By Craig Murray
February 25, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
Woolwich Crown Court is
designed to impose the power of the state. Normal
courts in this country are public buildings,
deliberately placed by our ancestors right in the
centre of towns, almost always just up a few steps
from a main street. The major purpose of their
positioning and of their architecture was to
facilitate public access in the belief that it is
vital that justice can be seen by the public.
Woolwich Crown Court, which hosts Belmarsh
Magistrates Court, is built on totally the opposite
principle. It is designed with no other purpose than
to exclude the public. Attached to a prison on a
windswept marsh far from any normal social centre,
an island accessible only through navigating a maze
of dual carriageways, the entire location and
architecture of the building is predicated on
preventing public access. It is surrounded by a
continuation of the same extremely heavy duty steel
paling barrier that surrounds the prison. It is the
most extraordinary thing, a courthouse which is a
part of the prison system itself, a place where you
are already considered guilty and in jail on
arrival. Woolwich Crown Court is nothing but the
physical negation of the presumption of innocence,
the very incarnation of injustice in unyielding
steel, concrete and armoured glass. It has precisely
the same relationship to the administration of
justice as Guantanamo Bay or the Lubyanka. It is in
truth just the sentencing wing of Belmarsh prison.
When enquiring about facilities for the public to
attend the hearing, an Assange activist was told by
a member of court staff that we should realise that
Woolwich is a “counter-terrorism court”. That is
true de facto, but in truth a “counter-terrorism
court” is an institution unknown to the UK
constitution. Indeed, if a single day at Woolwich
Crown Court does not convince you the existence of
liberal democracy is now a lie, then your mind must
be very closed indeed.
Extradition hearings are not held at Belmarsh
Magistrates Court inside Woolwich Crown Court. They
are always held at Westminster Magistrates Court as
the application is deemed to be delivered to the
government at Westminster. Now get your head around
this. This hearing is at Westminster Magistrates
Court. It is being held by the Westminster
magistrates and Westminster court staff, but located
at Belmarsh Magistrates Court inside Woolwich Crown
Court. All of which weird convolution is precisely
so they can use the “counter-terrorist court” to
limit public access and to impose the fear of the
power of the state.
One consequence is that, in the courtroom itself,
Julian Assange is confined at the back of the court
behind a bulletproof glass screen. He made the point
several times during proceedings that this makes it
very difficult for him to see and hear the
proceedings. The magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser,
chose to interpret this with studied dishonesty as a
problem caused by the very faint noise of
demonstrators outside, as opposed to a problem
caused by Assange being locked away from the court
in a massive bulletproof glass box.
Now there is no reason at all for Assange to be
in that box, designed to restrain extremely
physically violent terrorists. He could sit, as a
defendant at a hearing normally would, in the body
of the court with his lawyers. But the cowardly and
vicious Baraitser has refused repeated and
persistent requests from the defence for Assange to
be allowed to sit with his lawyers. Baraitser of
course is but a puppet, being supervised by Chief
Magistrate Lady Arbuthnot, a woman so enmeshed in
the defence and security service establishment I can
conceive of no way in which her involvement in this
case could be
more corrupt.
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It does not matter to Baraitser or
Arbuthnot if there is any genuine need
for Assange to be incarcerated in a
bulletproof box, or whether it stops him
from following proceedings in court.
Baraitser’s intention is to humiliate
Assange, and to instill in the rest of
us horror at the vast crushing power of
the state. The inexorable strength of
the sentencing wing of the nightmarish
Belmarsh Prison must be maintained. If
you are here, you are guilty.
It’s the Lubyanka. You may only be a remand
prisoner. This may only be a hearing not a trial.
You may have no history of violence and not be
accused of any violence. You may have three of the
country’s most eminent psychiatrists submitting
reports of your history of severe clinical
depression and warning of suicide. But I, Vanessa
Baraitser, am still going to lock you up in a box
designed for the most violent of terrorists. To show
what we can do to dissidents. And if you can’t then
follow court proceedings, all the better.
You will perhaps better accept what I say about
the Court when I tell you that, for a hearing being
followed all round the world, they have brought it
to a courtroom which had a total number of sixteen
seats available to members of the public. 16. To
make sure I got one of those 16 and could be your
man in the gallery, I was outside that great locked
iron fence queuing in the cold, wet and wind from
6am. At 8am the gate was unlocked, and I was able to
walk inside the fence to another queue before the
doors of the courtroom, where despite the fact
notices clearly state the court opens to the public
at 8am, I had to queue outside the building again
for another hour and forty minutes. Then I was
processed through armoured airlock doors, through
airport type security, and had to queue behind two
further locked doors, before finally getting to my
seat just as the court started at 10am. By which
stage the intention was we should have been
thoroughly cowed and intimidated, not to mention
drenched and potentially hypothermic.
There was a separate media entrance and a media
room with live transmission from the courtroom, and
there were so many scores of media I thought I could
relax and not worry as the basic facts would be
widely reported. In fact, I could not have been more
wrong. I followed the arguments very clearly every
minute of the day, and not a single one of the most
important facts and arguments today has been
reported anywhere in the mainstream media. That is a
bold claim, but I fear it is perfectly true. So I
have much work to do to let the world know what
actually happened. The mere act of being an honest
witness is suddenly extremely important, when the
entire media has abandoned that role.
James Lewis QC made the opening statement for the
prosecution. It consisted of two parts, both equally
extraordinary. The first and longest part was truly
remarkable for containing no legal argument, and for
being addressed not to the magistrate but to the
media. It is not just that it was obvious that is
where his remarks were aimed, he actually stated on
two occasions during his opening statement that he
was addressing the media, once repeating a sentence
and saying specifically that he was repeating it
again because it was important that the media got
it.
I am frankly astonished that Baraitser allowed
this. It is completely out of order for a counsel to
address remarks not to the court but to the media,
and there simply could not be any clearer evidence
that this is a political show trial and that
Baraitser is complicit in that. I have not the
slightest doubt that the defence would have been
pulled up extremely quickly had they started
addressing remarks to the media. Baraitser makes
zero pretence of being anything other than in thrall
to the Crown, and by extension to the US Government.
The points which Lewis wished the media to know
were these: it is not true that mainstream outlets
like the Guardian and New York Times are also
threatened by the charges against Assange, because
Assange was not charged with publishing the cables
but only with publishing the names of informants,
and with cultivating Manning and assisting him to
attempt computer hacking. Only Assange had done
these things, not mainstream outlets.
Lewis then proceeded to read out a series of
articles from the mainstream media attacking
Assange, as evidence that the media and Assange were
not in the same boat. The entire opening hour
consisted of the prosecution addressing the media,
attempting to drive a clear wedge between the media
and Wikileaks and thus aimed at reducing media
support for Assange. It was a political address, not
remotely a legal submission. At the same time, the
prosecution had prepared reams of copies of this
section of Lewis’ address, which were handed out to
the media and given them electronically so they
could cut and paste.
Following an adjournment, magistrate Baraitser
questioned the prosecution on the veracity of some
of these claims. In particular, the claim that
newspapers were not in the same position because
Assange was charged not with publication, but with
“aiding and abetting” Chelsea Manning in getting the
material, did not seem consistent with Lewis’
reading of the 1989 Official Secrets Act, which said
that merely obtaining and publishing any government
secret was an offence. Surely, Baraitser suggested,
that meant that newspapers just publishing the
Manning leaks would be guilty of an offence?
This appeared to catch Lewis entirely off guard.
The last thing he had expected was any perspicacity
from Baraitser, whose job was just to do what he
said. Lewis hummed and hawed, put his glasses on and
off several times, adjusted his microphone
repeatedly and picked up a succession of pieces of
paper from his brief, each of which appeared to
surprise him by its contents, as he waved them
haplessly in the air and said he really should have
cited the Shayler case but couldn’t find it. It was
liking watching Columbo with none of the charm and
without the killer question at the end of the
process.
Suddenly Lewis appeared to come to a decision.
Yes, he said much more firmly. The 1989 Official
Secrets Act had been introduced by the Thatcher
Government after the Ponting Case, specifically to
remove the public interest defence and to make
unauthorised possession of an official secret a
crime of strict liability – meaning no matter how
you got it, publishing and even possessing made you
guilty. Therefore, under the principle of dual
criminality, Assange was liable for extradition
whether or not he had aided and abetted Manning.
Lewis then went on to add that any journalist and
any publication that printed the official secret
would therefore also be committing an offence, no
matter how they had obtained it, and no matter if it
did or did not name informants.
Lewis had thus just flat out contradicted his
entire opening statement to the media stating that
they need not worry as the Assange charges could
never be applied to them. And he did so straight
after the adjournment, immediately after his team
had handed out copies of the argument he had now
just completely contradicted. I cannot think it has
often happened in court that a senior lawyer has
proven himself so absolutely and so immediately to
be an unmitigated and ill-motivated liar. This was
undoubtedly the most breathtaking moment in today’s
court hearing.
Yet remarkably I cannot find any mention anywhere
in the mainstream media that this happened at all.
What I can find, everywhere, is the mainstream media
reporting, via cut and paste, Lewis’s first part of
his statement on why the prosecution of Assange is
not a threat to press freedom; but nobody seems to
have reported that he totally abandoned his own
argument five minutes later. Were the journalists
too stupid to understand the exchanges?
The explanation is very simple. The clarification
coming from a question Baraitser asked Lewis, there
is no printed or electronic record of Lewis’ reply.
His original statement was provided in cut and paste
format to the media. His contradiction of it would
require a journalist to listen to what was said in
court, understand it and write it down. There is no
significant percentage of mainstream media
journalists who command that elementary ability
nowadays. “Journalism” consists of cut and paste of
approved sources only. Lewis could have stabbed
Assange to death in the courtroom, and it would not
be reported unless contained in a government press
release.
I was left uncertain of Baraitser’s purpose in
this. Plainly she discomfited Lewis very badly on
this point, and appeared rather to enjoy doing so.
On the other hand the point she made is not
necessarily helpful to the defence. What she was
saying was essentially that Julian could be
extradited under dual criminality, from the UK point
of view, just for publishing, whether or not he
conspired with Chelsea Manning, and that all the
journalists who published could be charged too. But
surely this is a point so extreme that it would be
bound to be invalid under the Human Rights Act? Was
she pushing Lewis to articulate a position so
extreme as to be untenable – giving him enough rope
to hang himself – or was she slavering at the
prospect of not just extraditing Assange, but of
mass prosecutions of journalists?
The reaction of one group was very interesting.
The four US government lawyers seated immediately
behind Lewis had the grace to look very
uncomfortable indeed as Lewis baldly declared that
any journalist and any newspaper or broadcast media
publishing or even possessing any government secret
was committing a serious offence. Their entire
strategy had been to pretend not to be saying that.
Lewis then moved on to conclude the prosecution’s
arguments. The court had no decision to make, he
stated. Assange must be extradited. The offence met
the test of dual criminality as it was an offence
both in the USA and UK. UK extradition law
specifically barred the court from testing whether
there was any evidence to back up the charges. If
there had been, as the defence argued, abuse of
process, the court must still extradite and then the
court must pursue the abuse of process as a separate
matter against the abusers. (This is a particularly
specious argument as it is not possible for the
court to take action against the US government due
to sovereign immunity, as Lewis well knows).
Finally, Lewis stated that the Human Rights Act and
freedom of speech were completely irrelevant in
extradition proceedings.
Edward Fitzgerald then arose to make the opening
statement for the defence. He started by stating
that the motive for the prosecution was entirely
political, and that political offences were
specifically excluded under article 4.1 of the UK/US
extradition treaty. He pointed out that at the time
of the Chelsea Manning Trial and again in 2013 the
Obama administration had taken specific decisions
not to prosecute Assange for the Manning leaks. This
had been reversed by the Trump administration for
reasons that were entirely political.
On abuse of process, Fitzgerald referred to
evidence presented to the Spanish criminal courts
that the CIA had commissioned a Spanish security
company to spy on Julian Assange in the Embassy, and
that this spying specifically included surveillance
of Assange’s privileged meetings with his lawyers to
discuss extradition. For the state trying to
extradite to spy on the defendant’s client-lawyer
consultations is in itself grounds to dismiss the
case. (This point is undoubtedly true. Any decent
judge would throw the case out summarily for the
outrageous spying on the defence lawyers).
Fitzgerald went on to say the defence would
produce evidence the CIA not only spied on Assange
and his lawyers, but actively considered kidnapping
or poisoning him, and that this showed there was no
commitment to proper rule of law in this case.
Fitzgerald said that the prosecution’s framing of
the case contained deliberate misrepresentation of
the facts that also amounted to abuse of process. It
was not true that there was any evidence of harm to
informants, and the US government had confirmed this
in other fora, eg in Chelsea Manning’s trial. There
had been no conspiracy to hack computers, and
Chelsea Manning had been acquitted on that charge at
court martial. Lastly it was untrue that Wikileaks
had initiated publication of unredacted names of
informants, as other media organisations had been
responsible for this first.
Again, so far as I can see, while the US
allegation of harm to informants is widely reported,
the defence’s total refutation on the facts and
claim that the fabrication of facts amounts to abuse
of process is not much reported at all. Fitzgerald
finally referred to US prison conditions, the
impossibility of a fair trial in the US, and the
fact the Trump Administration has stated foreign
nationals will not receive First Amendment
protections, as reasons that extradition must be
barred. You can read the whole
defence statement, but in my view the strongest
passage was on why this is a political prosecution,
and thus precluded from extradition.
For the purposes of section 81(a), I next
have to deal with the question of how
this politically motivated prosecution satisfies
the test of being directed against
Julian Assange because of his political
opinions. The essence of his political
opinions which have provoked this prosecution
are summarised in the reports
of Professor Feldstein [tab 18], Professor
Rogers [tab 40], Professor Noam
Chomsky [tab 39] and Professor Kopelman:-
i. He is a leading proponent of an open society
and of freedom of expression.
ii. He is anti-war and anti-imperialism.
iii. He is a world-renowned champion of
political transparency and of the
public’s right to access information on issues
of importance – issues such
as political corruption, war crimes, torture and
the mistreatment of
Guantanamo detainees.
5.4.Those beliefs and those actions inevitably
bring him into conflict with powerful
states including the current US administration,
for political reasons. Which
explains why he has been denounced as a
terrorist and why President Trump
has in the past called for the death penalty.
5.5.But I should add his revelations are far
from confined to the wrongdoings of
the US. He has exposed surveillance by Russia;
and published exposes of Mr
Assad in Syria; and it is said that WikiLeaks
revelations about corruption in
Tunisia and torture in Egypt were the catalyst
for the Arab Spring itself.
5.6.The US say he is no journalist. But you will
see a full record of his work in
Bundle M. He has been a member of the Australian
journalists union since
2009, he is a member of the NUJ and the European
Federation of Journalists.
He has won numerous media awards including being
honoured with the
highest award for Australian journalists. His
work has been recognised by the
Economist, Amnesty International and the Council
of Europe. He is the winner
of the Martha Gelhorn prize and has been
repeatedly nominated for the Nobel
Peace Prize, including both last year and this
year. You can see from the
materials that he has written books, articles
and documentaries. He has had
articles published in the Guardian, the New York
Times, the Washington Post
and the New Statesman, just to name a few. Some
of the very publications for
which his extradition is being sought have been
refereed to and relied upon in
Courts throughout the world, including the UK
Supreme Court and the
European Court of Human Rights. In short, he has
championed the cause of
transparency and freedom of information
throughout the world.
5.7.Professor Noam Chomsky puts it like this: –
‘in courageously upholding
political beliefs that most of profess to share
he has performed an
enormous service to all those in the world who
treasure the values of
freedom and democracy and who therefore demand
the right to know
what their elected representatives are doing’
[see tab 39, paragraph 14].
So Julian Assange’s positive impact on the world
is undeniable. The hostility
it has provoked from the Trump administration is
equally undeniable.
The legal test for ‘political opinions’
5.8.I am sure you are aware of the legal
authorities on this issue: namely whether
a request is made because of the defendant’s
political opinions. A broad
approach has to be adopted when applying the
test. In support of this we rely
on the case of Re Asliturk [2002] EWHC 2326
(abuse authorities, tab 11, at
paras 25 – 26) which clearly establishes that
such a wide approach should be
adopted to the concept of political opinions.
And that will clearly cover Julian
Assange’s ideological positions. Moreover, we
also rely on cases such as
Emilia Gomez v SSHD [2000] INLR 549 at tab 43 of
the political offence
authorities bundle. These show that the concept
of “political opinions” extends
to the political opinions imputed to the
individual citizen by the state which
prosecutes him. For that reason the
characterisation of Julian Assange and
WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence
agency” by Mr Pompeo makes
clear that he has been targeted for his imputed
political opinions. All the
experts whose reports you have show that Julian
Assange has been targeted
because of the political position imputed to him
by the Trump administration –
as an enemy of America who must be brought down.
Tomorrow the defence continue. I am genuinely
uncertain what will happen as I feel at the moment
far too exhausted to be there at 6am to queue to get
in. But I hope somehow I will contrive another
report tomorrow evening.
With grateful thanks to those who donated or
subscribed to make this reporting possible.
This article is entirely free to reproduce and
publish, including in translation, and I very much
hope people will do so actively. Truth shall set us
free.
Craig's blog has no source of state, corporate
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