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On 4th September 2020, Dr Vacy Vlazna, wrote

On this coming Father’s Day I want to salute three fathers whose sons, who have not broken Australian law, were and are betrayed by the Australian government: Terry Hicks the father of David Hicks incarcerated in a cage in Camp X-ray Guantanamo Bay for 5 years; John Shipton the father of Julian Assange who is presently incarcerated by the British government and Khalil El-Halabi whose son, Mohammed former Gaza/West Bank director of World Vision Australia, continues to be incarcerated by the Jewish state of Israel.

As you can empathise, for Terry, John and Khalil, on the unjust imprisonment of their sons, everything fell apart and the centre of normality and morality, with its implied fairness guaranteed by government obligations, ceased to hold as political shysters sacrificed their children to foreign interests (American and Israeli) while ‘journalists’, indentured as government henchmen, discharged venom and lies in the public square.

For them, daily a new alien norm of fatherhood was burgeoned with distress and anguish in knowing their child was daily suffering emotionally, physically, and mentally. For these fathers on a desperate mission of justice, powerlessness struggled with determination, frustration with doggedness, exhaustion with agency.

Terry Hicks

In 2006, ACT chief minister Jon Stanhope nominated Terry as Australian Father of the Year. It was awarded to the amazing Ron Delezio, notwithstanding, Terry stood tall and heroic in the eyes of supporters of his relentless five year campaign to secure a fair trial for his son David, who was arrested in 2001 in Afghanistan and underwent extraordinary rendition to Guantanamo Bay as a ‘terrorist’ and enemy combatant despite not having breached American or Australian law.

Until then Terry was a regular Aussie bloke, Dad and a political ingenue according to Sandra Kanck, the former outspoken Australian Democrat rep in South Australia, “Terry is a wonderful person who started out knowing nothing about politics and had to learn very quickly.”

Nor had Terry been outside of Australia, but as the saying goes  – parents will go to the ends of the earth to protect their children – he did just that “staying in a Guantanamo Bay-sized cage on a New York pavement and outside a convention centre in Adelaide” and followed in the dangerous footsteps of his son in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the making of the Curtis Levy’s documentary, The President vs David Hicks (2004)

Today Terry, political and justice wise, is a staunch supporter of Julian Assange,

“You might get support from high profile people, but the fight to gain Julian’s freedom depends on ordinary people speaking out. You will win them if you explain the basic issues at stake, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press and democratic rights, and you’ll be respected for your determination and your honesty.”

Concerning David,  political hypocrisy was putridly on the nose; consider ‘until Sept 11, 2001, the United States officially supported the Taliban with millions of dollars in aid and a natural gas pipeline worth billions’. Then there’s the many young Australians who take leave to join the military of a foreign power i.e.  Israel to brutally subjugate indigenous Palestinians, but never end up incarcerated on Christmas Island.

John Shipton

Julian Assange’s 7 year diplomatic asylum at the Ecuador Embassy, London was revoked in April 2019 when left-wing President Rafael Correa was replaced by devoted USA fan, the right-wing Lenin (irony) Morena.

Julian Assange’s father John Shipton now jumps the hurdles of the international advocacy circuit to secure Julian’s unconditional release from Britain’s high-security Belmarsh Prison where he served 50 weeks for breaching bail (but remains remanded) ,

“I’m at this full time,” he says. This is my job now. I came over from Melbourne this year and spent a month in the UK and saw how they kept mucking around with Julian, even with visiting him. They’d mess up an appointment and then you couldn’t go again for another two weeks.”

and to deter USA’s extradition demand and charge under the Espionage Act for the Wikileaks’ exposure of US torture and war crimes in Iraq. Australia, ever the US shoe-shine boy, abandoned Julian.

The mainstream media especially the Murdoch press has for years eviscerated the truth of Julian’s journalistic contribution to freedom of speech and to his reputation. As for the smear that Julian is his own worst enemy,

“That’s horseshit,” [John] says. “What you’re dealing with reminds me of the line in [TS] Eliot about the King and Thomas Beckett. ‘Will anybody rid me of this turbulent priest?’ A lot of that stuff is designed to just get at Julian with no basis for it.

“Julian is a joy of a man, he’s very positive, sweet natured. He’s determined but he always could get his own way by being charming. He didn’t have to bully anyone.”

Khalil El Halabi

Within the restrictions of his own incarceration in the wretched Gaza death camp, Khalil El Halabi pursues online his mission to free his son Mohammad who has been illegally held without charge by Israel since 2016 and is forced to attend court  – over 146 times. This psychological cruelty and abuse of the international standards of the rule of law are condemned by civilised people.

Mohammed, World Vision’s respected Gaza coordinator was falsely accused  by the Jewish state of diverting foreign aid (Australian funds) to Hamas.

This fake accusation was officially dismissed by the Australian government in March 2017 and by World Vision, nevertheless the Israeli ‘justice’ department beat, tortured and keeps Mohammed incarcerated. True to form, the Australian government simply threw him to Netanyahu’s wolves.

Yet, with typical Gazan resilience, Khalil persistently pleads to Australia for help,

My son stands by his innocence and without hesitation rejected Israel’s plea deal. He has been honoured by the UN as a Humanitarian Hero and is a loving father of five children, Khalil,15, Asem,13, Amro, 9, Rital,6, and Faris,4 who miss him so much. He is a fine man and son. My heart is broken for my son. All he was doing was trying to help needy people.

Every single day I try to do all I can to raise awareness of my son’s cause. Thinking of him humiliated and mistreated eats me up on the inside. I want to hold him close to my chest and tell him how proud I am for all he has done for Gaza and the Palestinian people.

The majority of Australian politicians are parents and a majority haven’t denounced the grave injustices threatening the children of their parental contemporaries. I say this is mainly down to two reasons:

1. the majority of politicians belong to two major parties and once elected they make the Faustian pact of sacrificing integrity and honour (if ever existed) for ambition which means. . .
2. b) towing the party line that involves, in these three cases, another sacrifice  – sacrificing Australian sovereignty for infantile subservience to US interests and/or zionist donor monies.

This Father’s Day I offer my respect to Terry, John and Khalil for their love, courage and moral integrity and also to our First Nations’ fathers who mourn their child’s death in custody or unjust incarceration. And, lest we forget the aching fathers in distant persecuted lands whose asylum-seeking children are cruelly incarcerated for the past 7 years by our government. Shame Australia.

Khalil El Halabi

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She is the author of  East Timor: Reveille for Courage, editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry, I remember my name and writes political commentary for a number of independent online magazines. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.

Read original article in Counter Currents

On the 30th August, Craig Murray posted

The travesty that is Julian Assange’s extradition hearing resumes fully on 7 September at the Old Bailey. I shall be abandoning my own legal team and going down to London to cover it again in full, for an expected three weeks. How this is going to work at the Old Bailey, I do not know. Covid restrictions presumably mean that the numbers in the public gallery will be tiny. As of now, there is no arrangement for Julian’s friends and family in place. It looks like 4am queuing is in prospect.

By 7 September it will be six months since I applied to resume my membership of the National Union of Journalists. I STILL have not the slightest idea who objected, or what the grounds were for objection. I have not heard from the NUJ for months. A senior official of an international journalists’ organisation has told us that he inquired, and learnt that the NUJ national executive has considered my application and set up a sub-committee to report. But if so, why is this secret, why have I not been informed, and why am I not allowed to know what the objection is? I find this all very sinister. At this stage it is not paranoid to wonder whose hand is behind this.

The practical effect of this is that without NUJ membership I cannot access a Press card, and avail myself of whatever media arrangements are in place for the Assange hearing (just as I was kept out of most of the Salmond trial). I have now reached the stage where I would like to take legal action against the NUJ, but the finances are beyond me. I am not going to ask you to donate because we are going to need all our resources for the contempt case against me, which the Crown drags out.

I shall be writing next week about my own case and that hearing earlier this week. I would just note now that the “virtual hearing” is entirely unsatisfactory and unfair on defendants. There was at least one occasion when my QC agreed with a suggestion of the judge when I would have instructed them not to had I been, as I should normally have been, seated near them in court and able to instruct.

More on Craig Murray’s Blog

On 26 August 2020, John Kendall Hawkins interviews Andrew Fowler

Andrew Fowler is an Australian award-winning investigative journalist and a former reporter for the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners programs. and the author of The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and WikiLeaks’ Fight for Freedom.

This is an updated edition of his 2011 account of the rise and political imprisonment of Assange. Much of that account explained how Assange seemingly inevitably moved toward an adversarial positioning against American imperialism abroad. He was a tonic for the indifference expressed by so many ordinary Americans in the traumatic aftermath of 9/11 and the rise of the surveillance state. Boston Legal’s Alan Shore (James Spader) seems to sum it up succinctly.

His updated version discusses the torture Assange is currently undergoing at Belmarsh prison in Britain. Here is a must-see film regarding his torture.

His book also contains the latest on UC Global’s comprehensive spying on Assange and his visitors at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in the last year of his ‘refuge’ there. UC Global is a Spanish security company hired to protect the embassy. It has since been revealed that they were passing on data to American intelligence, presumably the CIA. Certainly, Fowler implies such a connection in his updated book, citing two Assange hacking breaches of US government servers, each of which, Fowler writes, the CIA went berserk, as if they’d been hit by a foreign enemy. In the last (new) chapter of the book, “The Casino,” Fowler describes how outraged the CIA was when Assange published their hacking tools, known as Vault 7, on Wikileaks: “Sean Roche, the deputy director of digital innovation at the CIA, remembers the reaction from those inside the CIA. He said he got a call from another CIA director who was out of breath: ‘It was the equivalent of a digital Pearl Harbor.’” Below is my recent interview with the author.

* Note: Upon his release of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg was referred to as “the most dangerous man in the world.”

What is the up-to-date status of Julian’s health?

It seems quite clear that there is an attempt by the British and US administrations to destroy Assange, either driving him to suicide or a psychological breakdown. He has had a lung condition for a number of years, which has not been properly treated, and is clearly suffering from huge stress. During his last court appearance over a video link, there were long pauses between his words, even when speaking his own name.

When Chelsea Manning was imprisoned at Quantico she spent 23 hours per day in solitary confinement and was stripped naked at night. How does Julian’s treatment at Belmarsh compare? Manning’s treatment was said to be an attempt to coerce her into ratting on others, including, presumably Assange. What do you see as the ultimate purpose of Assange’s treatment? And how does it amount to torture?

The ultimate purpose of Assange’s treatment is a warning to others. Particularly other journalists. It’s the modern day equivalent of crucifixion, putting heads of enemies on spikes, or public hangings. The torture of Assange involves two main areas: being confined to three rooms in a single building for 7 years, and unable to leave without fear of arrest and extradition to Sweden which was playing an underhand role to allow Assange to be extrdited to the US. As the UN rapporteur on torture Nils Meltzer wrote that never in the two decades he had spent investigating war crimes had he ever seen such a ganging up of so many powerful nations against one individual. It is a testament to Assange’s mental strength that he resisted at all.

No effort was made by the Swedes to “question” Assange once he was lifted from the Ecuadorian Embassy, suggesting that their purpose all along was, as Assange and his defenders averred, a pretext for hand-over. You’d think there was some way to nix the bail jump charge given this likelihood of intergovernmental collusion. Thoughts?

There are no outstanding allegations for Assange to answer in Sweden. They were always only allegations, rather than charges. It is important to understand that if the Swedish prosecutors had charged Assange, they would have had to reveal the evidence of the ‘offences’ to his lawyers upon which those charges were based. And the evidence was not only thin, it pointed to a conspiracy. So it was possible to keep Assange in the embassy, while the UK prosecuting authority worked at ways of getting him extradited to Sweden. There seems little doubt that the plan all along was to use Sweden as a holding pen for Assange as the US applied for his extradition. It is possible he could take his case to the European Human Court of Human Rights, but the Brexit decision, makes this area extremely murky.

Can you provide more details about the UC Global, the Spanish company brought into the Ecuadorian Embassy to spy on Assange? Do we know more about what data that they gathered? Has a more definitive connection to the CIA been made? Has any further effort been put into place to quash the extradition process based on this fact alone? (He could never expect a fair trial back in the US if such surveillance and potentially framing were done.)

UC Global not only recorded hundreds of conversations inside the Ecuadorian embassy, but also photographed the phones [and] their location identifying IMEI numbers, passports and other documents of everyone who visited Assange in the embassy between 2015 and 2018. It’s my understanding that the case running in Madrid at the moment against the former CEO of UC Global, David Morales, who is charged with illegally spying on Assange and his lawyers (a specifically illegal act in Europe) will be used by the Assange legal team to argue that the US extradition case should be thrown out. It is my understanding that if any material gathered spying on Assange and his lawyers is used, or even known about, by those involved in the US prosecution – the charges must be withdrawn. There has been no definitive connection to the CIA. The closest I have managed to make the link is to the State Department and White House confidantes.

Snowden’s, Permanent Record is one of the best reads I’ve had in quite some time. You could argue that his revelations are equally, if not more significant, than what Assange offers up through Wikileaks. Where do you stand on the difference of value, if any, between Wikileaks and the Snowden revelations?

The main differences are: Assange is a recipient of information which as a journalist he publishes. Snowden is a source. When it comes to quantifying the different values of their work, Assange mainly provided information and analysis, whereas Snowden exposed intelligence gathering systems. In the source-journalist relationship, they both need each other. Both exposed the activities of a war-making machine. Without Assange it is unlikely that we would have had Snowden. It was WikiLeaks that opened up the public on a truly massive scale to a secret world of horror and deception which until then had been largely hidden from view. For Snowden’s part he brought the argument home that it wasn’t just foreign governments who were being spied on, it was the Americans themselves. They both played a significant and at times overlapping role in revealing the truth about the world we’re in.

Assange and Snowden seem to have had their differences over the years. Snowden describes in PR how he chose his nickname: “The final name I chose for my correspondence was ‘Verax,’ Latin for ‘speaker of truth,’ in the hopes of proposing an alternative to the model of a hacker called ‘Mendax’ (‘speaker of lies’)—the pseudonym of the young man who’d grow up to become WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange.” (p.193) There was irritability there between them, and Snowden didn’t trust Assange with his life (fearing that a dump, rather than a journo-processed revelation system, would close off future whistleblower arguments). His first choice had been the NYT, but their suppression of James Risen’s 2004 pre-election piece on STELLARWIND enraged him and he ended up going with Greenwald et al, instead. Snowden suggests character differences between the two, but on the other hand Assange really pissed the US government off when he sent a woman to rescue Snowden from Hong Kong. Some of us thought Obama was going to shoot down Bolivia One with president Evo Morales on board because Obama thought Snowden was onboard.

I see in Permanent Record Snowden says he decided not to go with WikiLeaks because of a change of policy to publish material unredacted, or ‘pristine’ as he calls it. Not sure why he says this because WL policy is to redact. [Here’s Snowden’s explanation.] WL did put all the Iraq/Afghanistan/Cablegate documents online un-redacted, but only after David Leigh of the Guardian published the password — and the material was already out on the internet. I’ve never asked Assange this, but there is another Mendax. In the 1920s an Australian science fiction writer Erle Cox’a Mendax was an eccentric inventor. Mendax experiments with ‘matter transmission’ ‘invisibility’ and ‘extracting gold from seawater’. There is a tension between the two, no doubt about it. Snowden still errs on the side of secrecy and Assange on the side of publication, possibly the difference between an ex-intelligence agent and a journalist.

Covid-19 seems to be the wild card in the deck, vis-a-vis Assange’s extradition to the US. If he doesn’t contract the illness in prison, then his extradition next year could prove problematic — courts, protests, circus. How do you think the virus will affect the legal proceedings? Do you think he’ll be better off under Biden’s DOJ? Or worse, given the perceived threat to the Democrats he represents? Do you see a way for his defense to exploit the DNC/Russia hack dishonesty?

Not sure how Covid will impact anything much, other than slowing down the process, which in itself is extremely problematic for Assange. He’s already been in prison or under house arrest (including the embassy) for nine years. I’m not sure what it takes to embarrass the UK government into refusing the extradition request, but the new indictment is surely turning the political prosecution into a farce. The US now wants to re-arrest Assange to wrap in a new indictment because the first one was likely to fail. In past years it might have been possible for the UK Government to reject this deceptive or incompetent behaviour by the US, but Britain is a spent force now on the world stage, and the US can do whatever it wants.

As for Biden’s DoJ, he’s called Assange a ‘high-tech terrorist’ and has recently said though he favours freedom of the press it should not compromise US national security. Not much hope there.

One hope Assange has is the possible pardoning of Snowden. It plays to Trump’s ‘deep state’ argument that the intelligence agencies are out of control and were involved in the fabrication of Russian collusion. [Here’s Snowden referencing his work for the “Deep State”] Assange’s work has exposed CIA atrocities (which supports Trump’s position) but WikiLeaks has also revealed evidence of war crimes by the US military, an establishment so admired by his core supporters. I fear that a Snowden pardon, much as I would personally welcome it, would only further isolate Assange.

If Assange goes down, do you see a future for journalism in the world — given America’s so-called leadership in this area, by way of the holy first amendment, but with dwindling global newspapers. The Guardian, WaPo and the NYT remain the only papers of record available in every international terminal in the world — and sales falling for them, the fight over what’s real news and what isn’t underway (a proxy war to control the narrative), how do you see the fight for journalism ahead?

If Assange goes down, it will be the third domino. First, the rising power of executive government; second, the destruction of the, at times, countervailing power of the mainstream media, including public broadcasters who draw their political power from their audiences (and thus to a certain extent are independent). The internet has savaged media budgets which has weakened the overall media environment and empowered governments to attack and cut public broadcasters. Assange who used the internet as a weapon for journalism provided a way to re-energise old media structures — engage readers and challenge executive government authority. He provided a way to democratise journalism. It is the reason he is such a threat to the hegemony of the US led five eyes nations, who until recently in a uni-polar political and strategic world, have ruled supreme.

I sometimes marvel at the effect on journalism and even constitutional issues in America that Australians have had. Early on, Assange seems to have declared war on the DoD and, later, the US State Department; John Pilger has, with his interview with the CIA “rogue” Duane Clarridge, exposed the full fuckin hubris of American foreign policy; and, Fox News has so dumbed down the political conversation in America that it may be heading for a fate like that depicted in Idiocracy. Any thoughts?

There’s a strange contradiction in Australia. Australians are very conservative, and cautious, but part of the national identity is tied to the notion of anti-authoritarianism, dating back to the nation’s convict past. The degradation of the mainly poor, transported to Australia from the UK and Ireland two centuries ago for often minor crimes, created a bedrock of antagonism against the ruling ‘elites’. This long history of dissent in Australia has produced outstanding journalists such as Pilger and Assange, Wilfred Burchett and Philip Knightly. I can think of no better way to explain how Assange and Murdoch became two of the most influential global media figures in the past century. Murdoch rose to power as an anti-establishment figure in the UK and Assange has done the same on a global basis.

Read Original Article John Menadue

Julian’s partner Stella Morris (Twitter , Facebook), is fighting day and night to bring him home. Please donate to his legal defence now to support the fight against U.S. extradition.

Donate at Crowd Justice Campaign

Julian's partner @StellaMoris1 is fighting day and night to bring him home. Please donate to his legal defence now to support the fight against U.S. extradition. #FreeAssangehttps://t.co/q3UGFDmUsN pic.twitter.com/wwl5uHYviF

— Father The Movie (@fathermovie) August 29, 2020

On the 31st July, 2020, Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis write

The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice is blocking the release of basic information about the judge who is to rule on Julian Assange’s extradition to the US in what appears to be an irregular application of the Freedom of Information Act, it can be revealed.

Declassified has also discovered that the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, has ordered extradition in 96% of the cases she has presided over for which information is publicly available.

Baraitser was appointed a district judge in October 2011 based at the Chief Magistrate’s Office in London, after being admitted as a solicitor in 1994. Next to no other information is available about her in the public domain.

Baraitser has been criticised for a number of her judgments so far concerning Assange, who has been incarcerated in a maximum security prison, HMP Belmarsh in London, since April 2019. These decisions include refusing Assange’s request for emergency bail during the Covid-19 pandemic and making him sit behind a glass screen during the hearing, rather than with his lawyers. 

Declassified recently revealed that Assange is one of just two of the 797 inmates in Belmarsh being held for violating bail conditions. Over 20% of inmates are held for murder.

Declassified has also seen evidence that the UK Home Office is blocking the release of information about home secretary Priti Patel’s role in the Assange extradition case.

The article covers many intrigues including:

• the difference in response between an FOI request on Judge Baraitser arguing the judiciary is not a public body versus the FOI request on Justin Barron where the FOI cost limit required a reduced FOI request.
• Baraitser has a 96% conviction rating on extradition trials, with a subsequent 26% rate of overturn by appeal
• An FOI request for all cases held at Woolwich Crown Court was denied
• Chief Magistrate Arbuthnot has a leader ship role in the case, possibly including selection of Judge Baraitser, yet has a conflict of interest due to her family’s connections to the British military and intelligence establishment
• An FOI on phone calls Home Secretary Priti Patel concerning the Assange case was denied, yet the Home Office appears to indicate that Patel has had communications regarding Assange during her tenure as home secretary.
• Patel is also linked to Arbuthnot’s husband, Lord Arbuthnot and will sign off Assange’s extradition to the US if it is ordered by Baraitser

Read whole article in the Daily Maverick’s Declassified UK or follow on Declassified UK on twitter

On the, 17th July 2020, Nina Cross sent this as yet unpublished article to the editors of this site.

There seem to be two notable tendencies of the British extradition courts. One is their protective nature towards oligarchs seeking asylum from Russia; the other is the extent they go to enable the extradition of Julian Assange. The first involves applying human rights and rights of asylum in the courts; the second involves removing human rights and rights of asylum from the courts.  By comparing them we can see the arbitrary nature of the British judiciary’s treatment of Assange.

We might remember British courts refused to extradite individuals to Russia for financial crimes connected to Yukos oil while the company was in the hands of oligarchs Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, champions of “market capitalism in Russia”. British courts claimed the allegations of financial crimes against individuals who were connected to Khodorkovsky and seeking asylum in the UK were politically motivated.  In contrast, we are told by the extradition court that Julian Assange, fighting extradition for charges of espionage, having exposed war crimes, is facing “serious allegations in the US.”   Yet if the average person were asked to choose, which of the following two charges do you think they would describe as politically motivated?

1. Massive financial crimes including defrauding the state
2. Espionage for publishing sources exposing government corruption and war crimes

It is notable that the British extradition courts hurried to refuse extradition requests relating to the first, but appear to be facilitating the second.  Is the interpretation of a politically motivated extradition request that arbitrary in British courts?

Alexander Temerko 

In 2005 Judge Timothy Workman refused to extraditefrom the UK several individuals wanted by the Russian authorities.  One of those was  Alexander Temerko, senior vice-president at Yukos, who was facing allegations of Conspiracy to Defraud and of Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice. Judge Workman claimed the case against Temerko was politically motivated by extension of the fact he believed the case against Khodorkovsky, eventually convicted by the Russian authorities in 2005 for tax evasion crimes (and again in 2010 for embezzlement and money laundering) was politically motivated. 

As a result, Temerko remained in the UK, and with the growth of his business in the UK became increasingly influential, and known for his connections to the Tory party to which he has made significant donations.   However, when Khodorkovsky took his case to the European Court of Human Rights, its ruling in 2011 did  not support the view it was politically motivated and in a second ruling in 2013 following his second trial and conviction, the ECHR claimed the case had ‘a healthy core‘.  Judge Workman may have had his reasons to refuse extradition, but by claiming the charges were politically motivated he allowed scope for interpretation the charges were trumped up, an interpretation clearly rejected by the ECHR.

On the publication of the ECHR ruling in 2011 the British media reported the findings but with no analysis of the convictions for financial crimes, while Khodorkovsky’s representative  was given a national platform.  The case of Khodorkovsky was presented to the West as a human rights case and he was effectively portrayed as a martyr.   Khodorkovsky would appear to be the righttype of Russian for the British political class, and his associates were the right type of asylum seekers for the extradition courts.

Public mobbing by public officials

Had the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, called Temerko a miserable little worm, we can imagine how this would have been presented at the extradition court of Judge Workman.  Yet the British Former Foreign Office Minister, Alan Duncan, made such a comment about Assange in the House of Commons.  Did we think then that Assange might be treated fairly?  Duncan’s collaboration with the Moreno government of Ecuador resulted in Assange being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy on 11th April last year, an act that violated international law. 

Immediately following Assange’s arrest, British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, made the following statement in what appeared to be an announcement presented in interview format, and broadcasted by the leading state broadcaster, the BBC, Jeremy Hunt: 

“No one is above the law. Julian Assange is no hero. He has hidden from the truthfor years and years and it is right that his future should be decided in the British judicial system. What has happened today is the result of years of careful diplomacy by the foreign office and I commend particularly our ambassador in Ecuador, and Alan Duncan and his team here in London for their work but also the very courageous decision by President Moreno in Ecuador to resolve the situation that has been going on for nearly seven years I mean it’s not so much Julian Assange being held hostage in the Ecuadorian Embassy, it’s actually Julian Assange holding the Ecuadorian embassy hostage in a situation that was absolutely intolerable for them so this will now be decided properly, independently by the British legal system respected throughout the world for its independent and integrity and that is the right outcome.”

BBC Political News: 

And What was the process that led to this between Ecuador and the UK?

Jeremy Hunt: 

Well we have been talking to them for a very very long time about how to resolve the situation. We are a law abiding country we always uphold the law so we have to follow all the international rules in a situation like this but there was a change of leadership by Ecuador, President Moreno took a courageous decision which has meant that we have been able to resolve the situation today.

This in effect announcement by Hunt appears to have been broadcasted in less than 90 minutes after Assange’s arrest, according to the times indicated, and before he even appeared in court. Hunt’s comments, how they were presented and when, demonstrate how he used his powerful position to shape the public’s view of Assange, an example of what Nils Melzer, UN rapporteur on Torture, has described as ‘public mobbing’. Hunt used a strategy of figurative language and insinuation to create suspicion around Assange. What ‘truth’ had Assange ‘hidden from’? Everyone knew he claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012, thereby jumping a police bail, which in 2019 was not attached to any investigation or existing or previous charges. In its 2015 decision of arbitrary detention, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) recognised Assange skipping police bail was a result of his seeking political asylum at the embassy. What truthwas Hunt therefore referring to? What ‘this’ would be ‘decided properly’? As there were no charges or even allegations made against Assange when Hunt made this speech, what was this mysterious vague badness hanging over Assange, evoked by Hunt, that the public should be so wary of and see as a reason to anticipate punishment, but that could not be clearly articulated?

Another term used by Hunt that day was ‘holding the Ecuadorian embassy hostage’. The power of such words should not be underestimated when used by political leaders. In fact, it has been described as a ‘rhetorical weapon’ used most enthusiastically by Barack Obama: 

“Never again will the American taxpayer be heldhostage by a bank that is too big to fail.” (January 21, 2010, Remarks on Financial Regulatory Reform)

Obama, a lawyer, used the term 70 times, demonstrating how highly he rated its political value, as has been pointed out:

President Obama and his speechwriters undoubtedly feel there is significant political value in playing the hostage card with respect to a whole host of domestic policy issues.

So why is it such a handy little weapon? We do not expect to hear the term ‘hostage’ from a leader without serious implications. When used to describe real cases we associate it with murder, death and danger. When used figuratively, it implies victimhood by one party subdued by another more powerful. Hunt wanted the public to believe Ecuador was being terrorised by Assange, and to support Moreno’s decision to expel him from the embassy. This was a flagrant violation of international laws, including non-refoulement, which means asylum cannot be removed, once granted, if the case for political persecution still exists. In Assange’s case it clearly still existed. Hunt’s comments were designed to legitimise Moreno’s actions. We now know that it was in fact Assange who was the victim inside the Ecuadorian embassy since Moreno came to power. He was denied visitors, a phone and internet access and then allowed limited access following intervention by UN officials. It has also come to light that he and his visitors were subjected to illegal and intrusive surveillance that was designed to benefit those engineering his extradition. In reality, Assange had been there entirely legitimately in accordance with international asylum law since the previous President, Rafael Correa, supported his application. Later that day, when Assange was indicted on a politically-motivated agenda by the US; it had nothing to do with the Ecuadorian embassy, which brought no charges against him, despite Hunt’s story to the public. The purpose of Hunt’s broadcast was clear: to discredit Assange, promote propaganda about his behaviour inside the embassy, airbrush his reason for being in the embassy and airbrush its legality.  

When was the last time a foreign secretary held a press interview about someone who breached a police bail several years previously? Is it a proportionate action by a government official towards someone with no criminal record, and not charged with any crime? We can imagine that Hunt’s remarks on the day of Assange’s arrest might have been written by a lawyer. They insinuate but do not name, they infer but do not clarify, and they were powerfully persuasive. And whom were they designed to persuade? The public or the courts? 

We might also read Hunt’s comments as an admission that his government had been able to arrest Assange because Moreno had broken ‘international rules,’ if not an actual admission that the UK government had stopped respecting them:

“…we have to follow all the international rules in a situation like this butthere was a change of leadership by Ecuador, President Moreno took a courageous decision which has meant that we have been able to resolve the situation today…”

What does this actually mean? That the British government chose not to invade the Ecuadorian embassy to capture Assange while the Correa government was in power? The reality behind this rhetoric was that by removing Assange’s asylum status in this politically motivated way, the Moreno government violated “international rules.” British politicians conspired to use this to send their authorities into Ecuadorian jurisdiction, the Ecuadorian embassy, to snatch Assange, denying him due legal process. 

The silence by the British media, and judiciary, following comments made about Assange by British leaders can be contrasted to the storm of hysterics over several comments made by Russian President Putin following Khodorkovsky’s first conviction in 2005, prior to his second. These include the following:

 “… As for Khodorkovsky, I have expressed my opinion on this on many occasions. But if you want me to repeat myself again now, I will. It is my conviction that “a thief should be in jail” [a quotation from a famous Soviet film starring Vladimir Vysotsky]. Khodorkovsky has been convicted, by court, for embezzlement, pretty major embezzlement. We’re talking about tax evasion and fraud involving billions of roubles. Then, very importantly, there was also the matter of his personal tax evasion.“

Outrage poured from Western media outlets.  The Guardian called it a ‘flagrant abuse of process’.   However, the ECHR ruled that Putin’s comments did not violate the convention protecting presumption of innocence because he had set his comments in the context of Khodorkovsky’s conviction.  The ruling makes the point also that Putin’s comment was spontaneous, made during a question-and-answer session with the general public. In contrast, Hunt’s comments about Assange were prepared and the interview appears to have been staged to take place directly after Assange’s arrest. It reached a mass audience through BBC Political News, a significant platform for British government announcements. 

https://ruptly.tv/en/videos/20190411-025

(this link shows Assange dragged out of embassy at 10.44

"Julian Assange is no hero. He has hidden from the truth for years and years"

UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says a "courageous decision" by Ecuador's new leader Lenin Moreno led to the arrest of #Wikileaks co-founder in Londonhttps://t.co/maAHGMUkjf #Assange pic.twitter.com/i8jzpSp4nq

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) April 11, 2019

this link shows Hunt making a statement about Assange’s arrest at 12.04

The charges against Assange brought by the US the same day of his arrest revealed the politically-motivated reason why the British authorities trapped him inside the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years.  It was never about sexual allegations:Swedish prosecutors were the last to know about his arrest despite all the years the Swedish authorities hung arrest warrants over him for allegations they failed to investigate and that contributed to the 2015 UNWGAD opinion of arbitrary detention.  On 11th April, Hunt publicly smeared and vilified Assange in an attempt to cover this politically-motivated abuse of process even before Assange stepped foot inside court. Even for this he had been given no time to prepare.

Enabling impunity 

Threats against Assange’s life have been made by powerful politicians (as seen here, here and here), some presented in court by his lawyers to explain why he sought asylum.  But the British courts’ routine dismissal of the death threats and instigations of violence by US public officials directed at Assange should be contrasted with the way the same extradition courts have rallied behind oligarchs fleeing Russia and claiming fear of persecution. Why are threats of violence and murder against Assange given a pass by British courts?

The denial of human rights in the case of Assange was seen in Judge Taylor’s sentencing statement to Assange’s notes of mitigation submitted on 2nd May last year, dismissing the UN ruling of arbitrary detention.  Her only reference to asylum was in the context of it being ‘revoked’ by the Moreno government of Ecuador, which, as has been made clear, was in fact a violation of international law of asylum.  And as Assange’s fears of extradition are unfolding in full view of the world, British judges have sent a journalist, who has held  authority to account for war crimes and corruption, to rot indefinitely in a category A prison.  From there he is fighting extradition to the US where the threats to his life have originated.  This is a stark contrast to the way British courts have listened with grave concerns to Russian oligarchs fleeing to Britain claiming asylum.

And it is not just Assange’s human rights they betray: the courts also ignore evidence of abuses of process in his case.  Assange’s case can be compared to the case of Lofti Raissi whom Judge Workman refused to extradite to the US in 2002.  Raissi was held in Belmarsh prison for a period of 5 months on ‘holding charges’ as the US tried to build a murder case against him, claiming he was linked to the 9/11 terrorist attack, the basis for a US extradition request.  However, it transpired that all Raissi had done was fail to disclose a knee injury, and a previous conviction for theft, leading to allegations he had misled the authorities in order to obtain a pilot’s licence.  The CPS “…repeatedly made statements for which they knew the evidence was either non-existent or erroneous”:

In 2008 the Court of Appeal, in a case brought by Raissi following refusal by British authorities to compensate the abuse he suffered, had this to say about the extradition case:

“Viewed objectively, it appears to us to be likely that the extradition proceedings were used for an ulterior purpose, namely to secure the appellant’s detention in custody in order to allow time for the US authorities to provide evidence of a terrorist offence.” 

“… it seems to us that the extradition proceedings themselves were a device to secure the appellant’s presence in the US for the purpose of investigating 9/11 rather than for the purpose of putting him on trial for non-disclosure offences.” 

Both the extradition and appeal courts recognised abuse of process by the CPS in the case of Raissi. Yet where Assange is concerned, the courts again turn a blind eye to serious questions about the handling of his case. They have ignored existing evidence that the CPS attempted to engineer Assange’s extradition to Sweden by pressuring the Swedish Prosecuting Authorities not to carry out a standard, preliminary interview with him in the UK. The courts have allowed what appear to be irregularities to go unchecked, enabling impunity.

As Assange fights for his life in continued arbitrary detention in overcrowded and understaffed category A Belmarsh prison, and vulnerable amid the Covid-19 pandemic, we see the arbitrary application of law by the British authorities. Each day Assange remains in Belmarsh, they align further with the political aspirations of Washington, enabling its impunity and the destruction of law.

On the 21st July 2020, the Stuttgarter Zeitung digital newspaper posted (Google translation)

Association ‘The Founders’

The association “Die Anstifter” awards the Stuttgart Peace Prize 2020 to the imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. It is endowed with 5000 euros.

Stuttgart – The Stuttgart Peace Prize 2020 of the association “Die Anstifter” goes to the imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange . The Australian-born has been in a London prison for about a year. The award for Assange is “a sign that the right to unconditional freedom of information and the press is not only protected, but enforced,” said club chairwoman Annette Ohme-Reinicke in Stuttgart on Tuesday.

With the award, the organization honors people or projects who are particularly committed to peace, justice and solidarity. The prize, endowed with 5000 euros, is to be awarded in Stuttgart on December 6 (11:00).

Read post in German at the Stuttgarter Zeitung

On the 25th June 2020 Oscar Grenfell writes

The Department of Justice today issued a superseding indictment against Julian Assange in the latest salvo of a decade-long campaign by the US government and its intelligence agencies to destroy the WikiLeaks founder and besmirch his reputation.

The new indictment does not contain any charges additional to those filed in May 2019. The 17 Espionage Act counts over WikiLeaks’ publication of documents leaked by Chelsea Manning exposing historic war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and illegal global diplomatic intrigues remain. These represent the greatest attack on press freedom and the First Amendment of the US Constitution in decades, directly targeting the right of all journalists to publish “national security” material.

The indictment also contains one charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. It was the first US count unveiled against Assange after he was dragged by British police from Ecuador’s London embassy in April 2019.

The additional material added to the introductory section of the new indictment is a desperate attempt to bolster that count, and the broader narrative that Assange is a “hacker,” not a publisher or journalist.

Its inclusion follows the public discrediting of the computer intrusion allegation, including in the first week of Assange’s British extradition hearings last February. According to the indictment, in March 2010, Manning asked Assange for assistance with cracking a hash value, or a password, that would have enabled her to log into the US army computer network anonymously.

It is now almost universally acknowledged that the hash value was never hacked. Manning, moreover, had by that point already gathered the material that she would provide to WikiLeaks. The purpose of her request, apparently made half in jest, was to browse the internet and download music anonymously.

The new indictment further exposes the attempt to extradite Assange to the US as a dirty-tricks political operation, rather than any sort of legal proceeding. It paints a picture of US government operatives pouring through decade-old tabloid gossip and dredging up the most unsavoury creatures of their own intelligence agencies to fling mud at Assange. It is an attempt to salvage their claim that he is a “hacker,” more than a year after they first publicly-unveiled charges against him.

Almost all of the new material has been on the public record in one form or other, for six years or longer.

Points four through six, for instance, reference Assange’s speeches to public conventions of computer experts in the Netherlands and Malaysia, in 2009 and 2010. The indictment claims that he encouraged those present to use their computing abilities to access classified material. To assert that such a statement, made in public, constitutes evidence of a “conspiracy,” is laughable.

However, the accusation continues the strand that runs throughout the indictment of seeking to criminalise standard journalistic practices, including encouraging sources and potential sources to provide a media organisation with newsworthy information in the public interest.

Sections F and G similarly allege that Assange and WikiLeaks associates encouraged administrators and others with access to computer systems to expose illegal activities by the intelligence agencies and corporate malfeasance. They are, again, based on statements at public gatherings spanning from 2013 to 2016, some of which have been viewable on the internet ever since.

Significantly, none of the events was held in the United States, but are cited as evidence of intent, or conspiracy, to violate American laws. This is in line with the unprecedented assertion of extraterritorial jurisdiction on which the entire indictment is based. The Justice Department is essentially arguing that domestic US laws apply to all individuals and gatherings in every part of the world.

Unlike the previous indictment, the latest US charge sheet condemns Assange over WikiLeaks’ role in assisting Edward Snowden to travel from Hong Kong to Russia in 2013, where he successfully obtained political asylum. Snowden is a multi-award winning whistleblower, who exposed illegal global surveillance operations by the US National Security Agency.

The document complains that WikiLeaks publicised its role in defending Snowden to display its commitment to whistleblower protection. This alone brands the new indictment as a further assault on fundamental journalistic practices.

A substantial part of the new material in the indictment appears to be based on testimony and information provided by two acknowledged informants of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, named in the document as “Teenager,” and Hector Monsegur, known by the online pseudonym “Sabu.”

In June 2019, WikiLeaks issued a statement reporting that the US government could be preparing a new indictment against Assange, based on testimony from Thordarson. The Icelandic man had made it known on social media that he was being ferried to the US for discussions with American government agencies. In subsequent press interviews, he revealed that Monsegur was also involved. WikiLeaks’ warning has now come to pass.

The indictment alleges that in early 2010, “Teenager” provided Assange with information stolen from a bank. It claims that the WikiLeaks founder “asked Teenager to commit computer intrusion and steal additional information, including audio recordings of phone conversations between officials in NATO Country-1, including members of parliament…”

The country being referenced is Iceland. The allegation that WikiLeaks attempted to surreptitiously record parliamentary conversations there has been in circulation for years. The story was only publicly promulgated after Thordarson began secretly working with the FBI. Its transparent purpose was to jeopardise WikiLeaks’ activities in a relatively liberal country where it enjoyed high levels of popular support.

Assange, moreover, has never been accused, let alone charged with a crime by any Icelandic agency. Senior government officials, however, including then Interior Minister Ögmundur Jonasson, have stated that FBI dirty-tricks operations were afoot against WikiLeaks.

Jonasson has testified that in June 2011, he blocked a plane load of FBI agents who had been sent to seek “our cooperation in what I understood as an operation to set up, to frame Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.” The frame had been accompanied by warnings of a plot to hack Icelandic government infrastructure.

The related new strand of the indictment asserts ties between WikiLeaks and computer hackers. The first set of alleged contacts, from December 2010 until the end of 2011, all involved “Teenager,” i.e., Thordarson, who claims to have been acting under the direction of Assange.

The most significant of those, beginning in June 2011, was with Lulzsec, a loose affiliation of US hackers. The supposed contact between WikiLeaks and the group was again brokered by Thordarson. The indictment alleges that Assange encouraged Lulzsec to hack into private security companies, including Intelligence Consulting Company, and provided them with scripts to search material gathered. It does not claim that Assange was involved in the computer intrusion.

That WikiLeaks published material obtained by people who had been in contact with Lulzsec has been known for years. In 2012, one of the hackers Jeremy Hammond was arrested and convicted for hacking into Stratfor, a private company dubbed a shadow CIA. WikiLeaks released emails from the firm showing that it had spied on activists and revealing its close relations to US government agencies.

The threadbare character of the allegations, however, is overshadowed by the fact that when Thordarson first made contact with Lulzsec, it was already effectively controlled by the FBI. Monsegur (“Sabu”), its leader, had been arrested on June 7, 2011, and had immediately agreed to collaborate with the US government.

A Justice Department press release accompanying the indictment coyly states: “In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI)…” This is a gross understatement. By that stage, Monsegur had been frantically burning associates for over six months, to avoid decades in prison, and had agreed to transform Lulzsec into a US government entrapment service.

It is not yet known whether Thordarson (“Teenager”) was already cooperating with the FBI when he made contact with Lulzsec. If he was, the conversations were between two FBI assets seeking to frame Assange.

Thordarson had insinuated himself into WikiLeaks as a 17-year-old volunteer in early 2010. In August 2011, Thordarson claims that he contacted the US embassy in Reykjavik, offering to assist in the “ongoing criminal investigation in the United States” against Assange.

By his own admission, Thordarson met with FBI agents multiple times in Reykjavik between 2011 and 2012. During that period, US authorities flew him to Denmark three times and to the US on one occasion, for secret meetings about WikiLeaks. He handed over WikiLeaks hard-drives and received thousands of dollars.

Some WikiLeaks collaborators who encountered him have stated that Thordarson’s behaviour was strange from the beginning, raising the possibility that he was sent into WikiLeaks as a plant.

Either way, Thordarson is an individual who could never be deemed a credible witness. WikiLeaks has alleged that he stole at least $50,000 from the organisation. 

In 2014, he pled guilty in an Icelandic court to 18 counts of fraud, embezzlement and theft, some of them relating to his missapropriations from WikiLeaks. The combined offenses carried a dollar value estimated at $US240,000. Thordarson was also convicted of impersonating Assange.

The following year he pled guilty to a raft of sexual offences, after admitting that he had coerced underage boys into performing sexual acts on him. A court-appointed psychologist found that he was a sociopath suffering from a “severe anti-social personality disorder.”

In Thordarson, a convicted paedophile and conman, and Monsegur, a former petty criminal turned stool pigeon, the US government has found the fitting representatives of its campaign against Assange. The reliance on testimony from both men demonstrates that the US extradition request should be dismissed as a criminal operation, involving individuals who themselves should be in prison.

The British courts and government, however, have made clear their support for the US-led vendetta against Assange, underscoring that it is up to the working class to take forward the fight for his freedom.

Read original article in World Socialist Web Site

On the 14th July, Craig Murray writes ‘Damage to the Soul’

The imprisonment of Julian Assange has been a catalogue of gross injustice heaped upon gross injustice, while a complicit media and indoctrinated population looks the other way. In a truly extraordinary twist, Assange is now being extradited on the basis of an indictment served in the UK, which is substantially different to the actual indictment he now faces in Virginia if extradited.

The Assange hearing was adjourned after its first full week, and its resumption has since been delayed by coronavirus. In that first full week, both the prosecution and the defence outlined their legal arguments over the indictment. As I reported in detail to an audience of millions, Assange’s legal team fairly well demolished the key arguments of the prosecution during that hearing.

This extract from my report of the Defence case is of particular relevance to what has since happened:

For the defence, Mark Summers QC stated that the USA charges were entirely dependent on three factual accusations of Assange behviour:

1) Assange helped Manning to decode a hash key to access classified material.
Summers stated this was a provably false allegation from the evidence of the Manning court-martial.

2) Assange solicited the material from Manning
Summers stated this was provably wrong from information available to the public

3) Assange knowingly put lives at risk
Summers stated this was provably wrong both from publicly available information and from specific involvement of the US government.

In summary, Summers stated the US government knew that the allegations being made were false as to fact, and they were demonstrably made in bad faith. This was therefore an abuse of process which should lead to dismissal of the extradition request. He described the above three counts as “rubbish, rubbish and rubbish”.

Summers then walked through the facts of the case. He said the charges from the USA divide the materials leaked by Manning to Wikileaks into three categories:

a) Diplomatic Cables
b) Guantanamo detainee assessment briefs
c) Iraq War rules of engagement
d) Afghan and Iraqi war logs

Summers then methodically went through a), b), c) and d) relating each in turn to alleged behaviours 1), 2) and 3), making twelve counts of explanation and exposition in all. This comprehensive account took some four hours and I shall not attempt to capture it here. I will rather give highlights, but will relate occasionally to the alleged behaviour number and/or the alleged materials letter. I hope you follow that – it took me some time to do so!

On 1) Summers at great length demonstrated conclusively that Manning had access to each material a) b) c) d) provided to Wikileaks without needing any code from Assange, and had that access before ever contacting Assange. Nor had Manning needed a code to conceal her identity as the prosecution alleged – the database for intelligence analysts Manning could access – as could thousands of others – did not require a username or password to access it from a work military computer. Summers quoted testimony of several officers from Manning’s court-martial to confirm this. Nor would breaking the systems admin code on the system give Manning access to any additional classified databases. Summers quoted evidence from the Manning court-martial, where this had been accepted, that the reason Manning wanted to get in to systems admin was to allow soldiers to put their video-games and movies on their government laptops, which in fact happened frequently.

Magistrate Baraitser twice made major interruptions. She observed that if Chelsea Manning did not know she could not be traced as the user who downloaded the databases, she might have sought Assange’s assistance to crack a code to conceal her identity from ignorance she did not need to do that, and to assist would still be an offence by Assange.

Summers pointed out that Manning knew that she did not need a username and password, because she actually accessed all the materials without one. Baraitser replied that this did not constitute proof she knew she could not be traced. Summers said in logic it made no sense to argue that she was seeking a code to conceal her user ID and password, where there was no user ID and password. Baraitser replied again he could not prove that. At this point Summers became somewhat testy and short with Baraitser, and took her through the court martial evidence again. Of which more…

Baraitser also made the point that even if Assange were helping Manning to crack an admin code, even if it did not enable Manning to access any more databases, that still was unauthorised use and would constitute the crime of aiding and abetting computer misuse, even if for an innocent purpose.

Now while there is no evidence that judge Baraitser is giving any serious consideration to the defence case, what this has done is show the prosecutors the holes in their argument which would cause them serious problems should they get Julian to trial in the United States. In particular, they are wary of the strong freedom of speech protections in the US constitution and so are desperate to portray Julian as a hacker, and not a journalist. But, as you can see above, their case for this is not looking strong.

So the prosecution needed a different case. They have therefore entirely changed the indictment against Julian in Virginia, and brought in a superseding indictment.

As you can see, this is about switching to charges firmly grounded in “hacking”, rather than in publishing leaks about appalling American war crimes. The new indictment is based on the evidence of a “supergrass”, Sigurdur Thordarson, who was acting a a paid informant to the FBI during his contact with Wikileaks.

Thordarson is fond of money and is a serial criminal. He was convicted on 22 December 2014 by Reykjanes District Court in Iceland of stealing over US $40,000 and over 13,000 euro from Wikileaks “Sunshine Press” accounts by forging documents in the name of Julian Assange, and given a two year jail sentence. Thordarson is also a convicted sex offender, and was convicted after being turned in to the police by Julian Assange, who found the evidence – including of offences involving a minor – on Thordarson’s computer.
[Updated 13.45 to add detail of Thordarson’s convictions].

There appears scope to doubt the motives and credentials of the FBI’s supergrass. 

The FBI have had Thordarson’s “Evidence” against Assange since long before the closing date for submissions in the extradition hearing, which was June 19th 2019. That they now feel the need to deploy this rather desperate stuff is a good sign of how they feel the extradition hearing has gone so far, as an indicator of the prospects of a successful prosecution in the USA.

This leaves the UK extradition in a state of absolute farce. I was involved in discussion with Wikileaks about what would happen when the superseding indictment was introduced at the procedural hearing last month. It ought not to have been accepted – it is over a year since the closing date, and a week of opening arguments on the old indictment have already been heard. The new indictment is plainly designed to redress flaws in the old one exposed at the hearing. 

The superseding indictment also is designed to counter defence witness affidavits which have been disclosed to the prosecution, including expert witness testimony which refutes the indictment on Assange’s alleged hacking assistance to Manning – until now the sole ground of the “hacking” accusation. This switch, we averred, was an outrageous proposition. Was the whole hearing to start again on the basis of the new indictment?

Then, to our amazement, the prosecution did not put forward the new indictment at the procedural hearing at all. To avoid these problems, it appears they are content to allow the extradition hearing to go ahead on the old indictment, when that is not in fact the indictment which awaits Assange in the United States. This is utterly outrageous. The prosecution will argue that the actual espionage charges themselves have not changed. But it is the indictment which forms the basis of the extradition hearing and the different indictment which would form the basis of any US prosecution. 

To have extradition decided on the merits of one indictment when the accused actually faces another is an outrage. To change the indictment long after the hearing is underway and defence evidence has been seen is an outrage. The lack of media outrage is an outrage.

None of which will come as any shock to those of us who have been paying attention. We have to continue to build public consciousness of the fact that the annihilation of a journalist for exposing war crimes, based on a catalogue of state lies and dodgy procedure, is not an act that the state can undertake without damage to the very soul of the nation.

Read original article and more in Craig’s Blog
and further reported in Consortium News as ‘One Outrage after Another’

On the 3rd July 2020 Mohamed Elmaazi writes as the world celebrates Julian’s birthday

The WikiLeaks publisher is wanted in the United States for his role in publishing classified US documents which revealed war crimes perpetrated by US-led forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Julian Assange’s supporters from around the world are posting messages of well-wishes to the WikiLeaks publisher, for his birthday on 3 July, as he remains incarcerated in Belmarsh maximum-security prison.

“We are calling on people to protest by posting selfies with a happy birthday message despite the fact that Julian Assange is spending a second birthday behind bars. He is guilty of no crime”, John Rees, of WikiLeaks’ official Don’t Extradite Assange Campaign, explained.

Twitter:
Happy birthday wishes to Julian Assange. Bittersweet wishes because this is what he is facing. Imprisoned for having the courage to publish material exposing the war crimes of the world’s most powerful empire. #HBDJA#JA49#HappyBirthdayAssange #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/wbH0VqwcJG
— Bean🔥 (@SomersetBean) July 3, 2020

Twitter:
Julian Assange is 49 today. He ‘celebrates’ in Belmarsh prison. Isolated for 23 hours a day. Why? Because he revealed American war crimes. The US wants him extradited. This must not happen. We demand his release #freejulianassange #dontextraditeassange #happybirthdayjulian pic.twitter.com/9ll34sYqcw
— Norsk PEN (@PEN_Norway) July 3, 2020

​Rees, himself a long-time journalist, called the extradition proceedings against Assange “an assault on the freedom of the press” which “should be dropped”.

A solidarity birthday vigil has been organised outside Belmarsh prison today which started from midday and is expected to continue to around 7pm.

The hashtags currently being used by social media users are #HBDJA, #JA49, #HappyBirthdayAssange and #FreeAssange.

Twitter:
Make a selfie video of you wishing Julian #Assange a Happy Birthday, include a fact about #AssangeCase.
And flood your social media with it using the #FreeAssangeBirthday along with whatever other relevant hashtags #Candle4Assange #HappyBirthdayAssange https://t.co/5gPHikDqyd
— Ian Rose (@IannRose) July 3, 2020

Mr Assange’s Mother: Thank you to all his supporters​

“Id like to thank all the supporters around the world working hard to save Julian, celebrating his important courageous journalism and protesting his brutal political persecution today” said Christine Assange, the award-wining journalist’s Australia-based mother, in a statement to Sputnik.

Twitter:
Today July 3rd is my sons 49th birthday
Here is a previously unpublished photo of 2 year old Julian, looking in the windows of an abandoned old house, hoping to discover something of great interest on the inside…hidden from view..
#Wikileaks #SaveJulian #HappyBirthdayJulian
pic.twitter.com/j9UfQevJle
— 🎗Christine Assange (@MrsC_Assange) July 3, 2020

Ms Assange, who no longer gives interviews, also thanked small independent media and journalists “who have continually investigated and exposed the facts of the 10 years of abuse of legal process” against her son. Mr Assange’s mother also passed on a special thanks to UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, along with his medical team. Mr Melzer, and two other experts in examining victims of torture, concluded last year that the WikiLeaks publisher showed clear symptoms of “psychological torture”.

Ex-Labour MP: Parliamentarians’ silence makes them ‘complicit’

Chris Williamson, a former shadow cabinet member with Labour, blasted the continued incarceration of Mr Assange as bringing “shame” onto the UK.

“[Mr Assange] has performed a vitally important international public service in exposing the abuse of corporate and state power, including war crimes” he said. The former MP for Derby North, who has since founded the political show Resistance TV, also lamented the fact that the response from most British parliamentarians has been “virtually non-existent”. “Their silence makes them complicit in, what can best be described as, the torture of Julian Assange and their failure to speak out brings our democracy into disrepute”, Mr Williamson added.

Doctors For Assange, who also received a special thanks from the incarcerated publisher’s mother, recently published a letter condemning his treatment which they described “medical neglect” and “torture”.

Twitter:
HappyBirthdayJulian
Today as you turn 49 and spend your 10th bday held in captivity, because you had the courage to publish US war crimes, I salute you.
While your tormentors continue to reveal their inhumanity, your power and grace only grows.
#HBDJA#JA49 #FreeAssange
pic.twitter.com/v2WWUiP0ab
— michelle (@pisces_uprising) July 2, 2020

Legal expert: Mr Assange has ‘defied the odds’ 

The messages of hope and support were also echoed by some in the legal profession. Polona Florijancic, of the group Lawyers for Assange, described the prosecution and incarceration of Mr Assange as a form of “increasingly grotesque lawfare” characterised by a “systematic and continuous disregard for his fundamental human rights”.

She said Mr Assange has displayed immense “strength of character” by “defying the odds and celebrating his 49th birthday”.

“We must not however lose sight of the very real danger posed to his life in the current situation and we must continue demanding his immediate release”, Ms Florijancic added.

He has been a ‘defender of Free Speech and a Free Press’ Assange supporter

“On Julian Assange’s 49th Birthday the second spent inside Maximum Security Belmarsh Prison, we celebrate his moral stamina and our commitment to him as a defender of Free Speech and a Free Press that has helped him, so far, survive state persecution by the USA and its allies”, said Emmy Butlin, spokesperson for the Committee to Defend Julian Assange.

“We salute Julian Assange as we commit to defend him as one of our own as he selflessly endures his ordeal”, Ms Butlin added.

Twitter: Despite all efforts to crush him physically and mentally, Julian Assange defies the odds and celebrates his 49th birthday today. Julian, we admire your resilience and your strength. #HappyBirthdayAssange #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/VJXYWkljPN
— Polona Florijančič (@PolonaFlori) July 3, 2020

The WikiLeaks publisher faces up to 175 years in prison in the the United States where he is wanted to stand trial for his role in publishing classified documents which revealed, among other things, war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and US occupied Cuba, Guantanamo Bay. Though the US has since declared that it has amended the indictment against Mr Assange to include alleged offences of collaborating with hackers, neither the defence nor the court has formally received this latest indictment, which has been criticised for its reliance on a convicted child abuser. The second part of Mr Assange’s substantive extradition hearings is due to begin on 7 September. 

Read original article in Sputnik News