This Assange “Trial” Is A
Self-Contradictory Kafkaesque Nightmare
By Caitlin Johnstone
February 28, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -The first week of the Julian Assange extradition
trial
has concluded, to be resumed on May 18th. If you
haven’t been following the proceedings closely, let
me sum up what you missed:
The prosecution is
working to extradite Assange to the US under a US-UK
extradition treaty, a treaty whose contents the
prosecution now says we should ignore because they
explicitly forbid political extraditions. The
prosecution says it doesn’t matter anyway because
Assange is not a political actor, yet in 2010 the US
government that’s trying to extradite him labeled
him a political actor in those exact words. Assange’s
trial is taking place in a maximum security prison
for dangerous violent offenders because that’s where
he’s being jailed for no stated reason and despite
having no history of violence, which means he’s kept
separate from the courtroom in a sound-resistant
safety enclosure where he can’t hear or participate
in his own trial. The magistrate judging the case
says he can’t be allowed out of the enclosure since
he’s considered dangerous, because he’s been
arbitrarily placed in a prison for dangerous violent
offenders. The magistrate keeps telling Assange to
stop speaking up during his trial and to speak
through his lawyers, yet he’s being actively
prevented from communicating with his lawyers.
Make sense?
No?
Not even a tiny bit?
Oh. Okay. Let me explain.
A British human rights and law reform organisation found that keeping a defendant locked in a sound-resistant glass cage apart from the courtroom, as they're doing to Assange currently, necessarily breaches their right to a fair trial. https://t.co/FG61rIu1ur
It’s
common in British courtrooms to have something
called a “dock”, a place where defendants sit
separately from court proceedings. Not all UK
courtrooms have docks, and not all docks are the
“secure” glass cabinet type which Assange is kept
in; they
can
also be open wooden enclosures. Because Assange
is being kept without explanation in a maximum
security prison
normally reserved the most dangerous violent
offenders and terrorism convicts, his trial is
taking place in a cage that is very much the
“secure” type (so much so that he’s been
complaining that he can’t hear the proceedings
in his own trial through the bulletproof glass), and
there is an expectation that he remain there.
The magistrate has ruled that this nonviolent
offender shall be kept in his sound-resistant
enclosure throughout the duration of his trial,
bizarrely asserting that Assange poses a danger to
the public.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
Former UK ambassador and longtime Assange
supporter Craig Murray was at court all four days of
the trial, and he
described the situation as follows (Edward
Fitzgerald is Assange’s defense attorney, Vanessa
Baraitser is the magistrate)
:
On return, Edward Fitzgerald made a formal
application for Julian to be allowed to sit
beside his lawyers in the court. Julian was “a
gentle, intellectual man” and not a terrorist.
Baraitser replied that releasing Assange from
the dock into the body of the court would mean
he was released from custody. To achieve that
would require an application for bail.
Again, the prosecution counsel James Lewis
intervened on the side of the defence to try to
make Julian’s treatment less extreme. He was
not, he suggested diffidently, quite sure that
it was correct that it required bail for Julian
to be in the body of the court, or that being in
the body of the court accompanied by security
officers meant that a prisoner was no longer in
custody. Prisoners, even the most dangerous of
terrorists, gave evidence from the witness box
in the body of the court nest to the lawyers and
magistrate. In the High Court prisoners
frequently sat with their lawyers in extradition
hearings, in extreme cases of violent criminals
handcuffed to a security officer.
Baraitser replied that Assange might pose a
danger to the public. It was a question of
health and safety.
Ah yes, yes I’m sure everyone at the courtroom is
very concerned that the emaciated computer nerd
might at any moment go full beast mode and start
throwing them all across the room. Sure thing,
Vanessa.
So to recap, Assange has been placed in a prison
for dangerous offenders for no reason, and he’s
designated too dangerous to participate in his own
trial because he’s in a prison for dangerous
offenders. Both the defense
and the prosecution agree that this is
absurd, yet the supposedly impartial judge ruled
against them both.
Does that make sense to you?
No?
Good. Means you’re sane.
Your Man in the Public Gallery – The Assange Hearing Day 3 - In yesterday's proceedings in court, the prosecution adopted arguments so stark and apparently unreasonable I have been fretting on how to write them up in a way that does not seem like https://t.co/Fd56lIUVcM
In the same report Murray also says Assange was
forbidden from passing notes to his lawyers, yet
when he tried to speak up during his trial to get
someone’s attention Baraitser told him he may only
speak through his lawyers. Even when they let him, Shadowproof‘s
Kevin Gosztola also
reports that the defense has complained that
they can’t even see when he wishes to communicate
something with them, because his dock is behind them
in the courtroom.
Assange then stood up in the dock and said,
“The problem is I’m not able to get
representation.” Judge Baraitser then told him
to “keep quiet and speak through his lawyers.”
He replied, “That’s the problem, I can’t.”
Assange has also complained that even when he is
both able and permitted to speak to his lawyers
during the trial, he’s unable to do so in private,
saying, “I cannot communicate with my lawyers or
ask them for clarifications without the other side
seeing” and “The other side has about 100 times more
contact with their lawyers per day.”
“I am as much a participant in these proceedings
as a spectator at Wimbledon,” a frustrated Assange
complained at one point.
So Assange may only speak through his lawyers,
but also he’s been presented with many obstacles to
speaking with his lawyers. Perfectly normal stuff in
a perfectly normal trial being treated in a
perfectly normal way by a perfectly normal empire.
It’s pretty clear by the way Baraitser is even
more biased against Assange than the actual
prosecutors that she made up her mind how she’s
going to rule long before the trial even began. This
is made all the more shady by the fact that there
are apparently no photographs of this public
official anywhere online, and indeed
no documentation of her existence outside of the
court.
“Ms Baraitser is not fond of photography – she
appears to be the only public figure in Western
Europe with no photo on the internet,”
wrote Murray after noting her anger at someone
photographing the courtroom. “Indeed the average
proprietor of a rural car wash has left more
evidence of their existence and life history on the
internet than Vanessa Baraitser. Which is no crime
on her part, but I suspect the expunging is not
achieved without considerable effort. Somebody
suggested to me she might be a hologram, but I think
not. Holograms have more empathy.”
This by itself is weird. How is someone with no
public face ruling on an extradition trial of such
immense historical significance? How is a public
official allowed to make a decision which will
affect every member of the public in one way or
another, yet the public is not allowed to know
anything about her or what she even looks like?
That, in my opinion, is weird and creepy.
It’s interesting. I have done some research. Baraister does not exist outside of court. Nothing. https://t.co/R0YksHkfbR
Then there’s the prosecution. They’re
trying to argue that the US-UK extradition
treaty which expressly forbids extradition for
political offenses is void and inapplicable to this
case because of another law called the Extradition
Act which is written differently, despite the fact
that the extradition treaty formed the
basis for Assange’s extradition request in the first
place.
“We’re in a pretty strange Alice in Wonderland
world where the treaty that controls and gives rise
to the request, supposedly has nothing to do with
the legality of it, it’s very strange,” Fitzgerald
said at one point, adding: “it is generally
accepted worldwide that people should not be
extradited for a non-violent offense of a political
nature.”
The prosecution also attempted to argue that even
if the exemptions in the extradition treaty did
apply, it wouldn’t matter because Assange is not
accused of anything that could be called a political
offense. They said the defense must “equate what Mr
Assange is alleged to have done against whether or
not the only purpose was to change the government in
America or induce America to change its policy, both
of which we say it’s not.”
The defense correctly
countered that not only was WikiLeaks trying
to affect US government behavior, but that
they actually succeeded in doing so. Not only
that, but the US government has itself
accused Assange of being a political actor who is
trying to change America’s behavior.
“He’s not a journalist. He’s not a whistleblower.
He is a political actor. He has a political
agenda,” State Department spokesman PJ Crowley
said of Assange in 2010 after WikiLeaks began
exposing US war crimes. “He is trying to undermine
the international system that enables us to
cooperate and collaborate with other governments and
to work in in multilateral settings and on a
bilateral basis to help solve regional and
international issues.”
In other words, Assange is a political actor who
is deliberately trying to interfere with the US
government agenda of world domination.
Defence counsel notes "We're in a pretty strange Alice in Wonderland world where the treaty that controls & gives rise to request supposedly has nothing to do with the legality of it, its very strange."#AssangeHearing#NoExtradition#FreeAssangepic.twitter.com/re0YhGQsfz
The Merriam-Webster dictionary
defines the word Kafkaesque as “of,
relating to, or suggestive of Franz Kafka or his
writings, especially: having
a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical
quality.”
“Kafka’s work is characterized by nightmarish
settings in which characters are crushed by
nonsensical, blind authority,” says Merriam-Webster.
“Thus, the word Kafkaesque is often applied
to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations
where the individual feels powerless to understand
or control what is happening.”
I generally try to avoid words that not everyone
will understand in my writings, especially in my
headlines, but, you know, damn. That’s the most
perfect definition of this ridiculous bootlicking
bureaucratic nightmare maze that you could possibly
come up with.
The time to speak up for Assange and the future
of press freedoms is now. Not when he’s extradited.
Not after his fake trial and draconian sentencing.
Now.
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