After a long delay caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Julian Assange’s extradition hearing resumed at the Old Bailey on 7 September 2020. If extradited to the US, Assange faces 18 charges of espionage, and if convicted he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison. The case had initially started on 26 February and was adjourned after four days. Assange was remanded at Belmarsh prison until the hearing resumed, although his defence team unsuccessfully fought to have him released on bail as the pandemic posed a serious threat to his health. SEAMUS O’TUAIRISC reports.
On 24 June, the US Department of Justice filed a second superseding indictment. Unlike the earlier such indictment in May 2019, this one does not add additional charges, but it increases the scope of the existing charges by including new allegations, based on claims by Icelandic hacker Sigurdur Thordarson that Assange instructed hackers to hack the phones of high-ranking officials and find classified documents. Thordarson was a paid FBI informant during his contact with WikiLeaks and in 2014, was convicted and imprisoned in Iceland for embezzling over $40,000 from WikiLeaks and forging documents in Assange’s name.
Assange’s barrister Mark Summers QC filed a request to postpone the hearing as these new allegations were submitted without warning and did not give the defence enough time to prepare a response. The deadline for submissions in the extradition hearing was 19 June 2019, and this should have been sufficient for the court to throw out the new allegations, but presiding judge Vanessa Baraitser dismissed the application.
When the hearing resumed, Assange was able to sit near and communicate with his defence team freely for the first time, unlike in earlier hearings at Woolwich Crown Court; however the same level of contempt towards him and his defence continued throughout. The public gallery of Court 10 at the Old Bailey has capacity for 40 people, but only five seats were allowed to be occupied. Although this restriction was imposed on the pretext of Covid-19, those who were allowed in the public gallery had to all sit in the front row without social distancing. Baraitser refused to grant online access to the proceedings to a number of NGOs and international observers, claiming that she would not be able to control the behaviour of those watching online.
Severe restrictions were imposed on the defence witnesses, such as allowing only 30 minutes for each of their testimonies. Baraitser was initially not going to let them testify at all – suggesting there was no need as they had submitted written statements – but Edward Fitzgerald QC for the defence countered this by stating that the public has the right to observe witnesses being cross-examined. In a shocking display of double standards, lead prosecutor James Lewis QC objected that in giving evidence orally, defence witnesses may state new facts to which the court would not have time to react.
The defence began by highlighting how WikiLeaks was crucial in uncovering war crimes and human rights abuses. Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith testified that classified documents published on WikiLeaks, detailing the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, were used by the International Criminal Court as part of an investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan. Lewis dismissed this, claiming that Assange was only being indicted for documents revealing the names of informants and that none of the materials Stafford-Smith referred to were relevant.
Subsequent witnesses testified that soliciting classified information from whistleblowers is standard journalistic practice. Professor Mark Feldstein, a journalism expert at the University of Maryland, added that while several previous US presidents attempted to prosecute journalists under the Espionage Act, the cases were thrown out because they infringed the first amendment of the US constitution. Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Paul Rogers of Bradford University both highlighted that the indictment is politically motivated and reflects President Trump’s disdain for journalists and hostility to accountability.
In the second week, the hearing descended further into farce, with prosecution barristers cross-examining expert witnesses as to how much they were being paid for their testimony. Eric Lewis – a former professor in law at Georgetown University who testified that, if convicted, Assange would serve his sentence in solitary confinement at federal supermax prison ADX Florence – replied, as did others, that he was indeed being paid at the standard legal rates and therefore aware of the responsibilities to be fair and objective that come with this.
Baraitser also attempted to further restrict witness evidence, preventing John Goetz, Chief Investigations Editor of German broadcaster NDR, from testifying that claims Assange had said that he did not care about the death of US informants were untrue, because this was not included in his written statement.
At the time of writing, the extradition hearing is ongoing. The US is colluding with Britain to seek retribution against Assange for his role in making imperialist atrocities public knowledge. The British court and prosecution have responded to the defence’s swift dismantling of both original and new allegations with outright aggression and are deliberately downplaying the political nature of these charges. The servile British media, including the ‘liberal’ Guardian, maintains a shameful silence on this blatant attack on freedom of the press. The extradition of Julian Assange must be stopped as it poses a serious threat to the future of journalism, in particular the right to scrutinise and call out the actions of governments.
Covid releases end
Having released just 275 prisoners out of a population of around 80,000 under the two different Covid-19 early release schemes for England and Wales, on 19 August the government announced that the scheme would be ‘paused’ from the end of the month. Scotland has also terminated its scheme, having released 348 prisoners from a total prison population approximately a tenth the size of that of England and Wales.
Meanwhile, whatever easing and re-imposition of ‘lockdown’ measures outside takes place, the real lockdown inside prison continues. In the summer issue of the Prison Officers Association (POA) magazine Gatelodge, POA chair Mark Fairhurst makes it clear that the union is more than happy with the renewed control it has gained over prisoners and prison regimes. Fairhurst writes that, despite the worries of ‘the so called prison “experts” who so often take the form of reform groups or psychologists who have never walked in our shoes … that human rights had been breached and we were implementing draconian unnecessary measures [and that] mental health would deteriorate and self-harm would significantly rise … we now see a controlled, well ordered, less violent and more stable prison estate despite the concerns of the critical few’.
