Category: Uncategorized

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

On 23rd June 2020, Michael Selby-Green reports

Editor’s Note: The Assange case is about prosecuting the publisher for exposing war crimes that have not been prosecuted. This article explains how a Government creates a system to frustrate the rule of law

The British army’s choice of unqualified junior officers to lead its police investigations unit during and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq contributed to soldiers escaping accountability for abuses, former members of the unit have told Declassified UK.

Senior army commanders pressured a junior officer to stop an internal investigation into a British war crime in Iraq, writing it off as an “unfortunate incident in war”, a former member of the Royal Military Police’s Special Investigations Branch (SIB) has told Declassified UK. 

Another former senior SIB officer has said that British paratroopers should have been convicted of killing another Iraqi but they escaped punishment when a trial collapsed after failings in an SIB investigation. 

Declassified UK has spoken to four former soldiers in the SIB, which deployed to the Iraq conflict in 2003 alongside conventional troops, ready to investigate serious incidents involving UK forces, including potential British war crimes. None wanted to be named.

Decisions were made not to send sufficiently qualified senior investigating officers to command the SIB during the invasion and early tours, the former SIB members said. This made it easier for the army’s senior command to influence the investigations into abuses and created a backlog of unresolved cases,they say.

“I did not feel qualified to deal with an investigation of this scale and did not have sufficient resources,” one of the unit’s leaders later said. The SIB should have sent their “A-team” to Iraq, but instead dispatched officers who were “completely unqualified” to lead serious investigations in a theatre of war, a former senior SIB officer told Declassified UK. 

“They sent the wrong people… And to this day I don’t know why,” the source said. “The more I think about it, the more mad it becomes.”

The former senior SIB officer said that one would “absolutely 100%” expect to see more UK military prosecutions coming out of Iraq. He added, “You look at the amount of people who were prosecuted – virtually none. You know, how many people got away with murder?”

There have been only four publicly disclosed cases of UK soldiers facing court martial over abuses in Iraq, with five soldiers convicted, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has confirmed.

The killing of Zahir Zaher 

An Iraqi man, Zahir Zaher, was killed by British soldiers on 24 March 2003, at a roadblock on the outskirts of Zubayr near Basra in southern Iraq. Zaher had approached a UK checkpoint guarded by British tanks and started throwing stones while advancing. 

Sergeant Steven Roberts of the 2nd royal tank regiment warned Zaher to stop, before shooting at him with a pistol. The Iraqi survived and continued to throw stones. Soldiers from two of the tanks fired and hit the Iraqi, but also killed Roberts. Zaher was still alive and another soldier killed him with shots from close range.

At a 2006 inquest into the death of Sgt Roberts, the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith told the House of Lords the case would be closed, saying, “There is insufficient evidence to institute criminal proceedings in this case” and that “there is no suggestion that the chain of command acted unlawfully.”

…

The killing of Zahir Zaher 

An Iraqi man, Zahir Zaher, was killed by British soldiers on 24 March 2003, at a roadblock on the outskirts of Zubayr near Basra in southern Iraq. Zaher had approached a UK checkpoint guarded by British tanks and started throwing stones while advancing. 

Sergeant Steven Roberts of the 2nd royal tank regiment warned Zaher to stop, before shooting at him with a pistol. The Iraqi survived and continued to throw stones. Soldiers from two of the tanks fired and hit the Iraqi, but also killed Roberts. Zaher was still alive and another soldier killed him with shots from close range.

…

The killing of Nadhem Abdullah 

In November 2005 a UK judge stopped a trial of seven British soldiers from 3 Para of the Parachute Regiment who were accused of murdering an Iraqi civilian during Parke-Robinson’s time as head of the SIB unit.

The British soldiers were accused of dragging 18-year-old Nadhem Abdullah and another Iraqi out of their car in the town of Al-Ferkah, southern Iraq, in May 2003, forcing them to lie down and battering them with rifle butts, helmets, fists and feet. 

Abdullah was taken to hospital with internal bleeding to the back of the head and died on the way. The other man survived. The prosecution said blood found on one of the rifle butts matched the DNA of Abdullah’s family. The soldiers pleaded not guilty in court.

…

‘No intention of prosecuting any soldier’

But flaws in the RMP went beyond the use of inexperienced commanders and ineffective investigations. The document written by government legal employees noted that before 1 November 2009, commanding officers were able to investigate but then dismiss incidents which occurred under their own command without the need for a report to come from the RMP and service police.

…

Read whole article in Daily Maverick ‘s Declassified UK

On 21st June 2020, 60 minutes posted this video as screened on 9 News

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has made his name – and plenty of enemies – by publishing military and other highly sensitive secrets of multiple governments around the world. As a consequence, he now calls a maximum-security jail in England home while he fights a bitter battle with the Trump administration which wants him extradited to the United States. Before prison, the controversial – and now very frail – Australian spent seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. And that’s where Assange conceived his own top secrets – two sons with his, until now, equally secretive fiancée, Stella Moris.

Editors Note: Interviews with Still Morris, Andrew Wilkie and Pamela Anderson

Read more in 9News including statements from
Australian Government re Julian Assange
John Shipton and Stella Morris appeal for support from
the Australian Government

On the 24th June 2020, the Department of JusticeOffice of Public Affairs of the United States of America blind sided the legal world by announcing

New Allegations Assert Assange Conspired With “Anonymous” Affiliated Hackers, Among Others

A federal grand jury returned a second superseding indictment today charging Julian P. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with offenses that relate to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.   

The new indictment does not add additional counts to the prior 18-count superseding indictment returned against Assange in May 2019.  It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged.  According to the charging document, Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks.

Since the early days of WikiLeaks, Assange has spoken at hacking conferences to tout his own history as a “famous teenage hacker in Australia” and to encourage others to hack to obtain information for WikiLeaks.  In 2009, for instance, Assange told the Hacking At Random conference that WikiLeaks had obtained nonpublic documents from the Congressional Research Service by exploiting “a small vulnerability” inside the document distribution system of the United States Congress, and then asserted that “[t]his is what any one of you would find if you were actually looking.”

In 2010, Assange gained unauthorized access to a government computer system of a NATO country.  In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack.  With respect to one target, Assange asked the LulzSec leader to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents, databases and pdfs.  In another communication, Assange told the LulzSec leader that the most impactful release of hacked materials would be from the CIA, NSA, or the New York Times.  WikiLeaks obtained and published emails from a data breach committed against an American intelligence consulting company by an “Anonymous” and LulzSec-affiliated hacker.  According to that hacker, Assange indirectly asked him to spam that victim company again.

In addition, the broadened hacking conspiracy continues to allege that Assange conspired with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password hash to a classified U.S. Department of Defense computer. 

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime.  Assange is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on each count except for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, for which he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.  A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after taking into account the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and James A. Dawson, Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Division, FBI Washington Field Office, made the announcement. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Doherty-McCormick, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kellen S. Dwyer, Thomas W. Traxler, Alexander P. Berrang, and Gordon D. Kromberg, and Trial Attorneys Adam L. Small and Nicholas O. Hunter of the Justice Department’s National Security Division are prosecuting the case.

Assange is currently detained in the United Kingdom on an extradition request from the United States.  Assange’s extradition to the United States is being handled by the Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and UK authorities, including the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales.

Refer to ‘Offical’ announcement on the Department of Justice web site

Editor’s Note: This announcement has not been communicated to Julian’s legal team

On the 21st June 2020 Consortium News posted this special broadcast on Youtube

Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnnson & Julian Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson respond to two Guardian articles this week that delivered significant context to Wikileaks‘ 2010 “Collateral Murder” video release: In this video by Don’t Extradite Assange, Hrafnnson and Robinson are joined by former Reuters’ Baghdad bureau chief Dale Yates and Sami Ramadani, an Iraqi lecturer and writer.

Yates, subject of one of The Guardian articles, held the Baghdad post in 2007 when an Apache helicopter airstrike killed two of his staff members, Saeed Chmagh and Noor-Eldeen. Yates wasn’t allowed to report on what two U.S. Generals had shown Reuters at the time.

What we learn now is what Reuters wasn’t able to report, in particular how the death of one Reuters employee strongly appears to be a war crime. Yates reels at the deception and says Reuters was cheated by the U.S. brass.

Sami Ramadani speaks of the Iraqi reaction to the ‘Collateral Murder’ release and the evidence WikiLeaks published of torture at Abu Ghraib prison. The second Guardian article points out that in Assange’s indictment there is no mention of the Baghdad air strike footage, even though 40 of the 175 years in prison Assange faces relates to “Collateral Murder.”

Robinson explains that the charges are in fact about the publication of the Rules of Engagement, which Manning leaked to show that the Baghdad air strike had violated them.

Watch the replay of Saturday night’s program here, courtesy of Don’t Extradite Assange.

The two Guardian articles are:

1. Julian Assange indictment fails to mention WikiLeaks video that exposed US ‘war crimes’ in Iraq ( Paul Daley)

US prosecutors have failed to include one of WikiLeaks’ most shocking video revelations in the indictment against Julian Assange, a move that has brought accusations the US doesn’t want its “war crimes” exposed in public.

2. ‘All lies’: how the US military covered up gunning down two journalists in Iraq (Paul Daley)

For all the countless words from the United States military about its killing of the Iraqi Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, their colleague Dean Yates has two of his own: “All lies.”

On 16th June 2020 Paul Daley reports

Former Reuters journalist Dean Yates was in charge of the bureau in Baghdad when his Iraqi colleagues Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were killed. A WikiLeaks video called Collateral Murder later revealed details of their death

For all the countless words from the United States military about its killing of the Iraqi Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, their colleague Dean Yates has two of his own: “All lies.”

The former Reuters Baghdad bureau chief has also inked some on his arm – a permanent declaration of how those lies “fucked me up”, while he blamed first Namir – unfairly – and then himself for the killings.

…

Is the US concerned that referring to the video will give rise to war crimes charges against the military personnel involved in the attack? Certainly, bringing the video into the prosecution case against Assange could only vindicate his role in exposing the US military’s lies about the ghastly killings.

‘Loud wailing broke out’

Early on 12 July 2007 Yates sat in the “slot desk” in the Reuters office in Baghdad’s red zone. He was ready for the usual: a car bomb attack while Iraqis headed to work, a militant strike on a market, the police or the Iraqi military. It was quieter than usual.

Yates recalls: “Loud wailing broke out near the back of our office … I still remember the anguished face of the Iraqi colleague who burst through the door. Another colleague translated: ‘Namir and Saeed have been killed.’”

Reuters staff drove to the al-Amin neighbourhood where Namir had told colleagues he was going to check out a possible US dawn airstrike. Witnesses said Namir, a photographer, and Saeed, a driver/fixer, had been killed by US forces, possibly in an airstrike during a clash with militants.

While the bureau was in a crisis of anger and mourning, Yates still had to write the early stories about the two men killed on his watch. He initially wrote that they had died in what Iraqi police called “American military action”.

Yates says: “Pictures taken by our photographers and camera operators showed a minivan at the scene, its front mangled by a powerful concussive force … There was much we didn’t know. US soldiers had seized Namir’s two cameras, so we couldn’t check what he’d been photographing.”

By early evening the military spokesman still had not replied. Yates pressed him for a response – and for the return of Namir’s cameras. Just after midnight, the US military released a statement headlined: “Firefight in New Baghdad. US, Iraqi forces kill 9 insurgents, detain 13.” 

It quoted a US lieutenant as saying: “Nine insurgents were killed in the ensuing firefight. One insurgent was wounded and two civilians were killed during the firefight. The two civilians were reported as employees for the Reuters news service. There is no question that Coalition Forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force.”

Yates, shaking his head, says: “The US assertions that Namir and Saeed were killed during a firefight was all lies. But I didn’t know that at the time, so I updated my story to take in the US military’s statement.”

It was a shocking time for locally engaged staff of foreign news organisations in Baghdad. On 13 July, the day of Namir and Saeed’s funerals, Khalid Hassan, a New York Times reporter/translator, was shot dead.

After the funerals Yates pressed the US military for Namir’s cameras and for access to cameras and air-to-ground recordings involving the Apache that killed his colleagues.

On 14 July, Yates learned that militants had murdered a Reuters Iraqi text translator.

In an effort to save employees’ lives, he began collaborating with other foreign news organisation managers to engage with the US military to better understand its rules of engagement. 

“We dealt with them in good faith,” he says. “What a joke that turned out to be.” 

‘Cold-blooded murder’

On 15 July the US military returned Namir’s cameras. Namir had photographed the aftermath of an earlier shooting and, a few minutes later (just before his death), US military Humvees at a nearby crossroads. There were no frames of insurgent gunmen or clashes with US forces. Date and time stamps show that three hours after Namir died his camera photographed a US soldier in a barrack or tent. The troops who mopped up the killing scene evidently messed around with his cameras afterwards.

Reuters staff had by now spoken to 14 witnesses in al-Amin. All of them said they were unaware of any firefight that might have prompted the helicopter strike.Advertisement

Yates recalls: “The words that kept forming on my lips were ‘cold-blooded murder’.”

The Iraqi staff at Reuters, meanwhile, were concerned that the bureau was too soft on the US military. “But I could only write what we could establish and the US military was insisting Saeed and Namir were killed during a clash,” Yates says.

The meeting that put him on a path of destructive, paralysing – eventually suicidal – guilt and blame “that basically fucked me up for the next 10 years”, leaving him in a state of “moral injury”, happened at US military headquarters in the Green Zone on 25 July.

Yates and a Reuters colleague met the two US generals who had overseen the investigation into the killings of Namir and Saeed.

It was a long, off-the-record meeting. The generals revealed a mass of detail, telling them a US battalion had been seeking militias responsible for roadside bombs. They had called in helicopter support after coming under fire. One Apache had the call sign Crazy Horse 1-8.

“They described a group of men spotted by this Apache,” Yates says. “Some appeared to be armed and Crazy Horse 1-8 … had requested permission to fire because we were told these men were ‘military-aged males’ … and they appeared to have weapons and they were acting suspiciously. So, we were told those men on the ground were then ‘engaged’.”

The generals showed them photographs of what was collected after the shooting, including “a couple of AK-47s [assault rifles], an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] launcher and two cameras”.Advertisement

“I have wondered for many years how much of that meeting was carefully choreographed so we would go away with a certain impression of what happened. Well, for a time it worked,” Yates says.

There was some discussion about what permitted Crazy Horse 1-8 to open fire if there was no firefight. One of the generals insisted the dead were of “military age” and, because apparently armed, were therefore “expressing hostile intent”. 

Yates says: “Then they said, ‘OK, we are just going to show you a little bit of footage from the camera of Crazy Horse 1-8.’”

The generals showed them about three minutes of video, beginning with a group including Saeed and Namir on the street.

“We heard the pilot seek permission from the ground to attack.” After the pilot receives permission, the men are obscured. The chopper circles for a clear aim.

Yates says: “When the chopper circled around, Namir can be seen going to a corner and crouching down holding something – his long-lens camera – and is taking photographs of Humvees. One of the crew says, ‘He’s got an RPG’ … He’s clearly agitated. And then another 15, 20 seconds the crew gets a clear line of sight … I’m watching Namir crouching down with his camera which the pilot thinks is an RPG and they’re about to open fire. I then see a man I believe to be Saeed walking away, talking on the phone. Then cannon fire hits them. I’ve got my head in my hands … The generals stop the tape.”

The generals downplayed a slightly later incident when they said a van had pulled up and Crazy Horse 1-8 assessed it as aiding the insurgents, removing their bodies and weapons.

“At some point after watching that footage it became burnt into my mind that the reason the helicopter opened fire was because Namir was peering around the corner. I came to blame Namir for that attack, thinking that the helicopter fired because he made himself look suspicious and it just erased from my memory the fact that the order to open fire had already been given. They were going to open fire anyway. And the one person who picked this up was Assange. On the day that he released the tape [5 April 2010] he said that helicopter opened fire because it sought permission and was given permission. And he said something like, ‘If that’s based on the rules of engagement then the rules of engagement are wrong.’”

Reuters asked for the entire video. The general refused, saying Reuters had to seek it under freedom of information laws. The agency did so, but its requests were denied.

During the next year, Yates checked when it might be released. All the while he and other executives from foreign news organisations continued their good faith meetings with various US generals to enhance the safety of their Baghdad staff.

Read whole article with many photos in the Guardian

And a follow up interview of Dean Yates by Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National Breakfast

On the 6th January 2020, Jean-Paul Radet posted in French with the following English translation

A NICE ARTICLE IN “PARIS-MATCH” ABOUT ASSANGE, FATHER AND SON

ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN N°3690 FROM JANUARY 23RD TO 29TH, 2020

FOR JOHN, HIS FATHER, PEOPLE WHO ACCUSE ASSANGE OF ENDANGERING LIVES SWIM UP TO THEIR NECKS IN A RIVER OF BLOOD.

By Sarah Mabrouk and Flore Olive

During his last visit, which lasted an hour and a half, Julian smiled at him once. If John Shipton points this out, it is because his son is no longer smiling: “As you can see from the photos taken when he was arrested in April, he is no longer the one we all knew, so sweet, funny and smart. “Julian Assange’s face is swollen, a common symptom, according to his father, in people under constant stress. “It can lead to swelling… When he was at the Ecuadorian embassy, he had a dental abscess, a nerve infection that he was not allowed to treat. He also suffered from musculoskeletal problems and could no longer lift his arm… Since he’s been incarcerated, he’s lost 15 kilos”.

Julian Assange has been detained since 11 April near London in Belmarsh, the prison the British call “our Guantanamo” (“our Guantanamo”). Initially placed in the high-security unit among the most dangerous criminals in the country, he had to be transferred on 18 May to the medical service, where his condition has continued to deteriorate. At the October 21 hearing on his extradition request to the United States (postponed until February 2020), the public saw a frail, sickly man on the stand who was having trouble “declaring his identity and date of birth”. Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, visited him with two doctors. “Unless the United Kingdom urgently changes course and improves its inhuman situation, Assange’s continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse could soon cost him his life,” he wrote. He calls for his release. In his wake, sixty doctors have issued an open letter to the Interior Minister asking that Julian Assange be transferred to hospital. According to them, in view of the “available evidence”, there are “real fears that he will die in prison”.

In an interview he gave us in 2010, Julian Assange spoke of his immoderate taste for long walks or horseback rides, fishing, hunting. “I grew up like Tom Sawyer, on farm. I like to live outdoors,” he said. Today, he is in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. As he confided to his friend Srecko Horvat, he has found a way of “escaping” in this tight cell: he walks back and forth, imagining that he is walking across Europe, covering 10 to 15 kilometres a day. During the forty-five minutes he spends in the walking yard, the other prisoners are kept away. He meets them only at mass, twice a week. Julian is not a believer but, explains his father, he goes there “just to socialize. His bedside book is Solzhenitsyn’s “Pavilion for Cancer Patients”, but he is not allowed to go to the library and has only recently been given a computer. According to a UN report released in November, the prolonged isolation causes irreparable damage and can be considered torture. Since 2015, the United Nations has prohibited its extension beyond 15 days.

Julian Assange gets two visits a month, lasting two hours. To get to him, you have to pass through three airlocks and submit to the control of a sniffer dog. Mobile phones are forbidden, as well as paper and food. His father brings him some canteen food (£20), but does not address any issues that make him angry: Julian is too depressed. He prefers to keep him informed of what is being done for his cause. He also gives him news about his children, his mother, his sister and his brother. Julian is very worried about dying in the United States,” he says, “about never seeing the people he cares about. It’s heartbreaking. When you imagine that they’re going to take away everything that makes you human, you only have a feeling of desolation.”

John Shipton no longer has any photographs with his son. All his albums, as well as many documents, were stolen from his home in Australia three years ago. Then family’s been threatened, harassed. Because whistleblower Chelsea Manning refused to testify against the man suspected of helping her crack a password, she went back to prison. Did Julian Assange have any idea what his revelations would cost him? In 2010, he told us: “I have become the main target, because such powerful organizations cannot lose face. To do so, they have to shoot the central figure, which is me. During my detention, I asked myself this question: “Is what I am doing worthwhile? Have I made mistakes? But in the end, my conviction was strengthened”.

So far, Julian Assange has not been convicted of any crime, but of a minor offence: violating the conditions of his bail by taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. He feared that Sweden, where he was being prosecuted for sexual assault, would extradite him to the United States. He remained in the embassy for seven years, as if he were walled up, until the new Ecuadorian president, Lenin Moreno, ordered his surrender to the British authorities. That was on 11 April and his sentence ended in September. Assange remained in prison, however, under an extradition request from the United States, which accuses him of spying for publishing classified information. These include “Collateral Murder,” a video of a 2007 US army air raid on Baghdad in which several civilians were killed, including two Reuters journalists, and “War Logs,” secret documents about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the information was published by Der Spiegel, the New York Times and the Guardian even before WikiLeaks, “which, when we released it, had a technical problem,” said investigative journalist John Goetz, who spent several days with Assange and other journalists studying the documents. “We discussed what to put forward, we made all the decisions as a team. It’s absurd to pretend that Julian is not a journalist. We were doing the same thing. “In the name of that status, Assange advocates the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. A New York judge ruled in his favor and dismissed the Democratic National Committee, which was suing for the release of his e-mails prior to the 2016 presidential election. But many U.S. politicians claimed that Assange was just a “hacker. Thus, for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, WikiLeaks is not a media organization but a “hostile intelligence service. “This Secretary of State, like the American officials who slandered Julian, are the same ones who were responsible for planning the destruction of Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Sudan,” explains John Shipton, who recalls that Assange received 16 major journalism awards. “These people are responsible for the deaths of 1.5 million people and the suffering of millions more, they are swimming up to their necks in a river of blood, but they point their fingers at Julian Assange and claim that he “put lives in danger.” This is beyond grotesque, it’s obscene! “He said that if extradition is decided, it would mean that in the future “the media, including the European media, could be attacked for publishing information that the United States does not want to be disclosed”.

Niels Melzer, the UN rapporteur, who sees espionage charges as the basis for “classic political crime”, explained that British law prohibits extradition for this type of offence. He denounces the conditions under which a trial would take place. “They will present evidence to which the defence will not have access and it will take place behind closed doors, in Alexandria, Virginia, with a jury constituted, in an area where 85% of the people work for the Ministry of Defence, the CIA and the NSA. “Melzer hopes the European Court of Human Rights will intervene. “If it allows extradition in these circumstances,” he said, “it will be a failure of The Rule of Law”.

John Shipton also knows that his son’s salvation depends on Europe. He hopes that not only MEPs, but also the people – what he calls “the grassroots” – will be able to exert pressure. Through him, Julian Assange made us say: “I miss France and Paris very much and France’s unfailing support is much appreciated. “If convicted, the founder of WikiLeaks could face up to 175 years in prison under these inhumane conditions. John Shipton wants to believe that no matter what happens, the movement started by his son will continue: “We may be moving slowly but, like a glacier that joins the sea, inescapably”.

JOHN SHIPTON KNOWS HIS SON’S SALVATION DEPENDS ON EUROPE

Original posting in Jean-Paul’s Facebook page

Radio Free Assange is a 24/7 radio program dedicated to ending the political persecution of Julian Assange. 

Radio Free Assange is an algorithmically curated collage of sound bits found online: songs and remixes, podcasts, documentaries, speeches, protests, interviews…

It bursts with surprising soundscapes, spanning from joy to anger, in defense of uncompromising journalistic activities worldwide.

Radio Free Assange invites all people, musicians, artists, to give a voice, a song or some noise, shedding light on Assange’s situation, and contribute to ongoing efforts aiming towards his liberation.

send suggestions (including links) to this email radiofreeassange[@]protonmail.com

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PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT WAR CRIMES