule to damage that cause, and even today, the weapon that was used is remembered more clearly than the cause that was attacked.
It’s been going on for centuries. Some of the earliest Christian biographers of the Prophet Mohammed did it. Some Puritans did it in their lurid charges of sexual misconduct against Popes. Henry VIII’s courtiers did it in alleging that Anne Boleyn had committed incest with her brother. The French revolutionaries in their charge that Marie Antoinette had committed incest with her son. Alfred Dreyfus was accused of having many mistresses. Sex is so often an element.
And, as when you use your body to protect someone who is being physically attacked, you risk getting hurt, so those who defend Assange can find their characters being attacked – as Pamela Anderson and others have discovered. Indeed, we as Assange supporters have all been described by a Guardian journalist as, I quote, ‘cunt soup babbling on about press freedom’. And a Sunday Times journalist claimed that ‘many of those who still support Assange are hard-right nationalists’.
So what are the weapons and techniques of this process?
Fabrications, insinuations, rumours, ridicule, misleading exaggeration.
Use of accusations – whether true, half-true, or false – to distract; to taint by association; or to create uncertainty.
When any of the accusations are true, as with Parnell and Dreyfus, they are often not connected to the cause that is the ultimate subject of attack – which is why private life is so often used in campaigns that are politically-motivated.
Character attackers invariably appeal to good principles – to the principle that killing Christian children to use their blood in making Passover mazzos is not a good thing. That indulging anti-Semitism is not a good thing. That using any degree of coercion in a sexual situation is not acceptable.
But good impulses, misdirected, can be a powerful force for ill.
Partly because innocent individuals get caught up in a general charge of guilt.
The fact that anti-Semitism and sexual abuse are rife in this world not does not mean that any given person accused of them is therefore guilty.
And partly because the fact that these things are rife makes it all the more important not to taint the anti-anti-Semitic cause, or the MeToo movement, by the terrible association of a witch hunt. In the name of justice, you have to proceed justly.
Now character attacks are often done horizontally – for example between competing candidates in an election.
But in the case of Assange since he took asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy, the attacks have been vertical – from the more to the less powerful. It’s been done by the British government, in its urging of Sweden not to drop its case against Assange when in 2013 it wanted to do so for the second time. When it discouraged the Swedes from interviewing Assange at the embassy. Or when it recently urged Sweden to apply for Assange’s extradition.
Many journalists have been involved.
They’ve engaged in misrepresentation by omission
By not telling the public those facts in the Swedish case that strongly indicate that it was being politically manipulated
That don’t mention the fact that the investigation was at first closed and Assange told he was free to leave Sweden
That it is not the case that someone has to be physically arrested in order to be charged under Swedish law
That Assange has never been charged by Sweden
Or that Sweden has a history of cooperation in rendition to the US, which led Assange to fear rendition ifhe returned to Sweden to meet allegations which seemed to have been revived in political circumstances – as his lawyer unsuccessfully argued in his defence at Southwark Crown court a few weeks ago.
Some of the accusations are rhetorically worded
As in the latest US indictment, which is repetitiously and portentously phrased and strung out to a length that itself asserts guilt.
Accusations have been made with no or little evidence
That he colluded with Russia
Is anti-Semitic
Is careless in his redaction and about US lives; though in the trial of Manning it was admitted that there was no evidence that his revelations had caused death or injury.
That he spied on Ecuador when in its embassy, as a representative of the new government asserted
That he is pro-Trump and anti-Clinton
That he didn’t change his clothes, and ate with his hands
Did not look after his cat
And smeared excrement on the embassy walls. Of the last if there were footage, as we are assured he was constantly surveilled, it has not been released.
And these things are used to ridicule him
As in the ugly descriptions of him as gibbering and gesticulating as he was removed from the Embassy, and countless cartoons and jokes on this theme.
As a journalist put it recently in what sounds like an analysis of the character assassination, but is in fact participating in it:
‘Assange was once seen as a quintessential left-wing figure, the Robin Hood of the information age; now he’s a Trump-supporting goblin who smears his own poop on walls. This makes it, shall we say, less urgent to defend him’ [Sady Doyle, Medium Politics, 16.5.19]
Why would you, in fact, give up an evening such as this one to listen to defences of an excrement-smearing cat-abusing Trump-and-Putin-loving life-endangering anti-Semitic narcissist who gibbers?
Well, there’s a clear answer.
If Assange were all of those things, I hope we would still be here to oppose his extradition to a country where he is at risk of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment – such as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture found Chelsea Manning to have undergone, and such as the Rapporteur has also found Assange to have undergone in his time in the embassy.
That would only be in accordance with the law, the Human Rights Act, which forbids putting people at risk of torture or the death penalty.
Many of you will remember the sixteen months that Augusto Pinochet spent under house arrest in London between October 1998 and March 2000.
If he had risked extradition to somewhere where he faced torture and an unfair trial, I hope that I would also have taken action to oppose it.
But it’s interesting to consider the parallels and differences.
If you accept Assange’s argument, as I and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture do, that his stay at the Ecuadorian Embassy was involuntary, then both men were detained against their will.
Both feared extradition from onecountry that wasn’t their own to another.
It was reported of both that they were suffering from ill health.
UK politicians got involved in both their legal cases.
But in Pinochet’s case there was overwhelming evidencein the public domain for many of the charges that judge Balthazar Garcon of Spain brought against him, which were for crimes on a far greater magnitude than the worst that has been alleged against Assange by anyone.
In the UK press Pinochet was not the target of ridicule, nor was his behaviour in captivity the subject of speculation or rumour.
Pinochet faced extradition to a country where the maximum penalty that he might have faced would have been imprisonment, which was a signatory of the European Convention of Human Rights, and which had no reputation for the ill treatment of its prisoners at that time.
A former UK Prime Minister, his personal friend, argued publicly against Pinochet’s extradition. The House of Lords ruled otherwise, but the Home Secretary intervened and said that on medical grounds he should be returned to his country, and not stand trial in Spain.
There has, to say the least, been no such merciful intervention in Assange’s case.
In these two cases we see the differences between one in which character assassination did not take place, and one in which it did.
In both cases, Britain was found to be on the wrong side of international law, and was criticised by the UN for that.
And of course, what Assange definitely did – as opposed to what he might have done – was to reveal precisely the kinds of crimes for which Pinochet would have been tried.
But the character attacks don’t just render Assange vulnerable. They deflect attention from his revelations onto him.
It is of course easier for the human mind to focus on one human story than the fate of anonymous masses. By Assange and his highly-filmable life story, rather than the anonymous Iraqis killed by a helicopter attack in Baghdad.
Are we guilty of doing the same? And with Manning, and with Snowden? Of focusing on the filmable hero or, if you like the anti-hero, rather than the greater narrative that they revealed?
Well, I do think it’s something we have to keep in mind.
But I also think we’re justified in defending a single human being who is currently vulnerable to mistreatment and injustice in this country – though of course we should similarly defend anyone similarly placed.
We are also defending a principle, and arguing against the setting of a precedent that would be dangerous to journalistic freedom
Single people can focus a cause, in a way that helps that cause, as the case of Nelson Mandela so well demonstrates. And once he was freed, so were thousands of others.
And in this case the two injustices – the one that Assange revealed, and the one that he is victim of – are of a piece.
The international overreach of US law in the latest indictment is the counterpart to the overreach of the US military that Assange exposed.
The journalists who were until recently hostile to Assange, but who oppose the latest extradition request, are too late – they can’t undo the damage they have done. Given that the current scenario was a live possibility that Assange himself had predicted, it was at the very least reckless for them to undermine his reputation as they did.
But the worst hasn’t happened, and I pray that it won’t. As for character assassination lasting for centuries – it isn’t always like that. Consider how we remember Dreyfus – as the man who didn’t spy for Germany, but who was wrongly accused of it, on the basis simply that he was rich, had affairs, and was Jewish – all of which was in his case true but irrelevant.
I hope that history will remember Assange first for the good he did, and as a distant second as a man who faced a campaign of character assassination which failed. We are doing all that we can to ensure that it does not succeed.
On the 12th April, Jérôme Duval translates an interview with Eva Joly, French Magistrate, presidential candidate and retired member of the European Parliament. A former magistrate, Eva Joly made a name for herself during her career by investigating political and financial cases such as the Elf affair, which led to some thirty convictions, including that … Continue reading “Eva Joly: If Julian Assange is extradited, it’s the end of the rule of law in the West”
On the 12th April, Jérôme Duval translates an interview with Eva Joly, French Magistrate, presidential candidate and retired member of the European Parliament.
A former magistrate, Eva Joly made a name for herself during her career by investigating political and financial cases such as the Elf affair, which led to some thirty convictions, including that of Loïk Le Floch-Prigent. She was an MEP for Europe Ecology-The Greens between 2009 and 2019 and is now a lawyer at the Paris bar.
Eva Joly, you have known Julian Assange for a long time, when you worked in Iceland with this young computer scientist on the project to transform Iceland into a paradise for journalism, for the protection of information. During an evening of solidarity with the whistleblower on 21 February at the Bourse du Travail in Paris, you alluded to a plane full of FBI agents landing in Iceland in 2011 on the pretext of an imminent computer attack against the government. Can you tell us more about this?
Eva Joly: The FBI was following Julian Assange, their agents knew he was in Iceland and they landed. They had contacted Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson, telling him that the Icelandic government’s computer system was in danger and that the FBI was offering to help. But Ögmundur Jónasson understood the manoeuvre and he refused. It went unnoticed, but his testimony is still available on the Internet[i]. The fact that Julian Assange was under surveillance and that the United States wanted to get its hands on him very early on is a fact.
What is the situation of Chelsea Manning, convicted for the disclosure of the Collateral Murder video published by Wikileaks?
Eva Joly: We can see that the perpetrators of the war crime who appear in this video have not been prosecuted and yet they are easily identifiable. On the other hand, the whistleblower who showed this war crime is wanted. Chelsea Manning has been arrested and prosecuted. She is convicted of breaking into a computer system and disseminating confidential information. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, then released by presidential pardon by Barack Obama on the last day of his presidency, she had already served seven years of her sentence. Paradoxically, she is still detained[ii], after being repeatedly convicted of contempt of court for refusing to testify before the Grand Jury against Assange. This shows that Julian Assange would not get a fair trial in the United States, which is one of the conditions for accepting extradition, since the requested country, in this case the United Kingdom, must be certain that the trial will be fair.
Julian Assange’s lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, said that on the first day of the trial, which opened in London on 24 February, his client had been stripped naked and searched twice, handcuffed 11 times and locked up five times in different holding cells. During his trial, Julian Assange was not seated with his lawyers as is customary, but was confined to the back of the courtroom, locked in a bullet-proof glass cage. Conditions that penalize the accused and seem unfair since they prevent him from following the proceedings, but which do not seem to bother the magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser. Is such a system unprecedented and is all this in accordance with the law?
Eva Joly: Here we see that the British are not treating Assange normally, because he was first sentenced to 50 weeks for breach of judicial supervision pronounced in 2012, when he was the subject of a Swedish extradition request. He had been allowed his liberty but forced to report regularly to the police. Julian Assange understood that he would be extradited to Sweden, he was convinced that it was a manoeuvre to hand him over to the United States, and he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted consular asylum. He stayed there for seven years. When Lenin Moreno, the President of Ecuador ended that asylum in 2017, the police took him out of the embassy in a very violent manner. He was taken to Belmarsh Prison, a maximum security prison. Now, Julian Assange is a multi-award winning journalist, he is not a terrorist. Especially since we know that the arrest warrant behind the Swedish extradition request had a very thin legal basis. We know that it was a manipulation. They sentenced Julian Assange almost to the maximum penalty for failure to comply with judicial supervision, 50 weeks, the maximum being 52, and they made him serve his sentence among those who detonate bombs and kill civilians. This is a signal sent by the United Kingdom, and it is unworthy of British justice. It is clear that the prison administration has instructions to execute his sentence first and then his pre-trial detention in the worst possible conditions.
In prison, he was placed in solitary confinement, and when he finished serving his sentence, he was remanded in custody, again awaiting trial. The solitary confinement ended only two or three weeks before the trial. There were also movements of prisoners who were sympathetic and asked that he be released from solitary confinement. All of this is abnormal. Julian Assange does not belong in a maximum security prison. The political situation is bad for Assange. We know that he was tortured and humiliated, and the UN rapporteur who assessed him has seen the impact of torture on his person.
At the hearing, when his lawyers requested that their client be allowed to sit next to them, the judge refused. The prosecutor’s office, representing the State, supported the lawyers’ request by justifying the customary nature of such a practice. Despite this, the judge opposed it. The whole situation is abnormal. According to the texts, it is the Westminster Magistrates Court that has to give an opinion, but the hearing is taking place at the Belmarsh Magistrates Court. In order to comply with the law, the Westminster staff and judges have been relocated so that Julian Assange does not have to be relocated. Are they open to attack on this aspect, or on the unfair conditions under which the trial was conducted?
Eva Joly: Yes, Assange’s treatment is the treatment of a terrorist. He was refused his glasses for six months, which, along with the isolation, is bad treatment.
If the British justice system agrees to extradite him to the United States at the end of this trial, will Julian Assange risk the death penalty for espionage?
Eva Joly: There is a fundamental rule: you don’t extradite to a country that practises the death penalty unless you have guarantees that the death penalty will not be requested or pronounced.
But you can’t extradite people for political offences either…
Eva Joly: Absolutely, it’s been more than a century since political prisoners were extradited. Otherwise you realize, we would have extradited the Chileans who were fleeing Pinochet, the Kurds who were fleeing Turkey, etc. The world is full of conflicts and political refugees who feel safe because if they get a visa, they know they cannot be extradited. It is true that, in this trial, the prosecution is trying to prove that, even if the offences of which Assange is accused are political, he could still be extradited.
Can extradition not be prevented by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights[iii] which protects freedom of expression?
Eva Joly: All this should protect this multi-award winning journalist, but we see that it does not protect him, which makes us fear the worst for the future. The FBI has been following the case for a long time. Julian Assange was also being watched by a Spanish company working for the CIA while he was granted political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. If Julian Assange is extradited, it is the end of the rule of law in the West as we have built it for nearly a century. In the name of the fight against terrorism we are giving up many freedoms because we believe that security is a higher value. We have not understood that we are in fact going to sacrifice freedoms without having security. This trial sheds a stark light on what is happening.
Concerning the rape charges against Julian Assange, the Swedish justice system dropped the charges due to lack of evidence. Are you surprised by this drop in charges?
Eva Joly: It was very costly for Julian Assange. We also know that the Swedish public prosecutor was keen to end the investigation earlier, but that she was encouraged to keep the investigation open by the Crown Prosecution Service [the service responsible for deciding on prosecutions in England and Wales]. We have evidence of that. We also have evidence of the FBI’s involvement in the case, but the Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, destroyed the e-mails she admits to having received from the FBI.
You criticized the media silence after some 60 international doctors tried to alert the world to Julian Assange’s physical and psychological state of health in November, when they were seriously considering that he might “die in prison”. This silence came from a press that has made extensive use of and benefited from the revelations that Julian Assange and his team had brought to it about the abuses and war crimes committed by the allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. How do you explain such a change in attitude?
Eva Joly: Absolutely. The Guardian, the New York Times and Aftenposten[iv] have won prestigious awards for their work with WikiLeaks documents. It’s important to understand that it’s the CIA’s and the FBI’s manipulations that have led to this reversal of opinion. The issue was no longer what Julian Assange had been able to prove, but whether or not he had raped someone.
Precisely, how can one sue Assange for his publications, while sparing the media that benefited and disclosed the content? Didn’t these media act in the same way as WikiLeaks by disseminating information passed on by a third party?
Eva Joly: In the United States, American journalists enjoy the protection of the First Amendment. This was the case with the Pentagon papers, where the DOJ (Department of Justice) tried to prosecute whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg who had them published for espionage. The Supreme Court ruled that he had only been using freedom of speech and that he was entitled to protection under the First Amendment to the Constitution. We therefore know that citizens of the United States are protected by this amendment. However, foreign journalists are not. Julian Assange in the United States would therefore not be able to invoke the First Amendment and, logically, there would be a risk that European journalists could be prosecuted.
Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, says: “This is not just about protecting Assange, but about preventing a precedent that could seal the fate of Western democracy.” Are we going to turn Julian Assange into a martyr?
Eva Joly: If we accept the extradition of Julian Assange, we are admitting the de facto supremacy of US law over our own. In Europe, however, it is not forbidden to publish genuine news of general interest, journalists are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. What Julian Assange published cannot therefore be described as espionage in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe. Julian Assange cannot be extradited because of double jeopardy and because he would not get a fair trial in the United States. These are two more than sufficient reasons to oppose this extradition.
Notes:
[i] ”Ex-Icelandic Interior Minister: US Tried to FRAME Julian Assange in Iceland!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmPQY7cXOIg, “Jónasson: The Icelandic Minister who refused cooperation with the FBI”, Marta Pacheco, Katoikos, 7 December 2016. http://www.katoikos.eu/interview/icelandic-minister-who-refused-cooperation-with-the-fbi-ogmundur-jonasson-in-an-interview.html
[ii] Chelsea Manning was released on March 12, 2020 after a suicide attempt the day before. The financial penalties imposed to force her to testify against Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange remain in effect and she will have to pay $256,000 in fines.
[iii] A guide on the implementation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. https://www.refworld.org/docid/49f17f3a2.html; European Convention on Human Rights: https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf
[iv] Conservative newspaper in Norway.
Original Article MrMondialisation
Source article Pressenza
March 27, 2020 Doctors4Assange strongly condemns Wednesday’s decision by UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser to deny bail to Julian Assange. Despite our prior unequivocal statement[1]that Mr Assange is at increased risk of serious illness and death were he to contract coronavirus, and the evidence of medical experts, Baraitser dismissed the risk, citing UK guidelines for … Continue reading “Doctors For Assange: Statement on Assange Bail Hearing over Coronavirus Risk”
March 27, 2020
Doctors4Assange strongly condemns Wednesday’s decision by UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser to deny bail to Julian Assange. Despite our prior unequivocal statement[1]that Mr Assange is at increased risk of serious illness and death were he to contract coronavirus, and the evidence of medical experts, Baraitser dismissed the risk, citing UK guidelines for prisons in responding to the global pandemic: “I have no reason not to trust this advice as both evidence-based and reliable and appropriate.”[2]
Notably, however, Baraitser did not address the increased risk to Mr Assange relative to the general UK prison population, let alone prisoners at HMP Belmarsh where Assange is incarcerated. Nor did she address the rapidly emerging medical and legal consensus that vulnerable and low-risk prisoners should be released, immediately.
As the court heard, Mr Assange is at increased risk of contracting and dying from the novel disease coronavirus (COVID-19), a development which has led the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency of international concern[3] and a global pandemic.[4] The reasons for Mr Assange’s increased risk include his ongoing psychological torture, his history of medical neglect and fragile health, and chronic lung disease.
Edward Fitzgerald, QC, representing Mr Assange, said, “These [medical] experts consider that he is particularly at risk of developing coronavirus and, if he does, that it develops into very severe complications for him… If he does develop critical symptoms it would be very doubtful that Belmarsh would be able to cope with his condition.”[5]
Baraitser’s casual dismissal of Mr Assange’s dire situation in the face of the COVID-19 emergency stood in stark contrast not only to the expert medical evidence, but the proceedings themselves. The hearing took place on the third day of the UK’s coronavirus lock-down. Of the two counsels representing Mr Assange, Edward Fitzgerald QC wore a facemask and Mark Summers QC participated via audiolink. US attorneys joined the proceedings by phone.
Mr Assange himself appeared by videolink, which was terminated after around an hour, rendering him unable to follow the remainder of his own hearing, including the defence summation and the District Judge’s ruling. Mr Assange’s supporters attending in person observed social distancing measures. Overall only 15 people were in attendance, including judge, counsel, and observers.
Baraitser further erred by stating that because no prisoners at HMP Belmarsh currently have coronavirus, Assange was not yet at risk. Mr Assange’s counsel noted, in contrast, that they had difficulty visiting him after being told by Belmarsh staff that over 100 Belmarsh employees are currently “self-isolating”. Furthermore, it is unclear whether any Belmarsh prisoners have even been tested for coronavirus.
Baraitser’s assurance that government measures were adequate to protect Mr Assange also rang hollow on the very day the UK government announced that Prince Charles tested positive for COVID-19. If the UK government cannot protect its own royal family from the disease, how can it adequately protect its most vulnerable prisoners in prisons, which have been described as “breeding grounds” for coronavirus?
Furthermore, news emerged on the day of the hearing that 19 prisoners in 10 prisons across the UK had tested positive for coronavirus, an increase of 6 prisoners in 24 hours.[6] From the time of the hearing to date, two UK inmates have died from COVID-19, both of whom, like Assange, are men in high risk groups.[7]
This news, and the decision to deny Mr Assange bail, is alarming in light of numerous statements and reports that have called out the risk to prisoners, urgently recommending release of non-violent prisoners, as well as actions taken by other nations to alleviate the risk.
Specifically, a March 17 report[8] by Professor of Public Health, Richard Coker of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, found that “congregate settings” such as prisons provide ideal conditions for “explosive transmission” of coronavirus. “Hours matter” in terms of containment, Professor Coker warns. The report recommends that “if detention is unnecessary it should be relaxed. This should be done before the virus has a chance to enter a detention centre.”
Accordingly, on the same day as Mr. Assange’s bail hearing, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, issued a statement[9] calling on authorities to release prisoners who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, as well as low-risk inmates. “Now, more than ever, governments should release every person detained without sufficient legal basis, including political prisoners and others detained simply for expressing critical or dissenting views”, she said.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned that in a health crisis such as that posed by COVID-19, the rights of detained people must be protected under the UN ‘Mandela Rules’ governing the rights of prisoners, noting that prisons are home to vulnerable populations such as the elderly, inmates with illnesses or disabilities, and pregnant or juvenile detainees. Such populations are often detained in facilities that are “overcrowded” and “unhygienic”, in some cases “dangerously so” she stressed.
“Physical distancing and self-isolation in such conditions are practically impossible”, the High Commissioner wrote. “With outbreaks of the disease, and an increasing number of deaths, already reported in prisons and other institutions in an expanding number of countries, authorities should act now to prevent further loss of life among detainees and staff.”
Consistent with that advice, in Mr Assange’s home country of Australia, on March 24 the New South Wales government announced[10] the early release of select prisoners, based on their “health vulnerability” and custodial and conviction status, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the US, the chief physician of Rikers Island, New York, has urged judges and prosecutors to release inmates, where possible, to protect them from coronavirus, and 600 prisoners incarcerated for minor and non-violent offences have been released in Los Angeles. Over 3,000 doctors and medical workers have also signed an open letter urging US immigration authorities to release detainees in order to mitigate the COVID-19 outbreak.[11]
Adding their legal voices to these medical and human rights authorities, the day after Mr Assange’s bail hearing, three professors in law and criminology recommended “granting bail to unsentenced prisoners to stop the spread of coronavirus”.[12]
Julian Assange is just such an unsentenced prisoner with significant health vulnerability. He is being held on remand, with no custodial sentence or UK charge in place, let alone conviction.
Doctors4Assange are additionally concerned that keeping Assange in Belmarsh not only increases his risk of contracting coronavirus, it will increase his isolation and his inability to prepare his defence for his upcoming extradition hearing, in violation of his human right to prepare a defence. Mr Assange’s lawyers have been increasingly restricted from visiting him as prisons lockdown visitation to prevent spread of the coronavirus.
These two factors are already major contributors to Mr Assange’s psychological torture, and we are alarmed that the combination of Baraitser’s decision, together with increasingly stringent prison restrictions in response to the pandemic, will intensify that very torture. This further increases his vulnerability to coronavirus.
Moreover, Assange’s witnesses are unlikely to be able to travel to his extradition hearing in May, due to travel restrictions put in place by either the UK or their home countries. This could result in further delay to his extradition hearing, thereby prolonging his medically dangerous abuse by psychological torture and politically motivated medical neglect, as we detailed in our letter published in the March 7 issue of The Lancet.[13]
Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor in chief of WikiLeaks, summarised Baraitser’s decision in a manner consistent with the overwhelming medical and legal consensus, and long held-medical ethics: “To expose another human being to serious illness, and to the threat of losing their life, is grotesque and quite unnecessary. This is not justice, it is a barbaric decision.”[14]
Contact: info@doctorsassange.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/doctors4assange
[1] From the Doctros4Assange website: https://doctorsassange.org/embargoed-press-release-doctors-for-assange-reply-to-minister-payne-18-03-20/
[2] From Marty Silk live tweet during the proceedings: https://twitter.com/MartySilkHack/status/1242807708778192897
[3] From the World Health Organization website: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/30-01-2020-statement-on-the-second-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-outbreak-of-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)
[4] From the World Health Organization website: http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-emergencies/coronavirus-covid-19/news/news/2020/3/who-announces-covid-19-outbreak-a-pandemic
[5] Bridges for Media Freedom, Briefing, Assange Bail Application, 25 March 2020.
[6] https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2020/03/25/prisons-19-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-in-10-jails/
[7] https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/26/second-uk-prisoner-dies-contracting-coronavirus-inside-12459973/
[8] https://detentionaction.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Report-on-Detention-and-COVID-Final-1.pdf
[9] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25745&LangID=E
[10] https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw-prepares-for-early-release-of-prisoners-during-covid-19-pandemic-20200324-p54db5.html
[11] https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-u-s-doctors-demand-immediate-release-of-prisoners-and-detainees
[12] http://theconversation.com/we-need-to-consider-granting-bail-to-unsentenced-prisoners-to-stop-the-spread-of-coronavirus-134526
[13] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30383-4/fulltext
[14] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/julian-assange-coronavirus-prison-bail-release-belmarsh-latest-a9424621.html
Refer Doctors For Assange Web Site with followup posts
On 6th April Nina Cross writes A TALE OF TWO DETENTIONS: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “…this will be decided properly, independently by the British legal system respected throughout the world for its independence and integrity,” said then UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt immediately following the arrest of Julian Assange, founder … Continue reading “Assange vs Khodorkovsky: Arbitrary Application of Human Rights by British Courts”
On 6th April Nina Cross writes
A TALE OF TWO DETENTIONS: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
“…this will be decided properly, independently by the British legal system respected throughout the world for its independence and integrity,” said then UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt immediately following the arrest of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, on 11th April 2019.
The high profile trials of the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, tried alongside his Yukos business partner Platon Lebedev, were widely criticised in the West, including by Britain, and therefore serve as a tool to compare against the UK’s treatment of Assange. Part 1 of this analysis will attempt to compare the way the British authorities treat Julian Assange to the way they have protected oligarchs fleeing Russia and protested the treatment of oligarchs convicted in Russia. In one case, the British authorities have applied human rights in their courts, while in another, they have removed human rights from their courts.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a case study
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The courtroom of Assange versus the courtrooms of Khodorkovsky
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Clear Double Standard
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Continued deference to legal assistance by Judge Vanessa Baraitser and the threat of Covid-19
According to reports by observers at Assange’s bail application hearing on March 25th, Baraitser again deferred to unqualified parties for legal assistance. On this occasion, she invited journalists to offer their opinion on how to manage the issue of anonymity of Assange’s partner should his partner’s statement be read to the court in support of his application. Baraitser’s continued reliance upon unqualified assistance in the legal fate of Assange suggests that she does not believe herself to be competent or even responsible for the consequences of court decisions.
His lawyers requested bail on the basis Assange has a chronic lung condition and is in a fragile state, putting him at higher risk of complications and even death if he were to catch the virus Covid-19, which has now reached the prison population. Judge Baraitser’s refusal to allow bail was condemned, particularly as several countries released low security risk prisoners to reduce their risk of infection. This included Iran which temporarily released British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Since then the British government has announced that Assange will not be released because he is on remand. However, the criteria for temporary medical release specifically refers to limited opportunity of custodial prisoners:
“…because such care cannot await the patient’s release or cannot be provided within the prison.”
The assumption is therefore that remand prisoners will not be remanded for long and if convicted may be eligible for temporary medical release. It can also be assumed that ‘patient’s release‘ relates to individual and specific cases. It is neither logical nor humane to interpret this as meaning that remanded prisoners should not have the same criteria for release during the spread of a deadly virus that anyone can catch. What’s more, Assange’s legal defence has warned that his case could continue for many years, resulting in his indefinite arbitrary detention, rendering the time-related criteria meaningless. Further, prison rule 21 provides the procedural framework for Assange to be released due to the threat of Covid-19:
21.—(1) The medical officer or a medical practitioner such as is mentioned in rule 20(3) shall report to the governor on the case of any prisoner whose health is likely to be injuriously affected by continued imprisonment or any conditions of imprisonment. The governor shall send the report to the Secretary of State without delay, together with his own recommendations.
This should remind us that the health of each prisoner in British prisons is not simply the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice, which counts itself as just one member of the national partnership for prisoner healthcare in England. Should Assange die in Belmarsh as a result of Covid-19 (or any other condition related to his long-term medical situation), responsibility will be the result of state-sponsored medical neglect.
Comparison of prison authorities: Access to lawyers and documents
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Solitary Confinement
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Lawyer-client confidentiality
In the case of Khodorkovsky, legal documents were consistently examined by the authorities when passed to him from his lawyers, which the ECHR ruled as a violation of Article 6 client-lawyer confidentiality. In the case of Assange, his documents were stolen by the Ecuadorian government and passed to the US authorities – the very country which is trying to extradite him. Violation of Assange’s confidentiality with his lawyers has been demonstrated through the widely reported investigation into the Spanish security company US Global, accused of spying on him inside the Ecuadorian embassy, which included recording his meetings with lawyers. The content of the surveillance was then passed to the authorities trying to extradite him. All of this has been ignored by the British extradition courts.
By comparing the cases of Assange and Khodorkovsky we can see a clear double standard being applied by the British authorities. While they have refused extraditions to Russia on human rights grounds, the same authorities have seen fit to strip away the human rights and the dignity of Julian Assange, in full public view, all while boasting of higher moral standards.
Read full article in 21st Century Wire
and follow Nina’s Archives
On 2nd March 2020 Craig Murray writes In Thursday’s separate hearing on allowing Assange out of the armoured box to sit with his legal team, I witnessed directly that Baraitser’s ruling against Assange was brought by her into court BEFORE she heard defence counsel put the arguments, and delivered by her entirely unchanged. I might start by … Continue reading “Craig Murray: The Armoured Glass Box is an Instrument of Torture”
On 2nd March 2020 Craig Murray writes
In Thursday’s separate hearing on allowing Assange out of the armoured box to sit with his legal team, I witnessed directly that Baraitser’s ruling against Assange was brought by her into court BEFORE she heard defence counsel put the arguments, and delivered by her entirely unchanged.
I might start by explaining to you my position in the public gallery vis a vis the judge. All week I deliberately sat in the front, right hand seat. The gallery looks out through an armoured glass window at a height of about seven feet above the courtroom. It runs down one side of the court, and the extreme right hand end of the public gallery is above the judge’s bench, which sits below perpendicular to it. Remarkably therefore from the right hand seats of the public gallery you have an uninterrupted view of the top of the whole of the judge’s bench, and can see all the judge’s papers and computer screen.
Mark Summers QC outlined that in the case of Belousov vs Russia the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg ruled against the state of Russia because Belousov had been tried in a glass cage practically identical in construction and in position in court to that in which Assange now was. It hindered his participation in the trial and his free access to counsel, and deprived him of human dignity as a defendant.
Summers continued that it was normal practice for certain categories of unconvicted prisoners to be released from the dock to sit with their lawyers. The court had psychiatric reports on Assange’s extreme clinical depression, and in fact the UK Department of Justice’s best practice guide for courts stated that vulnerable people should be released to sit alongside their lawyers. Special treatment was not being requested for Assange – he was asking to be treated as any other vulnerable person.
The defence was impeded by their inability to communicate confidentially with their client during proceedings. In the next stage of trial, where witnesses were being examined, timely communication was essential. Furthermore they could only talk with him through the slit in the glass within the hearing of the private company security officers who were guarding him (it was clarified they were Serco, not Group 4 as Baraitser had said the previous day), and in the presence of microphones.
Baraitser became ill-tempered at this point and spoke with a real edge to her voice. “Who are those people behind you in the back row?” she asked Summers sarcastically – a question to which she very well knew the answer. Summers replied that they were part of the defence legal team. Baraitser said that Assange could contact them if he had a point to pass on. Summers replied that there was an aisle and a low wall between the glass box and their position, and all Assange could see over the wall was the top of the back of their heads. Baraitser said she had seen Assange call out. Summers said yelling across the courtroom was neither confidential nor satisfactory.
I have now been advised it is definitely an offence to publish the picture of Julian in his glass box, even though I didn’t take it and it is absolutely all over the internet. Also worth noting that I am back home in my own country, Scotland, where my blog is based, and neither is within the jurisdiction of the English court. But I am anxious not to give them any excuse to ban me from the court hearing, so I have removed it but you can see it here.
This is the photo taken illegally (not by me) of Assange in the court. If you look carefully, you can see there is a passageway and a low wooden wall between him and the back row of lawyers. You can see one of the two Serco prison officers guarding him inside the box.
Baraitser said Assange could pass notes, and she had witnessed notes being passed by him. Summers replied that the court officers had now banned the passing of notes. Baraitser said they could take this up with Serco, it was a matter for the prison authorities.
Summers asserted that, contrary to Baraitser’s statement the previous day, she did indeed have jurisdiction on the matter of releasing Assange from the dock. Baraitser intervened to say that she now accepted that. Summers then said that he had produced a number of authorities to show that Baraitser had also been wrong to say that to be in custody could only mean to be in the dock. You could be in custody anywhere within the precincts of the court, or indeed outside. Baraitser became very annoyed by this and stated she had only said that delivery to the custody of the court must equal delivery to the dock.
To which Summers replied memorably, now very cross “Well, that’s wrong too, and has been wrong these last eight years.”
In Thursday’s separate hearing on allowing Assange out of the armoured box to sit with his legal team, I witnessed directly that Baraitser’s ruling against Assange was brought by her into court BEFORE she heard defence counsel put the arguments, and delivered by her entirely unchanged.
I might start by explaining to you my position in the public gallery vis a vis the judge. All week I deliberately sat in the front, right hand seat. The gallery looks out through an armoured glass window at a height of about seven feet above the courtroom. It runs down one side of the court, and the extreme right hand end of the public gallery is above the judge’s bench, which sits below perpendicular to it. Remarkably therefore from the right hand seats of the public gallery you have an uninterrupted view of the top of the whole of the judge’s bench, and can see all the judge’s papers and computer screen.
Mark Summers QC outlined that in the case of Belousov vs Russia the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg ruled against the state of Russia because Belousov had been tried in a glass cage practically identical in construction and in position in court to that in which Assange now was. It hindered his participation in the trial and his free access to counsel, and deprived him of human dignity as a defendant.
Summers continued that it was normal practice for certain categories of unconvicted prisoners to be released from the dock to sit with their lawyers. The court had psychiatric reports on Assange’s extreme clinical depression, and in fact the UK Department of Justice’s best practice guide for courts stated that vulnerable people should be released to sit alongside their lawyers. Special treatment was not being requested for Assange – he was asking to be treated as any other vulnerable person.
The defence was impeded by their inability to communicate confidentially with their client during proceedings. In the next stage of trial, where witnesses were being examined, timely communication was essential. Furthermore they could only talk with him through the slit in the glass within the hearing of the private company security officers who were guarding him (it was clarified they were Serco, not Group 4 as Baraitser had said the previous day), and in the presence of microphones.
Baraitser became ill-tempered at this point and spoke with a real edge to her voice. “Who are those people behind you in the back row?” she asked Summers sarcastically – a question to which she very well knew the answer. Summers replied that they were part of the defence legal team. Baraitser said that Assange could contact them if he had a point to pass on. Summers replied that there was an aisle and a low wall between the glass box and their position, and all Assange could see over the wall was the top of the back of their heads. Baraitser said she had seen Assange call out. Summers said yelling across the courtroom was neither confidential nor satisfactory.
I have now been advised it is definitely an offence to publish the picture of Julian in his glass box, even though I didn’t take it and it is absolutely all over the internet. Also worth noting that I am back home in my own country, Scotland, where my blog is based, and neither is within the jurisdiction of the English court. But I am anxious not to give them any excuse to ban me from the court hearing, so I have removed it but you can see it here.
This is the photo taken illegally (not by me) of Assange in the court. If you look carefully, you can see there is a passageway and a low wooden wall between him and the back row of lawyers. You can see one of the two Serco prison officers guarding him inside the box.
Baraitser said Assange could pass notes, and she had witnessed notes being passed by him. Summers replied that the court officers had now banned the passing of notes. Baraitser said they could take this up with Serco, it was a matter for the prison authorities.
Summers asserted that, contrary to Baraitser’s statement the previous day, she did indeed have jurisdiction on the matter of releasing Assange from the dock. Baraitser intervened to say that she now accepted that. Summers then said that he had produced a number of authorities to show that Baraitser had also been wrong to say that to be in custody could only mean to be in the dock. You could be in custody anywhere within the precincts of the court, or indeed outside. Baraitser became very annoyed by this and stated she had only said that delivery to the custody of the court must equal delivery to the dock.
To which Summers replied memorably, now very cross “Well, that’s wrong too, and has been wrong these last eight years.”
Drawing argument to a close, Baraitser gave her judgement on this issue. Now the interesting thing is this, and I am a direct eyewitness. She read out her judgement, which was several pages long and handwritten. She had brought it with her into court in a bundle, and she made no amendments to it. She had written out her judgement before she heard Mark Summers speak at all.
Her key points were that Assange was able to communicate to his lawyers by shouting out from the box. She had seen him pass notes. She was willing to adjourn the court at any time for Assange to go down with his lawyers for discussions in the cells, and if that extended the length of the hearing from three to six weeks, it could take as long as required.
Baraitser stated that none of the psychiatric reports she had before her stated that it was necessary for Assange to leave the armoured dock. As none of the psychiarists had been asked that question – and very probably none knew anything about courtroom layout – that is scarcely surprising
I have been wondering why it is so essential to the British government to keep Assange in that box, unable to hear proceedings or instruct his lawyers in reaction to evidence, even when counsel for the US Government stated they had no objection to Assange sitting in the well of the court.
The answer lies in the psychiatric assessment of Assange given to the court by the extremely distinguished Professor Michael Kopelman (who is familiar to everyone who has read Murder in Samarkand):
“Mr Assange shows virtually all the risk factors which researchers from Oxford
have described in prisoners who either suicide or make lethal attempts. … I
am as confident as a psychiatrist can ever be that, if extradition to the United
States were to become imminent, Mr Assange would find a way of suiciding.”
The fact that Kopelman does not, as Baraitser said, specifically state that the armoured glass box is bad for Assange reflects nothing other than the fact he was not asked that question. Any human being with the slightest decency would be able to draw the inference. Baraitser’s narrow point that no psychiatrist had specifically stated he should be released from the armoured box is breathtakingly callous, dishonest and inhumane. Almost certainly no psychiatrist had conceived she would determine on enforcing such torture.
So why is Baraitser doing it?
I believe that the Hannibal Lecter style confinement of Assange, this intellectual computer geek, which has no rational basis at all, is a deliberate attempt to drive Julian to suicide. The maximum security anti-terrorist court is physically within the fortress compound that houses the maximum security prison. He is brought handcuffed and under heavy escort to and from his solitary cell to the armoured dock via an underground tunnel. In these circumstances, what possible need is there for him to be strip and cavity searched continually? Why is he not permitted to have his court papers? Most telling for me was the fact he is not permitted to shake hands or touch his lawyers through the slit in the armoured box.
They are relentlessly enforcing the systematic denial of any basic human comfort, like the touch of a friend’s fingertips or the blocking of the relief that he might get just from being alongside somebody friendly. They are ensuring the continuation of the extreme psychological effects from isolation of a year of virtual solitary confinement. A tiny bit of human comfort could do an enormous amount of good to his mental health and resilience. They are determined to stop this at all costs. They are attempting to make him kill himself – or create in him the condition where his throttling death might be explained away as suicide.
This is also the only explanation that I can think of for why they are risking the creation of such obvious mistrial conditions. Dead people cannot appeal.
I would remind you that Julian is a remand prisoner who has served his unprecedentedly long sentence for bail-jumping. His status is supposedly at present that of an innocent man facing charges. Those charges are for nothing except for publishing Chelsea Manning’s revelations of war crimes.
That Baraitser is acting under instructions seems to me certain. She has been desperate throughout the trial to seize any chance to deny any responsibility for what is happening to Julian. She has stated that she has no jurisdiction over his treatment in prison, and even when both defence and prosecution combined to state it was normal practice for magistrates to pass directions or requests to the prison service, she refused to accept it was so.
Baraitser is plainly attempting psychologically to distance herself from any agency in what is being done. To this end she has made a stream of denials of jurisdiction or ability to influence events. She has said that she has no jurisdiction to interfere with the strip searching, handcuffing and removal of Assange’s papers or with his being kept in solitary. She has said she has no jurisdiction to request that his defence lawyers have more access to their client in jail to prepare his defence. She has said she has no jurisdiction over his position in the courtroom. Se has suggested at various times it is up to Serco to decide if he may pass notes to his lawyers and up to Group4 to decide if he can be released from the armoured dock. The moments when she looks most content listening to the evidence, are those when prosecution counsel James Lewis argues that she has no decision to make but to sign the extradition because it is in good form and that Article 4 of the Treaty has no legal standing.
A member of the Assange family remarked to me at the end of week one that she seems very lazy, and thus delighted to accept any arguments that reduce the amount she needs to do. I think it is different to that. I think there is a corner of the mind of this daughter of dissidents from apartheid that rejects her own role in the torture of Assange, and is continually urging “I had no choice, I had no agency”. Those who succumb to do evil must find what internal comfort they may.
Read original article in Craig’s blog
On 17th February 2020 an Email sent to the Australian Foreign Minister Senator the Hon Marise Payne by 117 Doctors from 96 countries. Email reads: From: Doctors for Assange doctorsforassange@gmail.comDate: Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 6:55 AMSubject: The Lancet – doctors’ warnings on torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange To: foreign.minister@dfat.gov.au Cc: senator.wong@aph.gov.au, A.Albanese.MP@aph.gov.au … Continue reading “Doctors for Assange: The Lancet – doctors’ warnings on torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange”
On 17th February 2020 an Email sent to the Australian Foreign Minister Senator the Hon Marise Payne by 117 Doctors from 96 countries.
From: Doctors for Assange doctorsforassange@gmail.com
Date: Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 6:55 AM
Subject: The Lancet – doctors’ warnings on torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange
To: foreign.minister@dfat.gov.au
Cc: senator.wong@aph.gov.au, A.Albanese.MP@aph.gov.au
Dear Minister Payne,
Today, the world’s pre-eminent medical journal, The Lancet, will carry a letter on behalf of 117 doctors regarding the human rights and health emergency faced by Australian citizen and journalist Mr Julian Assange.
Mr Assange faces extradition to the United States under the Espionage Act for journalistic activity that is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and under international human rights law.
On December 16, we wrote to you, as Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, urging action on your part to protect Mr Assange’s civil, political and human rights. As our letter in The Lancet notes, to date we have received no reply.
117 doctors from 18 countries are today renewing their appeal. Mr Assange’s human rights to health care and freedom from torture must be upheld. At this late hour, we call on you to act decisively now to remove Mr Assange from conditions which UN authorities have found amount to “prolonged psychological torture” and “illegal and arbitrary” detention.
The letter will be available on the online edition of The Lancet here (in advance of the print edition) when the embargo lifts today February 17 at 23:30 (GMT):
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30383-4/fulltext
Please be advised that a press release has been issued in Australia, the UK and in the United States, and we anticipate widespread public interest.
Yours sincerely,
Doctors for Assange
On Nov 22, 2019, we, a group of more than 60 medical doctors, wrote to the UK Home Secretary to express our serious concerns about the physical and mental health of Julian Assange.1In our letter,1 we documented a history of denial of access to health care and prolonged psychological torture. It requested that Assange be transferred from Belmarsh prison to a university teaching hospital for medical assessment and treatment. Faced with evidence of untreated and ongoing torture, we also raised the question as to Assange’s fitness to participate in US extradition proceedings.
Having received no substantive response from the UK Government, neither to our first letter1 nor to our follow-up letter,2 we wrote to the Australian Government, requesting that it intervene to protect the health of its citizen.3 To date, regrettably, no reply has been forthcoming. Meanwhile, many more doctors from around the world have joined us in our call. Our group currently numbers 117 doctors, representing 18 countries.
The case of Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is multifaceted. It relates to law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, journalism, publishing, and politics. It also, however, clearly relates to medicine and public health. The case highlights several concerning aspects that warrant the medical profession’s close attention and concerted action.
We were prompted to act following the harrowing eyewitness accounts of former UK diplomat Craig Murray and investigative journalist John Pilger, who described Assange’s deteriorated state at a case management hearing on Oct 21, 2019.4, 5 Assange had appeared at the hearing pale, underweight, aged and limping, and he had visibly struggled to recall basic information, focus his thoughts, and articulate his words. At the end of the hearing, he “told district judge Vanessa Baraitser that he had not understood what had happened in court”.6
We drafted a letter to the UK Home Secretary, which quickly gathered more than 60 signatures from medical doctors from Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, the UK, and the USA, concluding: “It is our opinion that Mr Assange requires urgent expert medical assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health. Any medical treatment indicated should be administered in a properly equipped and expertly staffed university teaching hospital (tertiary care). Were such urgent assessment and treatment not to take place, we have real concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Mr Assange could die in prison. The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose.”
On May 31, 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, reported on his May 9, 2019, visit to Assange in Belmarsh, accompanied by two medical experts: “Mr Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”7 On Nov 1, 2019, Melzer warned, “Mr. Assange’s continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life”.8 Examples of the mandated communications from the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to governments are provided in the appendix.
Such warnings and Assange’s presentation at the October hearing should not perhaps have come as a surprise. Assange had, after all, prior to his detention in Belmarsh prison in conditions amounting to solitary confinement, spent almost 7 years restricted to a few rooms in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Here, he had been deprived of fresh air, sunlight, the ability to move and exercise freely, and access to adequate medical care. Indeed, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had held the confinement to amount to “arbitrary detention of liberty”.9
The UK Government refused to grant Assange safe passage to a hospital, despite requests from doctors who had been able to visit him in the embassy.10 There was also a climate of fear surrounding the provision of health care in the Embassy. A medical practitioner who visited Assange at the embassy documented what a colleague of Assange reported: “[T]here had been many difficulties in finding medical practitioners who were willing to examine Mr Assange in the Embassy. The reasons given were uncertainty over whether medical insurance would cover the Equadorian Embassy (a foreign jurisdiction); whether the association with Mr Assange could harm their livelihood or draw unwanted attention to them and their families; and discomfort regarding exposing this association when entering the Embassy. One medical practitioner expressed concern to one of the interviewees after the police took notes of his name and the fact that he was visiting Mr Assange. One medical practitioner wrote that he agreed to produce a medical report only on condition that his name not be made available to the wider public, fearing repercussions.”11
Disturbingly, it seems that this environment of insecurity and intimidation, further compromising the medical care available to Assange, was by design. Assange was the subject of a 24/7 covert surveillance operation inside the embassy, as the emergence of secret video and audio recordings has shown.12 He was surveilled in private and with visitors, including family, friends, journalists, lawyers, and doctors. Not only were his rights to privacy, personal life, legal privilege, and freedom of speech violated, but so, too, was his right to doctor–patient confidentiality.
We condemn the torture of Assange. We condemn the denial of his fundamental right to appropriate health care. We condemn the climate of fear surrounding the provision of health care to him. We condemn the violations of his right to doctor–patient confidentiality.
Politics cannot be allowed to interfere with the right to health and the practice of medicine. In the experience of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the scale of state interference is without precedent: “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law.”7, 12
We invite fellow doctors to join us as signatories to our letters to add further voice to our calls. Since doctors first began assessing Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2015, expert medical opinion and doctors’ urgent recommendations have been consistently ignored. Even as the world’s designated authorities on arbitrary detention, torture, and human rights added their calls to doctors’ warnings, governments have sidelined medical authority, medical ethics, and the human right to health. This politicisation of foundational medical principles is of grave concern to us, as it carries implications beyond the case of Assange. Abuse by politically motivated medical neglect sets a dangerous precedent, whereby the medical profession can be manipulated as a political tool, ultimately undermining our profession’s impartiality, commitment to health for all, and obligation to do no harm.
Should Assange die in a UK prison, as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has warned, he will have effectively been tortured to death. Much of that torture will have taken place in a prison medical ward, on doctors’ watch. The medical profession cannot afford to stand silently by, on the wrong side of torture and the wrong side of history, while such a travesty unfolds.
In the interests of defending medical ethics, medical authority, and the human right to health, and taking a stand against torture, together we can challenge and raise awareness of the abuses detailed in our letters. Our appeals are simple: we are calling upon governments to end the torture of Assange and ensure his access to the best available health care before it is too late. Our request to others is this: please join us.
We are members of Doctors for Assange. We declare no competing interests. Signatories of this letter are listed in the appendix.
Full list of attachments and references appear in The Lancet