By Israel Shamir
March 14, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
Julian Assange’s extradition hearing has had very
little media coverage. Even The Guardian and
The New York Times barely mentioned it,
though these newspapers made a fortune publishing
Assange-provided cables. Unless you had been looking
for it, you wouldn’t even know that on February 24
to 27, the first stage of Assange’s extradition
hearing was being adjudicated in the secretive
Woolwich Crown Court embedded within the huge
Belmarsh Prison nicknamed “British Gitmo”. Luckily
for us, Ambassador Craig Murray, the indomitable
truth fighter, went there, waited in line for hours
in the rain, underwent searches and discomfort, and
wrote an
extensive report (12,000 words) on this travesty
of justice that went under the name of a ‘trial’.
His reports leave nothing out, from the threatening
atmosphere to the sinister legal arguments. He
captured the menace and the abuse bordering with
public torture, and delivered it to the world,
something that none of the journalists on the
payroll of the mass media had been allowed to do.
Here are some insights from his report in my free
rendering augmented with other sources.
The Court is designed with no
other purpose than to exclude the public, on 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 in truth just the
sentencing wing of Belmarsh prison.
The judge, the Magistrate (or
District Judge) Vanessa Baraitser is a modern
version of the
Hanging Judge George Jeffreys, a female Judge
Dredd. She is the chief villain by all descriptions
of the trial, not just tolerating but exceeding the
demands of the prosecution. The lawyers acting for
the prosecution did request some niceties if only
for the trial to appear fair. Baraitser had no such
pretensions. She went straight for the jugular. If
she could, she would hang Assange right away.
