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On 16th April 2020, Stefania Maurizi writes

Julian Assange is not a person who likes to appear fragile. Quite the opposite; to protect himself and his organisation, he has always avoided revealing his vulnerabilities and those of his organisation, WikiLeaks. Thus only extreme concern could have made his partner, Stella Morris, finally step out of anonymity last week to reveal not only that behind Mr. WikiLeaks there is a family man with two little children, but also that she fears losing him to coronavirus. In fact, his health is already in shambles, and now that judge Vanessa Baraitser – who presides over his extradition hearing – has denied him permission to leave the Belmarsh high-security prison in London, he is at risk like never before.

Fatto Quotidiano has had exclusive access to Morris’ court statement, and to some of the UK authorities’ internal communications on Julian Assange obtained through a five-year-long Freedom of Information Act litigation which is still ongoing, as well as to UG Global internal documents on the espionage activities against Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Documents revealing the extreme conditions Julian Assange has been living under in recent years.

Suicide risk, isolation, coronavirus

“The most difficult time in Belmarsh was in the months when in the Healthcare unit, he was in effective solitary confinement for most of the time. He finds isolation and its prospect terrifying”, Stella Morris writes in her statement to the judge, full of concern for her partner. “I have feared with strong reason for a long time that I will lose Julian to suicide if there is no way in which he can stop his extradition to the USA”, Morris continues in her declaration, “I now fear I may lose him for different reasons and sooner to the virus. I know very well that his health is extremely poor and can detail the different aspects of that poor health”. Morris describes how she had observed her partner on different occasions when he was in the Embassy and “how he struggled with physical crises as well mental”. At Belmarsh, things got worse and worse: “When in the Healthcare unit”, Stella Morris states, “he was taken from a ward into a single cell for many months in a form of isolation save for a very few hours each day I noticed how he, as I described at the time was visibly ‘very diminished…like a withering flower’. I observed how he could no longer function coherently. There is no doubt in my mind that that experience was one which it would be extraordinary worrying if it were to be repeated as I believe it is now. It is a matter of general knowledge that the future of the coronavirus will require enforcement of whatever forms of isolation, however inadequate, can be maintained in an institutional setting”.

The fact that even in these precarious conditions the British authorities refuse to release Julian Assange from Belmarsh comes as no surprise to those who have investigated his case in the last decade. Documents we have obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show the historic lack of interest by the UK authorities in how confinement inside the Ecuadorian embassy was impacting Assange’s health. In one of the internal emails dated November 2012 and written by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) – the UK authority currently in charge of handling the US extradition request – the CPS wrote: “I heard the BBC World service radio report early this morning about his health […] There is no question of him being allowed out of the Ecuadorian embassy, treated and then allowed to go back. He would be arrested as soon as was appropriate […] As for the weight lost, there are many people of my acquaintance [obviously just women] who would always welcome this”.

A family man

The revelations that Julian Assange has two children surprised everyone, even long-time media partners of WikiLeaks. The author of this article has worked on the secret WikiLeaks documents for the last 11 years and has met him and the WikiLeaks journalists dozens of times. Assange has never, ever introduced his children or partner to us. Stella Morris has been a constant presence in the WikiLeaks team since 2011, and some of the media partners guessed at a romantic relationship between Assange and Morris and knew he enjoys children, but the WikiLeaks founder has always protected his private life. 

Stella Morris, whose previous name was Sara Gonzalez Devant, has worked for many years as a legal researcher for the Julian Assange case. Her academic background is notable: she graduated in Law and Politics from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and obtained a Master of Science in Forced Migrations from the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre (RSC). Professor Matthew Gibney, Director of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, told Il Fatto Quotidiano: “She was a serious, determined, driven, mature and intelligent student. She came to Oxford with some important practical experience because she had worked in the Office of the President of East Timor in the early 2000s. She was awarded the prize for best thesis in her year at Oxford for a thesis on East Timor and displacement. This was a considerable achievement amidst an impressive bunch of students

UC Global spies: Operation Diaper

While Julian Assange and Stella Morris were shielding their private lives from the eyes of dozens of media people dealing with WikiLeaks for years, they were exposed to unprecedented spying activities by UC Global, a company based in Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, in southern Spain, which had been engaged by the Ecuadorian authorities to protect their embassy in London and Julian Assange.

Fatto Quotidiano has had access to multiple audios, videos, emails and pictures. UC Global targeted everyone: not even Gabriel, Morris and Assange’s firstborn son, was spared by the UC Global spies. A lengthy video shows how even the baby’s wails were recorded by the microphones placed inside the embassy. Emails provide evidence that while UC Global was very interested in the lawyer Renata Avila, in Sarah Harrison, the WikiLeaks’ journalist who flew to Hong Kong to save Snowden, in the Croatian philosopher Srecko Horvat, in the film-makers and journalist Juan and José Passarelli, and in Assange’s lawyers, Baltazar Garzon and Jennifer Robinson, they devoted “special attention” to Stella Morris. “We believe that is a false name”, UC Global’s boss, Davide Morales writes in his emails to the UC Global employees, saying that there were rumors “she had a baby by the host. She is supposedly Uruguayan, but once we came to identify a person related to her (mother) in Catalonia. If necessary I want a person fully dedicated to this activity, so if you have to hire someone to do it, tell me. All this has to be considered top secret so that the diffusion is limited”.

The baby UC Global was referring to is Gabriel, the firstborn son of Morris and Assange. To try to protect him and avoid revealing his identity, Gabriel was brought to the embassy to visit his father by a common friend. But UC Global was skeptical that the friend was the actual father, as “he is homosexual”.

The UC Global spying activities against WikiLeaks are now at the center of a criminal investigation by judge José de la Mata of Spain’s High Court (Audiencia Nacional). According to a protected witness, UC Global even planned to steal the baby’s diaper. By gathering his feces and performing a DNA test, they hoped to establish whether the newborn was a secret son fathered by Julian Assange. It was only thanks to the fact that a UC Global employee alerted the mother that the plan collapsed. However, the CIA might already know a lot about the little child: according to a protected witness, the videos, the audio recordings, the pictures and emails gathered at the Ecuadorian embassy by UC Global were shared with US intelligence.

Spanish lawyer Aitor Martinez, a member of Julian Assange’s legal team who was also filmed by UC Global, thinks that these activities targeting the WikiLeaks founder, his partner, children and the collaborators and lawyers, doctors, and journalists who visited him were so extreme that extradition to the US must be denied.

Original Article in Fatto Quotidiano

On the 14th April 2020, Helen writes in WISE Up Action

Introduction

Judge Vanessa Baraitser, currently presiding over Julian Assange’s extradition hearings, proposed on April 7^thto remove reporting restrictions on the identity of a key witness in the case. The witness, known as ‘AA’ in court, is Assange’s partner: her identity was already known to the Court, the defence and the prosecution. ‘AA’ asked to remain anonymous to protect herself and the couple’s young children from intrusions by the media. Assange’s defence team cited Article 8 of the Human Rights Act which “protects your right to respect for your private life, your family life, your home and your correspondence (letters, telephone calls and emails, for example)”(1) The judge ruled that “the woman’s right to a private family life was outweighed by the need for open justice.” (2)

The defence team argued that, without such restrictions, ‘AA’ and her children risked ‘disproportionate’ interference with their private lives and stated it would lodge an appeal with the High Court. Until the outcome of the appeal the reporting restrictions would have remained in place.

However, on April 11^th, Wikileaks released a recording of Assange’s partner, Stella Morris (3), presumably to pre-empt further press enquiry and intrusion.

Who was behind this move to force a reluctant young mother to come forward?

According to the Independent’s report of the hearing on the 7^th April, Judge Baraitser’s ruling followed “a submission by the PA news agency via telephone conference to the court.” (4) So what is the “PA news agency” and why would a British judge listen to them?

This article, explaining the nature of the Press Association was written in the days following the April 7^th hearing, but since the release of the interview with Stella Morris it was decided to publish the article with modifications to update it appropriately. The interview with Stella Morris is moving and courageous. Having spent years trying to protect her young family from media intrusion the cruel pressures of Baraitser and the Press Agency, and the real and present danger that Assange could die in prison have forced her to speak out.

The Press Association

The ‘PA news agency’ is the Press Association, which was rebranded last year as the PA Media Group Ltd.

A press agency is an “organisation that gathers, writes, and distributes news from around a nation or the world to newspapers, periodicals, radio and television broadcasters, government agencies, and other users.’ It supplies ‘news’ to its subscribers and “All the mass media depend upon the agencies for the bulk of the news, even including those few that have extensive news-gathering resources of their own.” (5)The Press Association is the national press agency for the UK and Ireland and contains “a diverse portfolio of specialist media companies spanning news & information, data, technology, marketing and communications.” (6)It was the source, in 2009, of 70% of all news stories in five ‘most prestigious Fleet Street titles”.(7)

It might therefore seem that the Press Association’s  highly effective intervention in the Assange case was public-spirited and disinterested, concerned only keep the public fully informed.

In fact of course this was an intervention by an exceedingly powerful, well-connected and inter-connected  business bloc, whose shareholders and directors have links with finance, government, industry and digital communication companies.

. . .

Read whole article in WISE Up Action

On 16th April 2020, Stefania Maurizi presents on Consortium News

Documents obtained under FOI request by Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, then working for La Repubblica, revealed that the UK’s crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were “calling the shots” in Assange’s Swedish case. Speaking at the ‘Free the Truth: Free Assange’ event on the anniversary of his incarceration, Maurizi describes her relentless pursuit of state documents to reveal the real goings-on between the UK and Sweden that locked Assange in to many years of arbitrary detention.

Initially responsive, Sweden gave Maurizi key documents that revealed the UK Crown Prosecution Service was giving instruction to the Swedes.

Maurizi says she has received “the tip of the iceberg” of documents, in response. Hundreds instead of tens of thousands, and none at all from critical moments, such as when Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy. When cornered (because the Swedes had revealed the existence of many more documents) the UK said they had deleted files. They also refused access because they only had hard copies, whereas the Swedes had declined because they only had electronic copies. Go figure.

Maurizi has been doing this FOI research at her own expense, because the major news outlets she worked for, she says with an air of amazement: “didn’t want to pay for this work”. Recently Maurizi received a grant to pay the five lawyers working with her (in the UK, US and Australia) frugal-to-no amounts for their services. “Just because they want to learn the truth. Because they want to honour fact.”, she explains.

Next week, Maurizi announces, they will extend the litigation from the UK to the US.

‘Free the Truth: Free Assange’ live stream courtesy of Deepa Govindarajan Driver, April 11 2020. Full conference on YouTube

The original document Maurizi have obtained under FOIA ( from Twitter)

Transcript on Catherine Brown’s Blog

On April 11th, the anniversary of Julian’s arbitrary detention in UK prisons, Julian’s fiancee talks to the cameras

Editor’s Note: Was this forced by Judge Baraitser’s court disclosures or a voluntary decision for the family to step into the limelight?

• Stella Morris fell in love with Assange five years ago while visiting him
• She is South-African born lawyer and changed name from Sara Gonzalez Devant 
• The couple have been engaged since 2017 and relationship began in 2015
• She first visited him while working on legal bid to halt extraditions to the US [Editor’s Note: Sweden?]
• First child, Gabriel, was conceived in 2016 before the couple’s engagement
• Couple believe US intelligence agencies tried stealing son’s DNA from his nappy
• Miss Morris had second son, Max, in February 2019, with birth filmed on a GoPro
• Assange was visited in prison by both sons, when Max was three months old

Coverage in the
Daily Mail and fact checked in RT News
The Evening Standard
ABC News

A Google translation of a letter dated 11th April 2020

A year after Julian Assange’s imprisonment in the United Kingdom, the three unions of French journalists, members of the IFJ (SNJ, SNJ-CGT, CFDT Journalists), sent him a letter of solidarity.

Dear Julian,

In these times of pandemic where releases are massively granted to prisoners from several countries of the world, your release has been refused by the judge who intends to keep you behind bars in order to continue the hearings on your potential extradition to American soil . Hearings that are part of a flawed procedure, preventing an effective organization for your defense.

On behalf of the three unions of French journalists members of the IFJ (SNJ, SNJ-CGT, CFDT Journalists), we extend our deep support to you in the face of the avalanche of injustices that you have suffered for almost eight years. We can never forget the ordeal you are going through for having succeeded in making possible the most massive leaks of information of general interest in the 21st century. And we can never thank you enough for your titanic work which has enabled journalists from around the world to relay to the general public the files that you have helped to make accessible.

At the time of writing, it has been a year, to the day, since the British authorities took physical possession of your destiny by forcing you into the high security prison at Belmarsh, near London, where you are now being held in a purely arbitrary manner, on political criteria that your jailers, the British authorities, no longer even hide.

International solidarity is yours, but despite the multiple demonstrations outside the prison, information campaigns on social networks, petitions, open letters to institutions and other press releases, arbitrariness and unfairness overwhelm you. Ink has been spilled in many countries around the world to demand your release. But, and you yourself have helped to reveal it in the eyes of all, the methods of those who are striving for truth and transparency around the world are proving to be tenacious: the cogs put in place to make you pay for your courage doesn’t have not yet given in to initiatives in favor of your release.

Julian Assange, thank you for having given strength and inspiration to a number of citizens who are committed to making transparent the criminal designs and the operating modes of administrations which survive only by the opacity of their actions.

A considerable mind has kept you going until this day. May the moral support that we send you in this letter allow you to hold on, the time necessary to find a positive outcome to the sham of judgment organized by your jailers. The time needed to repair eight years of forced confinement, purely political.

Hold on, Julian, for yourself, your family and all those who count on you around the world, because you have become a symbol of the freedom to inform. We need you ! Know that our unions will never stop defending you and putting all means in its possession with the aim of finally freeing you. You can count on us !

Yours,

SNJ, SNJ-CGT, CFDT-Journalists

Paris, April 11, 2020.

Original Post in French on International Federation of Journalists Web Site

On the 27th March Emmy wrote

Editor’s Note: This article is included as Julian’s protagonists have seemingly unlimited resources to spread misinformation and undermine Julians character. We are many and setting the record straight and keeping the publishers honest is an integral part of the campaign

Correcting the record in the Julian Assange case is essential part of our solidarity work in support of the WikiLeaks founder and in these Corvid-19 days of social distancing hampering our street actions, provides an effective alternative of action with significant impact.

I wrote to The Evening Standard twice highlighting errors in their reporting and requesting they set the record straight. Both times their response has been good.

On March 18th this year I highlighted that their article with the title: “The Londoner: Father fears Assange will die in jail” incorrectly stated that: “Assange had been set to be extradited to Sweden over rape charges, but these were dropped last year as the complainant’s memory faded”.

I pointed out their error correcting the record that Julian Assange was never charged in Sweden and that the case remained in preliminary stage investigating allegations only.

I provided them with several resources backing up my complaint like links to the UK’s Supreme Court clarifying note, and more recently, statements by Swedish Prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson to the press:

“I would like to make the following very clear: my decision to re-open the preliminary investigation is not equivalent on whether or not to file an indictment with the courts. This is the matter we’ll have to revisit,”

as reported by CNN

“Deputy Chief Prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson reopened the remaining case after Assange left the embassy, but she said on Tuesday the passage of time meant there was not enough evidence to indict Assange.

“After conducting a comprehensive assessment of what has emerged during the course of the preliminary investigation I then make the assessment that the evidence is not strong enough to form the basis for filing an indictment,” she told a news conference. ”

as reported by Reuters.

Concluding I asked them in the name of accuracy and truthful reporting, to replace the word “charges” with the word “allegations”.

Two days letter The Evening Standard’s Assistant Managing Editor Jeannette Arnold
Assistant Managing Editor wrote back thanking me for my letter. She corrected the error replacing the sentence with a more accurate description: “Assange had been set to be extradited to Sweden over a rape allegation, but the investigation was dropped last year as prosecutors said witnesses’ memories had faded.”

But went further to delete the word “Hiding” (in the embassy) by saying:

“we don’t consider this to be inaccurate. It’s a colloquial shorthand way of explaining that Mr Assange had entered the embassy in breach of his bail conditions and was avoiding arrest by the UK police. Nonetheless, we have deleted this word from the online article as a gesture of goodwill.”

Furthermore she continued:

“The article made no comment about the lawfulness or otherwise of Mr Assange’s eviction from the embassy. We are under no obligation to include every detail of the case.”

Since I did not highlight these additional points in my complaint, it is reasonable to assume that other people did place complaints and the editor created a single response collating the corrections that she then sent to all people who had complained.

Back in September last year I had made a similar complaint about exactly the same issue.

Their article of 27/09/2019 “Julian Assange: Private security firm ‘spied on WikiLeaks founder in Ecuadorian embassy for CIA’ ” stated that:

“He took refuge there in 2012 while on bail and facing extradition to Sweden on sex charges, saying he feared extradition to the US if he left over the activities of WikiLeaks.”

The same lady advised me on the same day that the article had been updated.

In conclusion:

The Evening Standard has a well staffed, fast response team for dealing with inaccuracies in their articles. Their reporting on the Julian Assange case is frequent as are the errors. It is worth reviewing its reporting to document historic errors. For someone with time in their hands, Evening Standard articles to March 2020 mentioning assange sweden charges and file complaints for all of them. It would be interesting to see if Editors would correct all of the errors going back to 2010.

Read original article plus more in WiseUp

On the 8th April, Craig Murray Blogs about the hearing that day

Yesterday Mark Sommers QC, the extremely erudite and bookish second counsel for Julian Assange in his extradition hearing, trembled with anger in court. Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser had just made a ruling that the names of Julian Assange’s partner and young children could be published, which she stated was in the interests of “open justice”. His partner had submitted a letter in support of his Covid 19 related bail application (which Baraitser had summarily dismissed) to state he had a family to live with in London. Baraitser said that it was therefore in the interests of open justice that the family’s names be made public, and said that the defence had not convincingly shown this would cause any threat to their security or well-being. It was at this point Sommers barely kept control. He leapt to his feet and gave notice of an appeal to the High Court, asking for a 14 day stay. Baraitser granted four days, until 4pm on Friday.

I am in lockdown in Edinburgh, but received three separate eye witness reports. They are unanimous that yet again Baraitser entered the court carrying pre-written judgements before hearing oral argument; pre-written judgements she gave no appearance of amending.

There have been two Covid-19 deaths in Belmarsh prison so far. For obvious reasons the disease is ripping through the jail like wildfire. The Department of Justice is admitting to one death, and refuses to give statistics for the number of cases. As even very sick prisoners are not being tested, the figures would arguably not mean much anyway. As the court heard at the bail application, over 150 Belmarsh prison staff are off work self-isolating and the prison is scarcely functioning. It is the most complete definition of lockdown.

The Prison Governors’ Association submitted to the House of Commons Justice Committee (which yesterday morning considered prisoner releases in closed session) that 15,000 non-violent prisoners need to be released to give the jails any chance of managing COVID-19. The Department of Justice has suggested releasing 4,000 of whom just 2,000 have been identified. As of a couple of days ago, only about 100 had actually been released.

The prisons are now practising “cohorting” across the estate, although decisions currently lie with individual governors. Prisoners who have a cough – any cough – are being put together in segregated blocks. The consequences of this are of course potentially unthinkable. Julian has a cough and chronic lung condition for which he has been treated for years – a fact which is not in dispute.

Yesterday Baraitser again followed her usual path of refusing every single defence motion, following pre-written rulings (whether written or merely copied out by herself I know not), even when the prosecution did not object. You will recall that at the first week of extradition hearing proper, she insisted that Julian be kept in a glass cage, although counsel for the US government made no objection to his sitting in the body of the court, and she refused to intervene to stop his strip searching, handcuffing and the removal of his court papers, even though the US government joined the defence in querying her claim she had no power to do this (for which she was later roundly rebuked by the International Bar Association). 

Yesterday the US government did not object to a defence motion to postpone the resumption of the extradition hearing. The defence put forward four grounds:

1) Julian is currently too ill to prepare his defence
2) Due to Covid-19 lockdown, access to his lawyers is virtually impossible
3) Vital defence witnesses, including from abroad, would not be able to be present to testify
4) Treatment for Julian’s mental health conditions had been stopped due to the Covid-19 situation.

Baraitser airily dismissed all these grounds – despite James Lewis QC saying the prosecution was neutral on the postponement – and insisted that the May 18 date remains. She stated that he could be brought to the cells in Westminster Magistrates Court for consultations with his lawyers. (Firstly, in practice that is not the case, and secondly these holding cells have a constant thoughput of prisoners which is very obviously undesirable with Covid19). 

It is worth noting that the prosecution stated that the US government’s own psychiatrist, appointed to do an assessment of Julian, had been unable to access him in Belmarsh due to Covid 19 restrictions.

This is getting beyond me as it is getting beyond Mark Sommers and the defence team. Even before Covid 19 became such a threat, I stated that I had been forced to the conclusion the British Government is seeking Assange’s death in jail. The evidence for that is now overwhelming.

Here are three measures of hypocrisy. 

Firstly, the UK insists on keeping this political prisoner – accused of nothing but publishing – in a Covid 19 infested maximum security jail while the much-derided Iranian government lets Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe out and hopefully will release her altogether.
Which is the inhumane regime?

Secondly, “open justice” allegedly justifies the release of the identities of Julian’s partner and kids, while the state enforces the secrecy of Alex Salmond’s busted accusers, even though the court heard evidence that they specifically colluded to destroy him using, as a deliberate tool, the anonymity afforded to people making sexual accusations.

Thirdly, nobody cultivates her own anonymity more than Vanessa Baraitser who has her existence carefully removed from the internet almost entirely. Yet she seeks to destroy the peace and young lives of Julian’s family.

Keep fighting for Julian’s life and for freedom.

Refer Craig Murray’s Blog

Posted on wiseUp on 22 March 2020

Investigative journalist and author Iain Overton worked with WikiLeaks Julian Assange in the publication of the Iraq War Logs while he was working for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Here, speaking to the podcast Anonymous Bites Back, he raises a strong voice in defence of the WikiLeaks publisher almost 10 years after their initial collaboration.

Read article with full transcript at WiseUp

Threat raised 7th January 2020; Response delivered 20th March 2020 on the CoE Platform to promote the protection of journalism and the safety of journalists

Review Incident Logs for complete picture

Editors Note: The response seems to over look the disproportionate sentencing issues and arbitrary nature of detention. It might also be possible the prosecution has already argued the safeguards of the Extradition Act 2003 as outlined below do not apply.

UK Response

UK State reply to alert “Continued Detention of WikiLeaks Founder and Publisher Julian Assange”
Received by e-mail on 20 March 2020

Mr Julian Assange is accused of unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defence of the US, and of computer misuse. The US extradition request for Mr. Assange is governed by Part 2 of the Extradition Act 2003. The Act provides a person whose extradition is sought by another jurisdiction with full and effective safeguards. For example, the court must consider human rights issues, including whether the person will receive a fair trial.

The next stage in the US extradition proceedings is a Magistrates’ Court hearing at which Mr. Assange may challenge his extradition on the grounds of the statutory bars in the Extradition Act, such as human rights. The hearing began on 24 February 2020 for one week and will continue on 18 May for three weeks.

Statement of Threat

Julian Assange, founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, is currently detained in Belmarsh high-security prison, United Kingdom, pending extradition to the United States of America. On 11 April 2019, after the Government of Ecuador had decided to stop granting him asylum in its London embassy, Assange was arrested by the British police, and found guilty that day of breaching the UK Bail Act. On 1 May 2019, he was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison in the United Kingdom, and the Government of the United States unsealed an indictment against him for alleged computer intrusion, based on a series of leaks provided by US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. The charges were extended on 23 May 2019 to violating the US Espionage Act of 1917. 

Several lawyers, politicians, journalists and academics consider Assange’s arrest in the United Kingdom and prosecution in the United States for publishing leaked documents of public interest an attack on press freedom and international law. After examining Assange in prison on 9 May 2019, UN special rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Nils Melzer concluded: “In addition to physical ailments, Mr Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.” In a letter sent on 29 October 2019 to the UK Government, Melzer wrote: “I found that the UK had contributed decisively to producing the observed medical symptoms, most notably through its participation, over the course of almost a decade, in Mr. Assange’s arbitrary confinement, his judicial persecution, as well as his sustained and unrestrained public mobbing, intimidation and defamation. (…) British officials have contributed to Mr. Assange’s psychological torture or ill-treatment, whether through perpetration, or through attempt, complicity or other forms of participation. (…) Recurring and serious violations of Mr. Assange’s due process rights by UK authorities have rendered both his criminal conviction and sentencing for bail violation and the US extradition proceedings inherently arbitrary. (…) The detention regime currently imposed on Mr. Assange appears to be unnecessary, disproportionate, and discriminatory and to perpetuate his exposure to psychological torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”