Journalism: a dangerous job, and oft well done (2024)

This is the latest iteration of a thread which began a few years ago. The OP posted, "Those of you who would like to report news of journalists being attacked throughout the world are welcome to do so under a thread that has not been given an ugly title." This was a welcome response to a previous abusive thread which indeed had an ugly title and which accused journalists of being stupid drunks who deserved to be physically assaulted, if I recall correctly. I would add that as well as reports of the dangers, difficulties and attacks faced by journalists throughout the world, this series of threads has also included inspiring stories of their courage, professionalism, achievements and outstanding contributions to society at large.

Sadly the first post of this new thread in 2024 is an account of a job not well done.

‘Journalists see their role as helping to win’: how Israeli TV is covering Gaza war (Guardian)

Coverage that omits plight of Palestinians leaves Israeli public dangerously disconnected from the rest of the world, critical journalists say...

Belfast court dismisses ‘frivolous’ Sinn Féin libel case against journalist (Guardian)

A Belfast court has thrown out a libel case brought by a leading member of Sinn Féin who was accused of shooting a prison guard, dealing a fresh blow to the party’s multiple lawsuits against the media. Master Evan Bell of the high court on Monday struck out the action by Gerry Kelly, who took a case against the journalist and commentator Malachi O’Doherty, calling it “scandalous, frivolous and vexatious”. In a 55-page ruling the judge said the attempt to personally sue O’Doherty was “completely untenable” and an effort to abuse the law to intimidate and silence a critic. “It would be utterly unjust if the court were to allow the proceedings to continue.” The ruling followed two other recent failed attempts by Sinn Féin members to sue a politician in Northern Ireland and a newspaper in Ireland. Press freedom groups have accused the party of using strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps), a form of legal harassment intended to muzzle critics. Sinn Féin has denied the accusation...

Armed gang storms Ecuador TV station as state of ‘internal armed conflict’ declared (Guardian)

Heavily armed gangsters have stormed the studio of a major television station in Ecuador during a live broadcast, prompting the country’s president to declare a state of “internal armed conflict” amid a series of seemingly coordinated attacks across the South American country. Police special forces later arrested all the masked gunmen who invaded the headquarters of the TC Televisión network in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, at about 2pm local time on Tuesday. Toting pistols, shotguns, machine guns, grenades and sticks of dynamite, a number of men overran the studio during the El Noticiero news programme. With the cameras broadcasting live, the men could be seen on camera while some employees lay down on the floor and someone was heard yelling “Don’t shoot!” before the signal was eventually cut...

Season of intimidation: Attacks on Ghana press escalate ahead of 2024 polls

Ghanaian journalists become targets of political actors and security operatives ahead of 2024 elections...

‘Threatened with rape’: Lama Khater recalls horrors while in Israeli jails

A writer and journalist who has covered crimes and violations committed by the Israeli occupation – and who has been in Israeli jails herself – Khater found herself subjected to pain and indignities all over again. She had been detained in the past for 13 months but said her detention after October 7 was “incomparable” to the previous jail time... “Handcuffed” with plastic zip ties that dug painfully into her wrists, Khater was thrown on the floor of the army jeep and taken to the Kiryat Arba settlement camp... the Israeli officers threatened her with rape, among other things, she said. “They threatened to kill me, my family, burn my house down,” Khater recalled. They also, she added, threatened to deport her to Gaza and more, telling her that she was a prisoner of war and they could do whatever they wanted... she was held with five other Palestinian women in a tiny cell built for one prisoner and “extremely dirty”, she said. They did not have access to water to clean the cell either, she added, explaining that their water supply was cut off for eight hours a day. There was so little room that the six women had to take turns to sit and sleep... she was moved to Damon Prison in northern Israel, where she was strip-searched and insulted. She also saw other prisoners being “badly beaten”... “A Shabak officer came to gloat at me, smiling and saying: ‘Your kids are now alone’,” Khater said... During that time, Khater was shocked at the level of inhumane treatment the Damon guards meted out to the women. Sometimes they would use pepper spray point-blank against the women for any perceived slight. They would also put prisoners in solitary confinement, severely limit their access to food and canteens to buy necessities, and deny them sanitary pads, she said. Finally, she was moved to Ofer Prison at the end of November, to wait in a cold cell for hours with neither food nor water until she was freed at dawn. Up to the very last minute, the officers and guards were threatening her. “They told me that any celebration is prohibited and that I was forbidden from receiving any well-wishers upon my release,” she said, adding that the Israeli officers also warned her not to publish on social media. “They said they would re-arrest me if their ‘rules’ were broken,” she said...

Both from Al Jazeera.

Gaza journalists’ families reject Israeli military's ‘terrorist’ claims (BBC)

The families of the two Palestinian journalists killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza have rejected as "fabricated" and "false" a new claim from Israel's military that they were "terrorists". The Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network, for whom one of the journalists worked, also condemned what it called the "false and misleading attempts to justify the killing of our colleagues". Hamza al-Dahdouh, an Al Jazeera journalist and cameraman, and Mustafa Thuraya, a freelance videographer, died after their car was hit in the southern city of Rafah on Sunday. A third journalist was reportedly seriously injured. Al Jazeera said at the time that it strongly condemned the "assassination" of the journalists "whilst they were on their way to carry out their duty" during the war between Israel and Hamas. It also accused Israel of "systematically targeting" Dahdouh's family. His father, Wael, is the network's Gaza bureau chief and he has now lost five members of his immediate family in Israeli strikes...

Leading tech journalist quits Substack over platform’s Nazi newsletters (Guardian)

Platformer, a prominent tech newsletter founded by the veteran reporter Casey Newton, is leaving Substack over the company’s failure to police extremist content. In a post explaining the decision, Newton said his team had identified seven Substack publications “that conveyed explicit support for 1930s German Nazis and called for violence against Jews, among other groups”. He said after weeks of back-and-forth discussions with company leaders about their “laissez-faire approach to content moderation”, he decided to part ways with the platform. “We didn’t ask Substack to solve racism,” Newton wrote in a post explaining the decision. “We asked it to give us an easy, low-drama place to do business, and to commit to not funding and accelerating the growth of hate movements. Ultimately we did not get either”...

Gonzalo Lira, US-born American-Chilean dual citizen and Dartmouth alum, journalist/vlogger, dead in Ukrainian custody as a political prisoner, after suffering torture and medical neglect.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/01/gonzalo-lira-is-dead.htm

I am saddened and outraged at this news. It is a disgrace, particularly after Gonzalo reported having been tortured and extorted while in prison, that the State Department did nothing to assist him, when they clearly could have gotten him deported. But that was certain not to happen given his show on Victoria Nuland.

I never liked the guy, but he didn't deserve to die for his viewpoints. The Chileans were the only people to so much as lift a finger for him.

I despise Tucker Carlson, but he gets to claim the credit of speaking up in the last months.

ETA: cf. The Gray Zone also bothered to afford him a mention, both then and now. Few else will apart from the Tuckerlings. https://thegrayzone.com/2024/01/12/gonzalo-lira-dies-ukrainian-prison/?utm_sourc...

“I cannot accept the way my son has died. He was tortured, extorted, incommunicado for 8 months and 11 days and the US Embassy did nothing to help my son,” Lira Sr. stated in an email announcing the news.

“The responsibility of this tragedy is (with) the dictator Zelensky with the concurrence of a senile American President, Joe Biden,” he wrote, adding: “My pain is unbearable. The world must know what is going on in Ukraine with that inhuman dictator Zelensky.”

As the world’s attention shifts from the Western proxy war in Ukraine, Lira Sr. joins the hundreds of thousands of fathers now grieving the deaths of their sons. Unlike most of them, his son did not die on a battlefield, but in prison for condemning the war that doomed so many to an ignominious fate.

Iran frees Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, jailed for covering Mahsa Amini death (BBC)

Iran has freed two female journalists jailed for more than a year for covering the death of Mahsa Amini, which triggered nationwide protests. Niloufar Hamedi, 31, and Elaheh Mohammadi, 36, were released on bail, Iranian media reported. The reporters are appealing against jail sentences and will remain out of prison until a court makes a decision, reports said. Ms Amini died in custody after being detained by Iran's morality police. She had been held for allegedly violating strict rules requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf. Iran's state coroner attributed her death to pre-existing medical conditions, but a UN human rights expert said the evidence established that she died "as a result of beatings" by morality police. Ms Hamedi, who worked for the reformist newspaper Shargh, broke the news of Ms Amini's death. She photographed Ms Amini's father and grandmother embracing after they learned their daughter had died and posted it online with the caption: "The black dress of mourning has become our national flag." Ms Mohammadi worked for Ham-Mihan, also a reformist paper, wrote about Ms Amini's funeral in her hometown of Saqqez. She described how hundreds of mourners cried out "Woman, life, freedom"...

>7 davidgn: More coverage.
SCANDAL: Biden SILENT As US Journalist DIES In Ukraine Custody
Breaking Points
1.16M subscribers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZR6glLFURY

"If you say the wrong thing, the government will let another government kill you. That is the reality of being American today if you think the wrong thoughts."

>9 davidgn: Col. Wilkerson weighs in on the case. https://www.youtube.com/live/LfAQGceiTJE?si=lSwgljQzpZqIUScX&t=919

From bot reporters to the loss of a legendary editor, the Daily Mirror is hanging by a thread (Guardian)

In a rightwing, plutocrat-dominated media landscape, we can’t afford to lose it – especially in an election year...

Jimmy Lai: UN experts call for release of Hong Kong newspaper founder (Guardian)

Four UN experts have called for all charges against pro-democracy Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai to be dropped, as they pressed for his immediate release. “Jimmy Lai’s arrest, detention and series of criminal proceedings over the past few years appear to be directly related to his criticism of the Chinese government and his support for democracy in Hong Kong,” the UN experts said. The statement was penned by the special rapporteurs on freedom of expression, on freedom of association, on degrading treatment or punishment and on the independence of judges and lawyers...

LA Times fires 115 journalists in ‘HR zoom webinar’ following union protests (Guardian)

The Los Angeles Times said it was laying off 115 journalists – or more than 20% of its newsroom – the day after members of Congress warned in a letter that sweeping media layoffs could undermine democracy in a high-stakes election year. The 142-year-old newspaper, which has one of the largest print circulations in the US, has also lost its executive editor and managing editor in recent weeks. On Friday, the union representing the newsroom’s journalists held an unprecedented daylong walkout, urging Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s billionaire owner, to reconsider a planned staff reduction in response to the paper’s struggling finances. Young journalists of color were “disproportionately affected” by the layoffs, the Los Angeles Times Guild said in a statement, with many Black, Asian American, and Latino staffers losing their jobs, despite the Soon-Shiong family’s public commitment in 2020 to diversity in the paper’s staff, which it said “has never truly reflected the region”...

Sudanese Journalists Network condemns violence against reporters (Dabanga)

In its latest report, the Sudanese Journalists Network (SJN) strongly denounced the targeting of journalists by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) during the war that has been raging for eight months. The New-York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for the ‘immediate and unconditional release’ of the editor-in-chief of El Midan and his brother held by an RSF unit in Khartoum on Saturday. The SJN “follows with great concern the systematic targeting of journalists by both warring parties through summons, arbitrary detention without legal justification, and extrajudicial killings,” the network stated on Sunday. “Therefore, the network holds both warring parties responsible for the safety and security of journalists and all civilians they hold hostage.” The SJN also rejects accusations of journalists spying for one of the sides, “simply for carrying out their duty in media coverage, especially satellite channel correspondents who have to transfer information from the scene of the event after having documented the truth with cameras”. The report describes the killing, detention, and accusations of of various journalists this month...

Indigenous reporter fears more journalists will be targeted after arrest as police cleared Canada camp (Guardian)

A journalist in Canada who was arrested and charged while reporting on a police operation to clear an encampment for unhoused Indigenous people says she fears the charges will chill further reporting of marginalized groups. Brandi Morin, an Indigenous journalist, was arrested on 10 January while documenting police efforts to dismantle the camp in the city of Edmonton. Morin, an award-winning journalist who has written for a range of outlets including the Guardian, was interviewing the camp’s leader when police created a perimeter of yellow tape around the camp. As a scuffle broke out, an officer ordered her to join other reporters outside the perimeter. Morin, at the time on assignment for Ricochet Media, said she refused to leave. “As someone who has covered police action against Indigenous peoples, I know of the violence and brutality that our people experience. It was important for me to be there as a witness,” she said in an interview...

Shooting war: Gaza’s visual storytellers under ‘blatant’ attack (Al Jazeera)

Gaza’s photojournalists, videographers and camera operators are paying the ultimate price for their work...

Clare Rewcastle Brown: UK journalist says Malaysia sentence is 'political revenge' (BBC)

UK journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown has accused Malaysia of seeking "political revenge" for her reporting after a court jailed her in absentia. The 64-year-old is appealing a surprise conviction for criminal defamation of a Malaysian royal handed down this week. A local magistrates' court sentenced her to two years in prison during a single-day hearing. Ms Rewcastle Brown told the BBC she was being targeted after her work on the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal. The scandal saw $4.5bn (£3.9bn) stolen from the Malaysian sovereign fund founded by former Prime Minister Najib Razak in what is thought to be the world's largest kleptocracy case... Ms Rewcastle Brown said she was not notified in advance nor given the opportunity to defend herself in court. Her lawyers have already requested the ruling be set aside by a higher court on violations of the criminal procedure code...

Julian Assange: Australian politicians call for release of WikiLeaks founder (BBC)

Australia's parliament has passed a motion calling on the US and UK to release Julian Assange, ahead of a crucial legal hearing. Mr Assange will appear in front of the UK's High Court next week for his final appeal against US extradition. The Australian citizen, currently in London's Belmarsh Prison, is wanted in the US on espionage charges and faces up to 175 years in prison. Australian MPs voted 86-42 that Mr Assange should be allowed to come home. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who supported the motion, has called for the Assange case to come to a "conclusion" since taking office in 2022. He raised the matter directly with US President Joe Biden during a state visit in October. It followed a cross-party delegation of Australian MPs travelling to Washington to lobby US lawmakers for Mr Assange's freedom. The WikiLeaks founder is wanted for publishing thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011, which American authorities say broke the law and endangered lives. He has long argued that the case against him is politically motivated. His legal team say he is at risk of taking his own life if he is sent to the US...

John J Mearsheimer On behalf of Julian Assange
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN_Shacd2Iw

A Sudanese journalist describes the horrors of a war she cannot cover (The New Humanitarian)

‘Will I survive? Will I emerge unscathed? If I am killed, will I be buried, or will my body be left on the streets for the dogs to eat?’ You cannot become a war correspondent overnight. That’s a reality I’ve been wrestling with for the past 10 months of bitter fighting in Sudan – a conflict that I am personally caught up in, where I’m no longer just a journalist and impartial witness, but a victim as well. War correspondents have training and protective gear. They have sympathetic editors and a distance from the story. I don’t have any of those defences. I have, instead, a tormented conscience. Unable anymore to do my job as an independent reporter, it still nags at me constantly. Since the first shots were fired in April 2023 between the army and rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) battling for power in the capital, Khartoum, all Sudanese have been caught up in the chaos and ruthlessness of this war. I’ve witnessed our neighbour’s house destroyed by a rocket, their 17-year-old daughter killed. I’ve seen RSF soldiers attacking civilians, shooting and looting at will. And then there are the dead bodies – lying out on the streets for weeks – that nobody has come to claim and bury. Ordinarily, my instinct would have been to pull out my camera and notebook and document it all. But these are not ordinary times: I haven’t taken a single photo nor written a single article – the risks are now too high. Voice a contrary opinion, or make a wrong move in front of these soldiers, and you can wind up with a bullet in your head. So instead of work, my priority has become my family: to keep them safe, to provide for them, to get us through this – and it has been psychologically exhausting...

Live feed outside the Assange hearings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDAjve_AOic

Assange Judge Worked for MI6 & Defence Ministry
As with previous judges who have ruled on the WikiLeaks publisher’s case, Justice Jeremy Johnson raises concerns about institutional conflicts of interest, write Mark Curtis and John McEvoy.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/19/assange-judge-worked-for-mi6-defence-minis...

ETA:
It looks as though Amb. Murray has made it to cover this after all -- clearly at not-insignificant personal risk (ETA: given that, as I have noted elsewhere, he has spent the past several months as a refugee of sort from Scotland, where he has been officially notified that he is under investigation for terrorism).

(Replaced with update 22 Feb 2PM Eastern. Some graphical quotes cannot be included.)
Assange Final Appeal – Your Man in the Public Gallery
https:// www. craigmurray. org. uk/ archives /2024 /02 /assange -final -appeal-your-man-in-the-public-gallery/

Reporting on Julian Assange’s extradition hearings has become a vocation that has now stretched over five years. From the very first hearing, when Justice Snow called Assange “a narcissist” before Julian had said anything whatsoever other than to confirm his name, to the last, when Judge Swift had simply in 2.5 pages of glib double-spaced A4 dismissed a tightly worded 152-page appeal from some of the best lawyers on earth, it has been a travesty and charade marked by undisguised institutional hostility.

We were now on last orders in the last chance saloon, as we waited outside the Royal Courts of Justice for the appeal for a right of final appeal.

The architecture of the Royal Courts of Justice was the great last gasp of the Gothic revival; having exhausted the exuberance that gave us the beauty of St Pancras Station and the Palace of Westminster, the movement played out its dreary last efforts at whimsy in shades of gray and brown, valuing scale over proportion and mistaking massive for medieval. As intended, the buildings are a manifestation of the power of the state; as not intended, they are also an indication of the stupidity of large scale power.

Court number 5 had been allocated for this hearing. It is one of the smallest courts in the building. Its largest dimension is its height. It is very high, and lit by heavy mock medieval chandeliers hung by long cast iron chains from a ceiling so high you can’t really see it. You expect Robin Hood to suddenly leap from the gallery and swing across on the chandelier above you. The room is very gloomy; the murky dusk hovers menacingly above the lights like a miasma of despair, below them you peer through the weak light to make out the participants.

A huge tiered walnut dais occupies half the room, with the judges seated at its apex, their clerks at the next level down, and lower lateral wings reaching out, at one side housing journalists and at the other a huge dock for the prisoner or prisoners, with a massy iron cage that looks left over from a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

This is in fact the most modern part of the construction; caging defendants in medieval style is in fact a Blair era introduction to the so-called process of law.

Rather incongruously, the clerks’ tier was replete with computer hardware, with one of the two clerks operating behind three different computer monitors and various bulky desktop computers, with heavy cables twisting in all directions like sea kraits making love. The computer system seems to bring the court into the 1980’s, and the clerk behind it looked uncannily like a member of a synthesiser group of that era, right down to the upwards pointing haircut.

In period keeping, this computer feed to an overflow room did not really work, which led to a number of halts in proceedings.

All the walls are lined with high bookcases housing thousands of leather bound volumes of old cases. The stone floor peeks out for one yard between the judicial dais and the storied wooden pews, with six tiers of increasingly narrow seating. The barristers occupied the first tier and their instructing solicitors the second, with their respective clients on the third. Up to ten people per line could squeeze in, with no barriers on the bench between opposing parties, so the Assange family was squashed up against the CIA, State Department and UK Home Office representatives.

That left three tiers for media and public, about thirty people. There was however a wooden gallery above which housed perhaps twenty more. With little fuss and with genuine helpfulness and politeness, the court staff – who from the Clerk of Court down were magnificent – had sorted out the hundreds of those trying to get in, and we had the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, we had 16 Members of the European Parliament, we had MPs from several states, we had NGOs including Reporter Without Borders, we had the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, and we had, (checks notes) me, all inside the Court.

I should say this was achieved despite the extreme of official unhelpfulness from the Ministry of Justice, who had refused official admission and recognition to all of the above, including the United Nations. It was pulled together by the police, court staff and the magnificent Assange volunteers led by Jamie. I should also acknowledge Jim, who with others spared me the queue all night in the street I had undertaken at the International Court of Justice, by volunteering to do it for me.

This sketch captures the tiny non-judicial portion of the court brilliantly. Paranoid and irrational regulations prevent publications of photos or screenshots.

The acoustics of the court are simply terrible. We are all behind the barristers as they stood addressing the judges, and their voices were at the same time muffled yet echoing from the bare stone walls.

I did not enter with a great deal of hope. As I have explained in How the Establishment Functions, judges do not have to be told what decision is expected by the Establishment. They inhabit the same social milieu as ministers, belong to the same institutions, attend the same schools, go to the same functions. The United States’ appeal against the original blocking of Assange’s extradition was granted by a Lord Chief Justice who is the former room-mate, and still best friend, of the minister who organised the removal of Julian from the Ecuadorean Embassy.

The blocking of Assange’s appeal was done by Judge Swift, a judge who used to represent the security services, and said they were his favourite clients. In the subsequent Graham Phillips case, where Mr Phillips was suing the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for sanctions being imposed upon him without any legal case made against him, Swift actually met FCDO officials – one of the parties to the case – and discussed matters relating to it privately with them before giving judgment. He did not tell the defence he had done this. They found out, and Swift was forced to recuse himself.

Personally I am surprised Swift is not in jail, let alone still a High Court judge. But then what do I know of justice?

The Establishment politico-legal nexus was on even more flagrant display today. Presiding was Dame Victoria Sharp, whose brother Richard had arranged an £800,000 loan for then Prime Minister Boris Johnson and immediately been appointed Chairman of the BBC, (the UK’s state propaganda organ). Assisting her was Justice Jeremy Johnson, another former barrister representing MI6.

By an amazing coincidence, Justice Johnson had been brought in seamlessly to replace his fellow ex-MI6 hiree Justice Swift and find for the FCDO in the Graham Phillips case!

And here these two were now to judge Julian!

What a lovely, cosy club is the Establishment! How ordered and predictable! We must bow down in awe at its majesty and near divine operation. Or go to jail.

Well, Julian is in jail, and we stood ready for his final shot for an appeal. We all stood up and Dame Victoria took her place. In the murky permanent twilight of the courtroom, her face was illuminated from below by the comparatively bright light of a computer monitor. It gave her a grey, spectral appearance, and the texture and colour of her hair merged into the judicial wig seamlessly. She seems to hover over us as a disturbingly ethereal presence.

Her colleague, Justice Johnson, for some reason was positioned as far to her right as physically possible. When they wished to confer he had to get up and walk. The lighting arrangements did not appear to cater for his presence at all, and at times he merged into the wall behind him.

Dame Victoria opened by stating that the court had given Julian permission to attend in person or to follow on video, but he was too unwell to do either. After that disturbing news, Edward Fitzgerald KC rose to open the case for the defence to be allowed an appeal.

There is a crumpled magnificence about Mr Fitzgerald. He speaks with great authority and a moral certainty that compels belief. At the same time he appears so large and well-meaning, so absent of vanity or pretence, that it is like watching Paddington Bear in a legal gown. He is a walking caricature of Edward Fitzgerald. Barrister’s wigs have tight rolls of horsehair stuck to a mesh that stretches over the head. In Mr Fitzgerald’s case, the mesh has to be stretched so far to cover his enormous brain, that the rolls are pulled apart, and dot his head like hair curlers on a landlady.

Fitzgerald opened with a brief headline summary of what the defence would argue, in identifying legal errors by Judge Swift and Magistrate Baraitser, that meant an appeal was viable and should be heard.

Firstly, extradition for a political offence was explicitly excluded under the UK/US Extradition Treaty which was the basis for the proposed extradition. The charge of espionage was a pure political offence, recognised as such by all legal authorities, and Wikileaks’ publications had been to a political end, and even resulted in political change, so were protected speech.

Baraitser and Swift were wrong to argue that the Extradition Treaty was not incorporated in UK domestic law and therefore “not justiciable”, because extradition against its terms engaged Article V of the European Convention on Human Rights on Abuse of Process and Article X on Freedom of Speech.

The Wikileaks revelations had revealed serious state illegality by the government of the United States, up to and including war crimes. It was therefore protected speech.

Article III and Article VII of the ECHR were also engaged because in 2010 Assange could not possibly have predicted a prosecution under the Espionage Act, as this had never been done before despite a long history in the USA of reporters publishing classified information in national security journalism. The “offence” was therefore unforeseeable. Assange was being “Prosecuted for engaging in the normal journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information”.

The possible punishment in the United States was entirely disproportionate, with a total possible jail sentence of 175 years for those “offences” charged so far.

Assange faced discrimination on grounds of nationality, which would make extradition unlawful. US authorities had declared he would not be entitled to First Amendment protection in the United States because he is not a US citizen.

There was no guarantee further charges would not be brought more serious than those which had already been laid, in particular with regard to the Vault 7 publication of CIA secret technological spying techniques. In this regard, the United States had not provided assurances the death penalty could not be invoked.

The CIA had made plans to kidnap, drug and even to kill Mr Assange. This had been made plain by the testimony of Protected Witness 2 and confirmed by the extensive Yahoo News publication. Therefore Assange would be delivered to authorities who could not be trusted not to take extrajudicial action against him.

Finally, the Home Secretary had failed to take into account all these due factors in approving the extradition.

Fitzgerald then moved into the unfolding of each of these arguments, opening with the fact that the US/UK Extradition Treaty specifically excludes extradition for political offences, at Article IV.

Fitzgerald said that espionage was the “quintessential” political offence, acknowledged as such in every textbook and precedent. The court did have jurisdiction over this point because ignoring the provisions of the treaty rendered the court liable to accusations of abuse of process. He noticed that neither Swift nor Baraitser had made any judgment on whether or not the offences charged were political, relying on the argument the treaty did not apply anyway.

But the entire extradition depended on the treaty. It was made under the treaty. “You cannot rely on the treaty, and then refute it”.

This point brought the first overt reaction from the judges, as they looked at each other to wordlessly communicate what they had made of it. It was a point of which they had felt the force.

Fitzgerald continued that when the 2003 Extradition Act, on which the Treaty depended, had been presented to Parliament, ministers had assured parliament that people would not be extradited for political offences. Baraitser and Swift had said that the 2003 Act had deliberately not had a clause forbidding extradition for political offences. Fitzgerald said you could not draw that inference from an absence. There was nothing in the text permitting extradition for political offences. It was silent on the point.

Nothing in the Act precluded the court from determining that an extradition contrary to the terms of the treaty under which the extradition was taking place, would be a breach of process. In the United States, there had been cases where extradition to the UK under the treaty had been prevented by the courts because of the ‘no political extradition’ clause. That must apply at both ends.

Of the UK’s 158 extradition treaties, 156 contained a ban on extradition for political offences. This was plainly systematic and entrenched policy. It could not be meaningless in all these treaties. Furthermore this was the opposite of a novel argument. There were a great many authoritative cases, stretching back centuries, in the UK, US, Ireland, Canada, Australia and many other countries in which no political extradition was firmly established jurisprudence. It could not suddenly be “not justiciable”.

It was not only justiciable, it had been very extensively adjudicated.

All of the offences charged were as “espionage” except for one. That “hacking” charge, of helping Chelsea Manning in receiving classified documents, even if it were true, was plainly a similar allegation of a form of espionage activity.

The indictment describes Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence agency”. That was plainly an accusation of espionage. This is self-evidently a politically motivated prosecution for a political offence.

Julian Assange is a person in political conflict with the view of the United States, who seeks to affect the policies and operations of the US government.

Section 87 of the Extradition Act 2003 provides that a court must interpret it in the light of the defendant’s human rights as enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights. This definitely brings in the jurisdiction of the court. It means all the issues raised must be viewed through the prism of the ECHR and from not other angle.

To depend on the treaty yet ignore its terms is abuse of process and contrary to the ECHR. The obligation in UK law to respect the terms of the extradition treaty with the USA while administering an extradition under it, was comparable to the obligation courts had found to follw the Modern Slavery Convention and Refugee Convention.

Mark Summers KC then arose to continue the case for Assange. A dark and pugnacious character, he could be well cast as Heathcliff. Summers is as blunt and direct as Fitzgerald is courteous. His points are not so much hammered home, as piledriven.

This persecution, Summers began, was “intended to prohibit and punish the exposure of state level crime”. The extradition hearing had heard unchallenged evidence of this from many witnesses. The speech in question was thus protected speech. This extradition was not only contrary to the US/UK Extradition Treaty of 2007, it was also plainly contrary to Section 81 of the Extradition Act of 2003.

This prosecution was motivated by a desire to punish and suppress political opinion, contrary to the Act. It could be shown plainly to be a political prosecution. It had not been brought until years after the proposed offence; the initiation of the charges had been motivated by the International Criminal Court stating that they were usking the Wikileaks publications as evidence of war crimes. That had been immedately followed by US government denunciation of Wikileaks and Assange, by the designation as a non-state hostile intelligence acency, and even by the official plot to kidnap, poison, rendition or assassinate Assange. That had all been sanctioned by President Trump.

This prosecution therefore plainly bore all of the hallmarks of political persecution.

The magistrates’ court had head unchallenged evidence that the Wikileaks material from Chelsea Manning contained evidence of assassination, rendition, torture, dark prisons and drone killings by the United States. The leaked material had in fact been relied on with success in legal actions in many foreign courts and in Strasbourg itself.

The disclsures were political because the avowed intention was to affect political change. Indeed they had caused political change, for example in the Rules of Engagement for forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and in ending drone killings in Pakistan. Assange had been highly politically acclaimed at the time of the publications. He had been invtied to address both the EU and the UN.

The US government had made no response to any of the extensive evidence of United States state level criminality given in the hearing. Yet Judge Baraitser had totally ignored all of it in her ruling. She had not referred to United States criminality at all.

At this point Judge Sharp interrupted to ask where they would find references to these acts of criminality in the evidence, and Summers gave some very terse pointers, through clenched teeth.

Summers continued that in law it is axiomatic that the exposure of state level criminality is a political act. This was protected speech. There were an enormous number of cases across many jurisdictions which indicate this. The criminality presented in this appeal was tolerated and even approved by the very highest levels of the United States government. Publication of this evidence by mr Assange, absent any financial motive for him to do so, was the very definition of a political act. He was involved, beyond dispute, in opposition to the machinery of government of the United States.

This extradition had to be barred under Section 81 of the Extradition Act because its entire purpose was to silence those political opinions. Again, there were numerous cases on record of how courts should deal under the European Convention with states reacting to people who had revealed official criminality. in the judgment being appealed Judge Baraitser did not address the protected nature of soeech exposing state criminality at all. That was plainly an error in law.

Baraitser had also been in error of fact in stating that it was “Purely conjecture and speculation” that the revelation of US war crimes had led to the prosecution. This ignored almost all of the evidence before the court.

The court had been given evidence of United States interference with judicial procedure over US war crimes in Spain, Poland, Germany and Italy. The United States had insultated its own officials from ICC jurisdiction. It had actively threatened both the institutions and employees of the ICC and of boides of other states. All of this had been explained in detail in expert evidence and had been unchallenged. All of it had been ignored by Baraitser.

Following the publication of the Manning material, there had been six years of non-prosecution of Assange. WHy was there a prosecution after six years? What had changed?

Following the declaration by the International Criminal COurt that it would use Wikileaks material to investigate US government officials for war crimes, US officials described Assange as “a political actor”. This period saw the origin of the phrase “non state hostile intelligence agency”. Assange had been accused of “working with Russia” and “trying to take down the USA”.

Baraitser had acknowledged hostility from the CIA but stated that “the CIA does not speak on behalf of the US administration”.

It was important to note that it was after the Baraitser judgment that Yahoo News had published its investigation into the US government plot against Assange.

The court had heard of CIA action against Assange from Protected Witness No.2, but that had only gone to unlawful surveillance at the Ecuadorean Embassy and elsewhere. He did not know of the kidnap and kill plot. This was very real, and it was chilling. Indeed, the prosecution and extradition request was only initiated in order to provide a framework for the rendition attempt.

Political persecution was also apparent in the highly selective prosecution of the appellant. Numerous newspapers had also published the exact same information, as had other websites. Yet only Assange was being prosecuted.Baraitser had simply ignored numerous facts which were key to the case, and therefore her judgment was plainly wrong.

The European Court of Human Rights had ruled that, under Article 7 of the Convention, a prosecution must be forseeable, for the act committed to be criminal. This prosecution failed the forseeability test because no journalist had ever before been prosecuted under the US Espionage Act. Baraitser was obliged to rule on this but instead had simply said it would be a matter for the US court.

Publication of leaks was routine. National security journalism is a thing. It was a well established aspect of the profession in the USA. Encouraging those in possession of classified material to reveal it is routine journalistic practice. Whistleblowers had been frequently published. But no publisher or journalist had ever been prosecuted for obtaining or publishing classified state material.

Baraitser had heard much unchallenged evidence on this point. A prosecution which has never happened before is not forseeable.

At this point, Judge Johnson intervened to ask whether the publication of so many unredacted names of informants had not also been unprecedented, and this may have been expected to trigger an unprecedented response?

Summers replied there had been other examples of publication of names. At this point, the court broke up for lunch.

It had been a strong start to the case by the defence. The judges had appeared to pay increasing attention as the case went on, and at times seemed surprised by some of the assertions made. The first substantive question, coming just on the lunch break, was however plainly intended to be hostile to Assange.

I am publishing this update at this stage. We are a quarter of the way in. I shall be continuing to write.

Above, Continuation available as of morning of 23 Feb:

We left the courtroom and headed for the canteen. This has no frills and a very limited menu, designed to shove the food out quick. I was with John Shipton and German MP Sevim Dagdelen, who kindly paid for lunch, thus immediately distinguishing herself from all the British MPs I have known.

I asked for a baked potato with cheese, but it turned out that baked beans and cheese were not a choice but a pre-mix, and the potato came covered in this bright orange mess. I accidentally got some on my thumb, which despite the passage of 48 hours and frequent washing, remains the colour of Donald Trump’s face.

After lunch, Mark Summers was able to return to the question raised about the release of names of agents and informants.

He said there were many examples in the past of such names being published, including en masse, and it had never resulted in the Espionage Act or any other charges being brought against a publisher. In the case of Philip Agee, the publication of names had led to revocation of the article but no prosecution of the publisher. Daniel Ellsberg had in fact given evidence in this very case that publication of the Pentagon Papers had revealed numerous names, for which there had been no prosecution of the New York Times.

He suggested it was also worth noting there is currently no prosecution of Cryptome, which published the unredacted Manning material before Wikileaks, and still carries it. There has, since these events, been a law passed in the United States specifically outlawing the publishing of the names of secret service officers and sources, but this legislation is specifically limited to officers of the state only and specifically does not include publishers or journalists.

This prosecution therefore remains unprecedented and unforseeable. No American case has ever sought to prosecute publishers who publish state secrets. The governing principle remained as famously defined by Justice Stewart “The autonomous press may publish what it knows and seek to learn what it can”.

Against this great raft of practice and jurisprudence, continued Summers, all the US government had managed to produce was a court of first instance case named Rosen, in which the court had “entertained the possibility” that the receipt and passing of classified information, not by the whistleblower, might be an offence. But that case was about corporate lobbyists and not about journalism or publishing, it had anyway never concluded and it was from a court with a comparative authority to Truro Magistrates Court.

That was literally the only argument the US government had to offer. Yet Baraitser had found in their favour.

Judge Johnson now interrupted to ask how this related to the theft of information aspect of the charges against Assange, and assisting Manning to crack a hashtag? Taken at its highest, was this not conspiracy to get hold illegally of state material?

Summers responded that it was standard journalistic practice to encourage and assist whistleblowers to obtain material for the press. There were a very large number of such instances, but in 2010 there had never been a prosecution. The US government had asserted two examples of such prosecutions, but there were from 2012 and 2016, and they were not relevant to whether such a prosecution could have been forseeable to Julian Assange in 2010.

At this point Summers appeared very exasperated indeed. He addressed the judges as though he were a leading astrophysicist who, for some reason, found himself teaching elementary mathematics to an unruly remedial class at a young offenders’ insitution. His jaw was set and his hands clenched and unclenched. I would not have bet any significant sum against his next words being “listen, you bloody fool”. Every now and then there was a menacing pause while he lent forward and rested his weight on fists bearing down on the desk in front of him, which seemed to help control his anger.

Gathering himself, he continued:

It was the duty of Judge Baraitser to ensure that the extradition did not breach the ECHR Article VII on the rule of law. If the prosecution were unforseeable – as it was – that was a breach. Baraitser’s ruling left the decision on this point to be decided by the court in the United states. But she could not abdicate responsibility in this way. She had an explicit duty to offer ECHR protection and consider the point herself. By not doing this, she had erred in law. The Court cannot be absolved of its duty to deal with Convention rights.

Summers continued the Court had a duty to consider the case the way that Strasbourg would judge the case, applying “European values”. Justice Johnson asked whether that applied to all the charges of the indictment. Summers answered simply “all of them”. Dame Victoria then asked whether it made a difference if Ms Manning had come across the information in the ordinary course of her employment, or had actively sought them out.

Summers replied that what the court at Strasbourg would say on this is that there was a “proportionality balance”.

Manning had revealed massive state level criminality going to the very heart and purpose of the organisation for which she worked. Of course she was entitled actively to look for evidence of it. Manning’s exposures were conscience driven and from no other motive. There was plainly enormous public interest in the publication.

On the question of public interest the Strasbourg jurisprudence differs radically from English domestic legislation on official secrets, but in considering Convention rights the court is obliged to look at it through the Strasbourg lens.

The question was this: “Is the public interest in the disclosure sufficient to outweight the duty of confidentiality of the employee?”

Strasbourg judgments made plain it was not enough just to say “national security”. The actions of governments, especially when it came to state crime, must be subject to scrutiny by the public.

Justice Johnson then intervened to ask how this related to the harm caused to human sources whose names were revealed in the publication?

Summers again controlled himself, and then said there had been no evidence presented, at these hearings nor at the trial of Chelsea Manning, that any harm had actually occurred to any named individual. There was no allegation, in all the United States case, that any individual had actually come to harm. The allegation was they were put at risk.

What had been exposed was state level crime on a massive scale, including very grave war crimes. Set against that was a potential risk to individuals involved in those crimes. In considering the balance, Strasboug would consider that they themselves as a court had made use of the Manning material in several very important legal cases. The International Criminal Court has similarly used the material.

Manning was a whistlebower and her material was of enormous, the greatest, public interest. That would weigh very heavily in the balance of proportionality, compared to the disproportionate American sentencing for disclosure.

More fundamentally, Manning was a whistleblower who had revealed state level serious criminality. The publications were therefore protected speech and Strasbourg would rule there should be no prosecution at all. And the answer to Dame Victoria’s question, Summer concluded, is this:

“If the speech is protected, then helping it cannot be criminal”.

Assange’s intention was political and the effects were political. These had included an end to drone killing in Pakistan, changes to the Rules of Engagement for US forces in Afghanistan and even arguably they had helped bring an end to the war in Iraq. There was no doubt the public interest in this eclipses all the other arguments.

While, unlike Manning, Assange had been under no duty of secrecy to the US government of any kind.

Dame Victoria interrupted to say that Judge Baraitser had dealt with all of these arguments at para 110 of her judgment.

Summers looked at her pityingly. “No, she doesn’t,” he said “she just looks at the Official Secrets Act plus Shayler. Nowhere does she ever acknowledge the public interest in the disclosures. She just recognises everything in the other side of the balance. She does not do the required balancing exercise at all. She never understands the test she has to apply and to judge public interest on the facts of the case.”

Plainly in the lunch period the judges had returned to their corner stools, where they had been given smelling salts, splashed with water and instructed to come out swinging. Judge Johnson asked with extra sarcasm: “So, revealing the identities of informants. How do you balance that?”

Dame Victoria said that Judge Baraitser had noted that this was a matter of “indiscriminate disclosure” that had been condemned by the New York Times, Guardian and Mr Assange’s other media partners.

Summers replied that the risk to those people named simply formed a part of the balancing exercise which Judge Baraitser had failed to carry out. It had to be set against the value of disclosing ongoing war crimes. And you are talking about a potential risk to US informants who might come to harm, against actual war crimes which really had happened. Thousands of people who had been assassinated, tortured, renditioned etc.

Baraitser’s failure to carry out the balancing exercise on public interest and the rule of law under Article 7 of the Convention was blatant, but even more so was that she had failed to engage at all with Article X – Freedom of Speech. She had stated that whether Assange was entitled to First Amendment protection in the United States was for the American judge to decide, but had ignored her own duty to herself consider the same freedom of speech arguments under Article X of the Convention.

There was established Strasbourg jurisprudence that showed that news gathering activity was as much a part of the act of protected speech as the publication of the information. The allegation in the indictment ftom the USA that Assange helped Manning with hashtag hacking could bear two interpretations. It was either news gathering, or providing the source with protection. Both were legitimate.

The court had also to consider the emormity of the sentence Assange could face. This was so disproportionate, at up to 175 years as currently charged, that it should itself fall foul of Article III of ECHR. There was also the question of the sheer chilling effect of this kind of prosecution and sentence, on other journalists and publishers. That too had to be considered in the balance of public interest.

Summers now finished and sat down. We looked around, and were rather relieved to find that it appeared that he had got through his performance without any actual physical harm coming to anybody.

But Summers very definitely had an effect. The attitude and the body language of the judges had changed. It was perfectly plain that he had presnted them with facts about the case that they had never heard before, and arguments that they found cogent. Their interchange of glances with each other became more frequent, and at times Johnson had walked over to confer. They looked things up and moved papers and furrowed brows. It was obvious they had a great deal of respect for Summers, even though, if it were mutual, he hid that fact very well.

Edward Fitzgerald stood up again and the whole court relaxed. Everybody’s shoulders lowered an inch. Both judges looked at him fondly, as at a beloved uncle getting to his feet after an excellent Christmas lunch, who is now going to do conjuring tricks for the family, which everyone knows will go hilariously wrong in the middle but be spectacularly successful in the end.

For some reason, Fitzgerald was carrying the desktop lectern in the crook of his elbow as he started to address the judges, gradually sorting out this and his boxes of papers as he went along. He said that the extradition must be blocked because Assange faced discrimination on grounds of nationality. In his affidavit for the prosecution, Deputy Attorney General Kronberg stated that it may be held that Assange was not entitled to First Amendment rights and protections for free speech, as he was a foreign national. This had also been stated by Mike Pompeo, a senior administration official.

Judge Baraitser had said that the USAID case on this point was not relevant as it only applied to companies outside the United States. But the very affidavit setting out the indictment stated that the US might apply this to Assange, and so had Pompeo. So Baraitser was plainly wrong.

Dame Victoria interjected that Judge Baraitser had also said that the US government position is that this case is not really a First Amendment case at all. Fitzgerald replied that it most certainly is at least arguably a First Amendment case on freedom of speech; that the defence wished to argue the First Amendment. The prosecution themselves said there was at the least an option to deny this defence to Julian Assange on discriminatory grounds of nationality.

If the defendants’ preferred defence were blacked on the grounds of nationality, that was enough to deny the extradition. The notion of an unfair process was not dependent on its result.

The point had been extensively raised and the United States had given no assurances that they would not treat Assange in this discriminatory way.

This was another point where the judges looked at each other, clearly perplexed. This case was not as simple to dismiss as they had expected.

Fitzgerald then said that, contrary to Articles VI and VII of ECHR, it was possible in the USA to be sentenced for conduct with which you have not been charged or of which you have even been acquitted. This could occur at “sentencing enhancement”, where a judge could bring in other alleged conduct which had not been in the trial, to affect the sentence. As this was done on a “balance of probabilities” basis, there were even many cases where the judge had sentenced people for offences of which they had been acquitted by the jury on the measure of “beyond reasonable doubt”.

Fitzgerald gave the example of a person accused of dealing cannabis who had been sentenced for a second degree murder which had never been prosecuted. He said that in the Assange case, this was particularly likely to happen. None of the charges now before the court related to the Vault 7 leaks, but the defence believed these had motivated the prosecution. It was following the Vault 7 publication that Pompeo designated Wikileaks a “non-state hostile intelligence agancy”. It was very likely Assange could be sentenced for the Vault 7 leaks with which he had never been charged. Joshua Schulte, the supposed Vault 7 leaker, had just been sentenced to 40 years in jail.

These kind of arrangements certainly reached the bar of a “flagrant demial of justice” which the courts had set as necessary to prevent an extradition on grounds of lack of due process.

Dame Victoria asked whether this would extend so far as to put aside extradition in every US criminal case? Fitzgerald replied no, you would have to look at each individual case and assess how great the risk. She asked whether the Vault 7 disclosures created the risk in this case, and Fitzgerald replied yes, though there were also other factors.

Fitzgerald then moved to the evidence of Protected Witness 2 and the issue of illegal surveillance of Assange in the Embassy, including of his legal consultations, and the plot to kidnap and even kill him, by the authorities of the state that was seeking his extradition. Baraitser’s answer to this was not to take it into account because it was the subject of criminal proceedings in Spain, but said Fitzgerald “that cannot be a reason not to look at it”.

In considering real danger to life when issues of human rights and political motivation are concerned, the strict rules of legal evidence, as in a criminal court case, do not apply. The Yahoo News article would be considered acceptable evidence in weighing an asylum application under the Refugee Convention, and it should be given the same weight now. Pompeo had himself confirmed that some of it is true.

If removed to the USA there is a real danger that Assange’s life could be targeted by US intelligence organisations. The CIA also has a major role in prison allocation and the imposition of Special Administrative Measures, defined by the UN as tantamount to torture.

Dame Sharp said that the US prosecution had said Assange could be transferred to prison in Australia. Fitzgerald said that was a highly conditional suggestion. Assange would be in any event liable for two years or more pre-trial detention in the USA, then years more if an appeal was to be heard. The conditions of transfer beteen the USA and Australia would be subject to diplomatic negotiation. All the time Assange would be subject to the “real possibility of extra-judicial attack”, while being held in the USA.

Finally, Fitzgerald turned away from the grounds on which appeal should be allowed against Baraitser’s judgment, to the grounds where the Home Secretary (Priti Patel I think – they come and go so fast) had failed in her duty by authorising the extradition.

Fitzgerald said the Home Secretary had a separate obligation to enforce Article 4 of the Extradition Treaty, as she was executing an instrument under the Treaty. She had failed to do so. She had also not exercised her own judgment, as she ought to have done on the Gary McKinnon precedent. The Secretary of State must also act in conformity at all times with the ECHR.

Separately, the Secretary of State had failed in her specific duty to obtain assurances that the death penalty would not be implemented, before agreeing an extradition. The United States could add further charges at any time were Assange in the US, including aiding and abetting treason or other Espionage Act charges which attract the death penalty. It was routine in these circumstances to obtain assurances against the death penalty, and it was sinister they had not been obtained.

The law on this point was very clear; in the absence of assurances against the death penalty, the extradition must be stopped by the Home Secretary and the defendant discharged.

On this rather sombre point, Judge Sharp called the end of the day, and we staggered out into a wet London evening. It was a huge amount to pack into our heads in a day for those of us with brains smaller than Mr Fitzgerald, and the large crowd that roared its approval as we emerged hardly registered with me at all.

It had gone better than I expected.

For the first time in the five years of these extradition hearings, I felt that the judges were genuinely listening and engaged. It was obvious that they had been briefed by the security services beforehand, that the only issue in this case was the placing at risk of US informants whose names had been revealed. It was also plain that they had read very little of the documentation, as they continually asked for references and seemed unacquainted with many basic facts of the case. But as the day went on, they had discovered that there was very much more to be considered, and they looked like they were considering it.

You may think this strange, but they also both came over as rather nice people. They were unfailingly polite, and it did not seem a pretence. They both found the odd moment amusing that was natural to be amusing, and engaged sympathetically with the defence team throughout. Of course, I do not pretend that any of that is more powerful than the Establishment desire to see Julian crushed, and I am well aware they both have truly Deep State backgrounds. But I left encouraged.

Julian remained in his tiny cold cell. The next day would be the US government response.

ASSANGE'S LAST STAND? - Chris Hedges, Craig Murray & Alexander Mercouris
A review of Julian Assange's Renewal Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice, with Chris Hedges, Craig Murray and Alexander Mercouris.

Consortium News
25K subscribers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bccv50tIPWI

After this week’s Julian Assange court hearing, this is clear: extradition would amount to a death sentence (Guardian)

Which is the more serious criminal activity: extrajudicial killings, routine torture of prisoners and illegal renditions carried out by a state, or exposing those actions by publishing illegally leaked details of how, where, when and by whom they were committed? That is essentially the question that was asked this week at the Royal Courts of Justice in London... Politicians in the UK often express their horror at “cancel culture”, but few have so far managed to denounce the US’s attempts to cancel a journalist for the offence of causing shame and embarrassment. So, after this week, the next question is this: does our judiciary and our government have the steel to fight this extradition? Everyone who values the right to free speech undoubtedly should.

Assange Appeal Roundtable: Hedges, Murray, Lauria, Vogan, Butlin, Elmaazi & Narvaez on Truth Defence
Day one roundtable on the Julian Assange Renewal Appeal Hearing with courtroom journalists and others expert in the case. Guests: Chris Hedges, Craig Murray, Joe Lauria, Cathy Vogan, Emmy Butlin, Mo Elmaazi & Fidel Narvaez. Presented by Taylor Hudak for Truth Defence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SclryEv76c

Journalists call for foreign media access to Gaza in open letter (BBC)

More than 50 journalists have sent an open letter calling on Israel and Egypt to provide "free and unfettered access to Gaza for all foreign media". The letter is signed by correspondents and presenters for broadcasters with UK bases, including the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet and Mishal Husain. It says the need for comprehensive on-the-ground reporting is "imperative". Israel's military says its troops have taken journalists on escorted trips in Gaza to allow them to report safely. Palestinian journalists and media workers have reported from inside Gaza since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October, but dozens have been killed, injured or gone missing. In the letter, the 55 journalists write that "foreign reporters are still being denied access to the territory, outside of the rare and escorted trips with the Israeli military". The escorted trips are highly controlled and often only to show tunnels that the military says are used by Hamas or weapons stores... The letter calls on Israel's government to "openly state its permission for international journalists to operate in Gaza"...

Amb. Murray has recovered enough (in Greece) from his recent illness to complete the write-up.
https:// www. craigmurray .org. uk/ archives/ 2024/ 02/ assange- final- appeal- day- 2-your-man-in-the-public-gallery/
Assange Final Appeal Day 2 – Your Man in the Public Gallery
February 29, 2024 in Uncategorized by craig

I approached Day 2 with trepidation. It was not so much being accustomed to having hopes dashed, as having lived so long without hope that it was hard to know what to do with it. At 5:30am I stopped work for a while on writing up Day 1 and went out to walk down the Strand to the court. There was a slightly bigger crowd than had been there the day before at the same time, and happily it included the heroic volunteers saving my place.

A freezing Easterly wind was bustling down the Strand having come express from Siberia, driving before it what felt like a fair chunk of the North Sea, penetrating through layers of clothing with the ease of a ghost through the walls of St Paul’s. I gave the volunteers my opinion of the case so far and what I hoped was a rousing 6am pep talk. They were just astonishingly cheerful in the circumstances. There is a human goodness which can warm from within – I do wish I had some.

Having explained I wanted to publish as much as I could before returning to court, I went back to my Airbnb, where I needed to change all my clothing and even my shoes. I then got back to writing, and dashed off a good few more paragraphs before court, then pressed publish.

I was a little worried that this might be the day I was arrested – my appearance the first day might have thrown the authorities off guard, and I had always thought they would likely think about it a little before acting on the “terrorism investigation” nonsense. But in the event I had no problems at all, and police and court officials continued to be very friendly towards me.

Taking our position in the courtroom, there were still fewer seats available to the public. This is because there was a much larger presence of the “court media”, meaning those London-based journalists with permanent accreditation to the court. They had largely ignored Day 1 as that was Julian’s case; they had however turned up to report the US Government case on Day 2.

I had witnessed precisely the same behaviour at the ICJ Genocide Case in the Hague, where the Israeli arguments on the second day got massively more media coverage than South Africa on the first. The BBC even livestreamed the Israeli case but not the South African, which is a breathtaking level of bias.

So there were fewer spaces available. I was squashed up against the lady instructing the lawyer for the Home Secretary, who was actually extremely nice and kept feeding me mint humbugs as it became increasingly obvious I was struggling against cold symptoms.

James Lewis KC, who had previously led for the US government, was not present. This was unexplained; it is not usual to change the lead KC mid-way through an important case, and judges will generally bend over backwards to avoid diary clashes for them. I have to confess I had rather warmed to Lewis, as I think my reporting showed. I wondered if he had lost faith in his client; it may be of interest that his professional profile lists his most famous cases – but not this most famous case of all.

So his number 2, Clare Dobbin, today stepped up to the lead. She appeared to be on tenterhooks. For a full fifteen minutes before the appointed starting time at 10:30am, she stood ready to go, her papers carefully spread out around the rostrum. She continually looked up at the judges’ chair as though mentally rehearsing zinging her arguments in that direction. Or imagining becoming a judge; how do I know what she was thinking? Ignore me.

It particularly seemed futile that she was standing there all ready to go while we were sitting around her heedlessly chatting, given that we would all have to stand up too when the judges came in, before resuming our places with a fuss of coughing, turning off phones, knocking over files, squashing sandwiches etc. Anyway there she stood, staring earnestly at the bench. This gave me time to remark that she had notably longer hair than the last time she appeared in this case, and the long blond fibres fell completely straight and evenly spaced, ending in a line of hair across the back of her legal gown that was not only perfectly straight but also perfectly horizontal, and remained so no matter how she moved.

It was the most disciplined hair I ever witnessed. I suspect she had shouted it into submission. Ms Dobbin has an extremely strong accent. It is right out of those giant Belfast shipyards that only ever employed Protestants and which produced great liners that sank more efficiently, and in a more Hollywood-friendly manner, than any other ships in the world.

Someone in the shipyard had taken Ms Dobbin’s accent and riveted on a few elongated vowel sounds in an effort to make it posher, but sadly this had caused cracks of comprehension below the waterline.

However, something had happened to Ms Dobbin. She had been stentorian – I had previously described her as Ian Paisley in a wig. But now it took me several minutes to realise she had started speaking. This did not get better. The kindly Judge Dame Victoria Sharp came up with about eight different formulations in the course of the morning to ask her to speak up, like a school teacher encouraging a shy child at a carol concert. All to no avail.

One thing was very plain. Ms Dobbin had lost her faith in the case she was presenting. She hardly tried to argue it. That was not only in terms of volume. Ms Dobbin made very little effort at all to refute the arguments put by the Assange team the day before. Instead she merely read out large chunks of the affidavit provided by US Deputy Attorney General Kronberg in support of the second superseding indictment.

As judges Johnson and Sharp presumably can read, it was not plain what value this exercise added. Ms Dobbin is not so much in danger of being replaced by Artificial Intelligence, as being replaced by a Speak Your Weight machine. Which at least may have a more pleasant accent.

I should explain “Second Superseding Indictment”. The indictment, or raft of charges on which Julian Assange was first held for extradition, was an obvious load of nonsense flung together and scribbled on the back of Mike Pompeo’s laundry list. However, before the hearings started the US Government was allowed to scrap this and replace it with an entirely different set of charges, the “First Superseding Indictment”.

The rendition hearings started with five days of opening argument at Woolwich Crown Court, in the course of which the First Superseding Indictment was torn to shreds by the defence. Therefore – and please read this three times to overcome the disbelief you are about to feel – after the hearings had started and gone through the important opening argument phase, the United States Government was allowed to drop those charges, change them completely and present the Second Superseding Indictment with an entirely new bunch of charges based on Espionage and Hacking.

The Defence did not get to change their opening arguments to reflect the new charges, nor did they get the break of several months they requested to study the new charges and respond to them. Nor were they allowed to change their defence witness list, which consisted of witnesses called to rebut the charges now dropped, not the entirely different charges now faced.

Yes, you did read that all right. No, I can’t really believe it either. Now, let us continue. This is my very best effort to reconstruct, with occasional help from the kind lady from the Home Office, what Dobbin may have mumbled.

Dobbin opened by saying that the defence had made much of evidence being unchallenged. This was a mischaracterisation. All of the defence evidence was challenged. None should be taken as accepted.

Judge Baraitser, said Dobbin, had shown very considerable leniency in allowing evidence to be heard of dubious relevance. Furthermore there was a nexus of relationships between several of the witnesses, and between some of the witnesses and Julian Assange. Some, including one lawyer, had been previously in his employ. The status and expertise of the witnesses individually and collectively is challenged. Their evidence was directly contradicted by the prior evidence which is contained in the witness affidavits of US Deputy Attorney Generals Dwyer and Kronberg.

This case is not about journalism. It is about the bulk disclosure of classified materials. It is about the indiscriminate publication of unredacted names. That is what distinguishes Wikileaks from the Guardian or New York Times. Judge Baraitser had rightly rejected outright that Assange is a journalist or akin to a journalist.

This is not a political prosecution. The US Administration had changed during these proceedings, but the prosecution continues because it is based upon law and evidence, not upon political motivation.

In Superseding Indictment 2 (which sounds like a very bad franchise movie) the hacking charge is added but the accusations in Superseding Indictment 1 are incorporated. What is alleged bears no relation to the Article X ECHR Freedom of Speech cases submitted by the defence. This case is about stolen and hacked documents, about a password hash hacked to allow Wikileaks and Manning to steal from the United States of America, and about the subsequent publication of unredacted names that had placed individuals at immediate risk of physical harm and arbitrary detention.

The indiscriminately published document files were massive. They included over 90,000 on Afghanistan, over 400,000 on Iraq and over 250,000 diplomatic cables. Assange had encouraged and caused Chelsea Manning to download the documents. The Wikileaks website actively solicits hacked material. “The suggestion Miss Manning is a whistleblower is unrealistic. A whistleblower reveals material legally obtained in the course of employment”. Manning however had illegally obtained material.

Assange cracking the password hash “goes far beyond the position of a journalist”. Judge Baraitser was therefore fully entitled to give full weight to that aspect of the case.

The United States had been obliged to go to great lengths to mitigate the danger that arose to its sources after their names were revealed, Many had been resettled, forced to move. The allegation is that the defendant knowingly and deliberately published the names of the informants.

As pointed out by Deputy Attorney General Kronberg, the charges had been approved by a Federal Grand Jury, after very careful independent consideration of the evidence.

Although this prosecution may indeed be unprecedented, it proceeded along long-established principles. There is no immunity of journalists to violate the criminal law. There is now a specific law against the intentional release of the names of intelligence officers and sources, and it has been ruled that this does not breach the First Amendment. The only material for which Assange is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act is that containing names. That is the difference between this and earlier instances which were or were not prosecuted.

Kronberg stated in his affidavit that there is evidence of people having to leave their homes or even their countries as a result of this disclosure. Several had been arrested or interrogated, and some had disappeared.

The material released by Wikileaks had been useful to hostile governments, to terrorist groups and to criminal organisations. Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban had requested and studied some of the disclosed material.

The judges at this stage were looking much more comfortable than they had the day before. They sat back in their chairs visibly relaxed and smiling. Yesterday they had been discomfited by members of their own class saying things about US war crimes to their faces, which they preferred not to hear. Today they were getting a simple recital of Daily Mail clichés and trigger words that reinforce the Establishment worldview. They were back in their milieu, like plump tropical fish in a tank whose heater had failed yesterday but just been replaced.

Dobbin continued that there was no question of any balance of public interest exercise being required. “The material that Assange published unredacted carries no public interest whatsoever. That is at the heart of the case.”

Judge Johnson asked whether Dobbin accepted the evidence given yesterday that others had published the unredacted material first. Dobbin replied that it was Assange who bore the responsibility for the material being available in the first place.

On the question of political extradition, the 2003 Act had transformed extradition law and had deliberately removed the prohibition on extradition for political offences which had been contained in Section 6 of the 1989 Extradition Act (shown here).

By contrast, Section 81 of the 2003 Extradition Act said this:

The phrase “political offence” had obviously been deliberately removed by parliament, said Dobbin.

Judge Johnson asked if there was any material published by government or anything said by ministers in Hansard which explained the omission. Dobbin replied that this was not needed: the excision was clear on the face of Section 81. If a Treaty contains a provision not incorporated in UK Domestic Law, it is not for the court to reinstate it. The political offence exclusion on extradition is not customary international law.

An unincorporated treaty can give rise to an obligation in domestic law, but cannot contradict the terms of a statute. Article 4 of the US/UK Extradition Treaty of 2007 contradicts the terms of Section 81(a) of the Extradition Act of 2003. That Article of the Treaty therefore falls in the United Kingdom, even though enforced in the United States where it does not contradict domestic legislation. Whereas extradition treaties are supposed to be mutual and interpreted the same way by both sides, that does not preclude an extradition by one party in unilateral circumstances.

At this point Judge Johnson was looking at Ms Dobbin with some concern, like a home supporter at a soccer match which his team is unexpectedly losing 3-0, who cannot quite work out why they are performing this badly.

At this point I thought I might introduce a panel so the reader can isolate this vital argument. The question is this. Is this provision of the 2003 Extradition Act at Section 81 (A):

… incompatible with this section of the subsequent US/UK Extradition Treaty of 2007:

… so as to render the latter null and void? That is a fundamental question in this hearing and the assertion made by Dobbin.

If Judge Baraitser’s acceptance of this argument was correct, it of course means that the Home Office lawyers in 2007 drafted a treaty, approved by the FCO lawyers, which neither set of lawyers noticed was incompatible with the legislation the same lawyers had drafted just four years earlier.

It would also mean that the very substantive mechanisms for ensuring the compatibility of treaties with domestic legislation, involving a great round of formal written interdepartmental consultation, all failed too. I have personally worked those mechanisms when in the FCO, and I don’t see how they can fail.

Crucially, Dobbin’s argument depends on the notion that the Extradition Treaty gives a broader definition of what can be a politically motivated extradition, than the Act. So while Assange’s extradition would be barred by the Treaty, it is not by the Act.

But that is obviously nonsense. The entire purpose of the much longer provision in the Treaty is plainly to limit what counts as political under the very broad definition in the Act. It reduces the ground for denying extradition as political; it does not extend it. The fact that even this lengthy list of exclusions does not exclude Wikileaks’ activity is extremely telling.

OK, that’s the end of the panel. Let us return to the hearing.

Dobbin continued that Abuse of Process arguments do not enable the incorporation of unincorporated international treaties. As an example, alleged obligations of the UK under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child have been found by the courts not to be enforceable in domestic law. It is not accepted by the United States that this is a political offence. But even if it were, Swift and Baraitser are correct in law that there is no bar on extradition for political offences.

The defence had claimed the prosecution purported to be for a criminal offence but in reality was political. This argument must be treated with great caution, because any criminal could argue their offence was politically motivated.

The starting position must be the assumption of good faith on the part of the state with which the UK has treaty relations on extradition. The United States is one of the UK’s longest standing and closest international partners.

The Yahoo article was not fresh evidence. It had been properly considered and rejected by Swift and Baraitser. It was internally inconsistent and included official denials of the conduct alleged. The court must consider the nexus between those making allegations of impropriety and the appellant. Ecuador had rescinded his claim of political asylum and Assange was properly arrested by police invited into the Ecuadorean Embassy. There is simply no evidence that any harm would come to Assange were he to be extradited.

Even accepting the Yahoo article as evidence, that does not affect the objective basis of extradition proceedings. It states that kidnapping was rejected by US government lawyers as it would interfere with criminal proceedings.

It is not journalism to encourage people to break the Official Secrets Act or to steal information. Miss Manning is not a whistleblower but a hacker. Protected speech is therefore not engaged and that entire line of argument falls. Baraitser rightly distinguishes between Wikileaks and the concept of “responsible journalism”. No public interest could attach to the indiscriminate mass release of information.

There are many reasons why the title of whistleblower does not attach to Chelsea Manning. There is no evidence Manning had any specific information she wished to impart or any specific issues she wished to pursue.

Julian Assange did not have to disclose the unredacted material. It was not a necessary part of his publication. The New York Times had published some of the material responsibly and redacted. Assange by contrast arrogated to himself the role of deciding what was in the public interest.

The defence was mistaken in its approach to Article X on Freedom of Speech. The approach in England and Wales is not to consider whether a particular publication is compatible with Article X, but whether a particular criminal charge is compatible with Article X. Plainly the charge was compatible in this case with Article X restrictions on grounds of national security. There was no error in law. In this jurisdiction Assange could also be charged with conspiracy.

Johnson then asked a very careful question. If, in this country, a journalist had information on serious governmental wrongdoing and solicited classified material, and published that material in a serious and careful way, would that not engage Article X?

Dobbin replied that following the decision in the Shayler case, he should have pursued internal avenues.

Johnson pressed that he was not talking of the whistleblower but of the journalist. Would the journalist have Article X protection?

Dobbin replied no, but there would have to be a proportionality test before a prosecution was engaged. (You will recall Dobbin had stated earlier that in this case there was no need for any such balancing test as Manning was not a whistleblower and the material was not in the public interest.)

Dobbin said the USA was at pains to distinguish this unprecedented prosecution from ordinary journalism. This was indiscriminate publication of material. The Rosen case was important because, although in a lower court, it explains why you prosecute Wikileaks and not the New York Times. (This case has come up repeatedly throughout the hearings. Of current interest, it was about AIPAC receiving and using classified information.)

While it was the case that the United States could argue that Julian Assange was not entitled to First Amendment protection due to his nationality, it was not saying it would do that. This was merely noted as an option. This could not therefore be a block to extradition due to discrimination on grounds of nationality under Section 81a.

Johnson interjected that in the affidavit we have the prosecutor clearly saying that he might do this. Dobbin replied that this was “tenuous”. Even if the prosecutor did it, there was no way of telling how it might work out. The judge might reject it. This argument could fall flat in court. This possibility did not offer sufficient foundation to exclude extradition on the basis of discrimination due to nationality. Further this would be about Convention rights that lie outwith the jurisdiction of this court.

At this point Judge Dame Victoria Sharp was looking at Dobbin with great concern, as Dobbin prattled on with a kind of stream of consciousness of meaningless phrases. Judge Johnson attempted to bring her back to reality. Do we have any evidence, he asked, that a foreign national does indeed have the same First Amendment rights as a US citizen?

Well, yes, replied Dobbin. Or perhaps, no. One of the two. She would find out.

With that, Dobbin sat down with a look of great relief. She had got to the end, and spoken so softly that not many people heard what she had said. So not too much damage done. The judges looked even more relieved that she had finished. Prof Alice Edwards, the redoubtable UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, was in court. I wanted to ask her whether listening to Dobbin for more than 15 minutes could in itself be construed as cruel and unusual punishment, but sadly she was seated too far away.

The next KC for the USA now stood up, a Mr Smith, who had been promoted from Number 3 to Number 2 in the absence of Lewis. Smith, from his manner, had no doubts at all about his client’s case, or at least he had no doubts about his fee, which amounts to the same thing. He also had no problem being heard. They heard him in Chelsea.

He said that he wished to address the mosaic of complaints brought by the applicant under Articles IV and VI of the ECHR, relating to fair trial, the rule of law and abuse of process. In the written submissions, the appellant had referred to the system of plea bargaining as enforcing guilty pleas by threatening disproportionate punishment, thus interfering with fair trial. But this argument had never been accepted in any extradition to the United States. In some matters, such as jury selection, the defendant had better rights than in the UK.

With regard to the system of sentencing enhancement with reference to other alleged offences not charged, this could not be abuse of process or denial of fair trial. It was “specialty or nothing”, specialty being the principle in international law that a person extradited could only be charged with the named offence.

As the appellant had noted, the US trial judge could enhance the sentence on the basis of whether the applicant was guilty of further offences, on a “balance of probability” judgment. But this does not mean the defendant is convicted of those further offences. The conviction is solely for the offence charged, enhanced by other conduct. The specialty argument then falls. This was not dissimilar to the UK, where aggravating or mitigating factors might be taken into account.

This could come nowhere near the threshold of a “flagrant” breach of the rule of law required to bring the ECHR into operation. Article 6 (2) would only be invoked if the procedure involved an additional conviction on a new charge. The appellant had also raised the possibility of sentencing enhancement from the information in classified material that would be shown to the judge but not to the defendant or his lawyers. But there was no evidence before the court that showed this would happen in this case.

We now come, said Smith, to the question of grossly disproportionate sentencing, which the defence first raised in relation to Article III of ECHR and they now relate also to Article X on Freedom of Speech. But it is not the norm to impose UK sentencing standards on foreign states. The test is whether a sentencing decision is “extreme”.

The defence had given the estimate of 175 years, as the maximum sentence for each charge, running consecutively. But the defence’s own expert witnesses had given different estimates, ranging from 30 to 40 years to 70 to 80 months.

In his affidavit the Deputy Attorney General had stated that avoiding disparity was a key factor in sentencing guidelines. Miss Manning had been sentenced to 35 years and was eligible for parole after one third of that sentence under military law. Kronberg had given other possible comparators ranging from 42 months to 63 months.

Assange stood accused of very serious conduct, for which sentence could be upped by significant aggravating factors. In the UK, Simon Finch had his sentence increased to 8 years for leaking a document which had put national security at risk. By comparison Assange’s alleged offence was not just grave but entirely unprecedented.

Assange and others at Wikileaks had recruited Chelsea Manning and other hackers, encouraged them to steal classified information, had published unredacted names thus putting lives in danger and causing relocation. So none of the range of sentences which had been placed before the court would be grossly disproportionate, from 60 months to 40 years.

Article X could only be applied in these circumstances to a flagrant breach of Freedom of Speech rights. That was not the case. This was neither a whistleblower case nor responsible journalism. It does not engage Article X at all.

Judge Johnson asked for a copy of the sentencing remarks of the court martial in the Manning case.

Ben Watson KC now stood up to address the court on behalf of the UK Home Secretary, although on recent form he could not be sure if that would still be the same person when he got back to the office. He stated that the Secretary of State has no role in supervising the extradition treaty, The substantive decision is for the judges.

He said that it was worth noting that the bar on political extradition had been removed from the European Framework Agreement between EU member states. It was a doctrine “on the wane”.

There was no basis for the court to infer that Parliament was not aware of the difference between section 81 of the 2003 Extradition Act and the bar on political extradition at section 6 of the 1989 Act. See for example the contribution of Prof Ross Cranston MP in the debate on the act (Cranston was both an MP and a former High Court judge).

I suspect that Watson threw this out with confidence that nobody actually would see the contribution of Prof Ross Cranston MP in the debate. But then Mr Watson has never met me. I did decide to see the contribution of Prof Ross Cranston MP in the debate, and this is what he had to say on the subject of political extradition, in the debate on 9 December 2002.

Clause 13 refers to extraneous circumstances. We shall not extradite people where they might be pursued for political or religious opinions. That is a good thing. There is, of course, the question of definition. In the Shayler case, the French court refused to extradite Shayler to this country on the ground that it was a political offence, so there can be disagreement about what extraneous circumstances might entail. However, there is a valuable barrier that will operate in our domestic law.

That rather conveys the opposite sense to what Watson claimed Professor Cranston was saying. Cranston says political offences will still be banned, and it will be for the courts to define them. That is plainly not the same as saying the Act is removing the bar on extradition for political offences.

Judge Johnson now asked Watson a question. The treaty bars extradition for a political offence. So does this mean that if the US receives a request for extradition for a political offence from the UK, it can refuse it, but if the UK receives an extradition request for an identical political offence from the US, it cannot refuse it, and the Secretary of State cannot block it even if they consider it contrary to Article IV?

Watson replied yes, that is the position. He seemed to find nothing troubling in that at all. Judge Johnson, however, seemed to find it a strange proposition.

Watson moved on to the death penalty. Chelsea Manning had not received the death penalty. There was nothing to suggest the applicant faced the serious threat of the death penalty. The fact that the United States had said that Assange could serve his sentence in Australia could be taken as an assurance against the death penalty. So there was no need for the Secretary of State to seek assurances. The United States had suggested Assange faced a maximum penalty of 30 to 40 years.

Judge Johnson then intervened again, and asked if there were anything to prevent the United States from adding offences of aiding and abetting treason or other counts of espionage which do attract the death penalty? Watson replied there was nothing to stop them, but that would be contrary to the assurance received on serving sentence in Australia. There must be a threshold of possibility of the death penalty before the Secretary of State was obliged to seek assurances against it.

Edward Fitzgerald then rose for rebuttal. He was in much more commanding form today, on the attack, scornful of the arguments he was dismissing with a broad sweep of rhetoric.

Edward Fitzgerald KC

The United States had failed to address the point of arbitrariness. Of course it was arbitrary to lock somebody up under an extradition treaty, while deliberately ignoring a major provision of that very treaty that specifically says they should not be locked up. Even if we did ignore this vital provision in the treaty, Assange was still being punished for his political opinions contrary to Section 81 of the Extradition Act.

It had been suggested that the removal of the phrase “political offence” from the 2003 Act was an “express omission”. But there was no evidence produced of that. “You are saying that silence provides by inference the provision of the Act, that disapplies a provision that plainly is actually in the subsequent Treaty”.

It is ludicrous to say the bar on political extradition is out of date. It is not out of date. The UK continues to sign extradition treaties containing this exact same provision. It is in all but 2 of the UK’s over 150 extradition treaties. It is in all US extradition treaties. It is in many major international instruments. Plainly this is abuse of process. As stated plainly by Bingham and Harper “it is abuse to disentitle someone to the protection of the treaty”.

The United States had come nowhere near to meeting the point on the discrimination by nationality, if Mr Assange were not given First Amendment protection because he is not a US citizen. For the US prosecutor to say we may or may not apply this discrimination was no answer, any more than if they said they reserved the right to torture somebody but may not do it.

On enhanced sentencing, this point also had not been met. There was a clear danger Assange would be sentenced for offences with which he was not charged.

Judge Sharp asked Fitzgerald if this point could not block every extradition to the USA. Fitzgerald said no, it should be judged on a case by case basis on the likelihood of this occurring. In this case the court had evidence that the prosecution had not been motivated by the offences charged, but by other alleged conduct. Judge Sharp asked if he meant the CIA Vault 7 leaks. Fitzgerald confirmed that he did.

Mark Summers KC then stood to continue the rebuttal. It was remarkable, he declared in a tone of barely suppressed rage, that counsel for the USA had spoken for hours and never once acknowledged the massive evidence of criminal state-level behaviour by the United States revealed in the leaked material. They never mentioned or acknowledged the war crimes revealed. There had never been any challenge in the court to the witnesses who testified for days that the material exposed state-level crimes.

Mark Summers KC

Summers said that a key United States argument seemed to turn on the notion that what constituted a political act and political persecution under section 81, and the standards of evidence required in judging them, were different in an extradition hearing than applied in consideration of political asylum cases. This was wrong, They were the same. The protected categories in Article 33 of the Refugee Convention of 1954

on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

… were in practice identical to the protected categories of the 2003 Extradition Act Section 81:

on account of his race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation or political opinions

There was a reason for this. The protection to be given under the Extradition Act and under the Refugee Convention is identical, and for identical reasons, and to be judged by the same standards.

When you prosecute for the act of publishing evidence of war crimes, the nexus that made this political persecution was entirely plain. Publication of information which exposes a state’s crime is protected speech. The state you exposed cannot prosecute you for that.

We had heard much about Deputy Attorney General Kronberg, but he was not the initiator. This was all ordered from way above his head. The prosecution had been decided at the very top. You cannot discuss the sheep and ignore the shepherd. The prosecution had noted that Trump had praised Wikileaks a couple of times as though that ruled out the possibility that agencies in the United States were plotting to kill Assange. That plainly did not follow.

We had clear evidence both from the Yahoo News article and from Protected Witness 2 that there were plans laid by US authorities to murder, kidnap or poison Assange. What does that tell us about the intentions of the US government, as opposed to the bland claims of Mr Kronberg?

The point of foreseeability had not been countered. There was no effort made to counter it. In 2010 it could not have been foreseen that publication would bring espionage charges against the publisher. It had never happened before. Encouraging a whistleblower to produce documents was definitely not unprecedented. That was an absurd claim. It was everyday journalistic activity, as witnesses had testified. No witnesses had been produced to say the opposite.

Of course it was illegal for journalists to commit criminal acts to obtain material. That had not happened here. But even in that case, it does not render the act of publication illegal.

The release of unredacted names was by no means unprecedented. Daniel Ellsberg had testified in these very hearings that the Pentagon Papers he released contained hundreds of unredacted names of sources and officers. The Philip Agee case also released unredacted names of sources and officers. Neither had resulted in an Espionage Act prosecution, or any prosecution aimed at a journalist or publisher.

The information released revealed war crimes. Article X is therefore unavoidably engaged by protected speech. The Shayler case was being misapplied by the prosecution. That judgment specifically excluded the press from liability for publication. It was about the position of the whistleblower. Assange is not the whistleblower here, Manning is. Assange is the publisher. There is no suggestion whatsoever, in any of the Strasbourg authorities, that the press are to be regarded the same way as the whistleblower. What Strasbourg does dictate is that there must be an Article X balancing exercise with the public interest in the disclosures. No such exercise was undertaken by Baraitser.

The prosecution refused to acknowledge the fact, backed up by extensive and unchallenged witness evidence, that Assange had undertaken a whole year of a major redaction exercise to avoid publication of names which might be put at risk. This year was followed by one of the media partners publishing the password to the unredacted material as the chapter heading in a book. Then Mr Assange made desperate efforts to mitigate the damage, including by phoning the White House. This did not accord at all with the prosecution narrative: “At best, Mr Assange was reckless in providing the key to Mr Leigh”.

Several others had then published the full, unredacted database first, including Cryptome. None had been prosecuted, yet more evidence that this prosecution was unforeseeable.

There was, however, no evidence given of harm to any individual from the disclosures. What had been created was a risk. You had to set against that risk the proposed sentence of 30 to 40 years in jail suggested by the prosecution. The guidelines say “rest of life”. Chelsea Manning was given 35 years. Evidence had been given that 30 years was a “floor not a ceiling”. A sentence like this for publication “shocks the conscience of every journalist around the world”.

For what? For revealing state-level crime including torture, rendition, waterboarding, drone strikes, murder, assassination, strappado. Strasbourg regards revelation of these state-level crimes as extremely important. The court has ruled revelations of such abuses as clearly covered by Article X. Leaks had the capacity to stop such abuses, and in some cases actually had. The exposure of major international criminal wrongdoing outweighs the risk created by revealing the names of some of those involved in it.

Dame Victoria interjected that some of the names were of people not involved in criminal wrongdoing. Summers accepted this but said “it is just not tenable to argue, as the prosecution does, that there is no public interest whatsoever in the publications”.

Turning to the issue of capital punishment, the Home Office contended that there was “no real risk”. But it was admitted that Assange could be charged with a capital offence. This exercise is not a risk assessment. The law says that in circumstances where the death penalty might be imposed, there must be an assurance sought against it. “We don’t understand why there is no routine assurance against the death penalty provided in this case. If there is no risk, then surely there is no difficulty in providing the assurance”.

Then, all of a sudden, the hearing was over. The judges stood and left through the door behind them. Five minutes later they were back and reserved their judgment, asking for various written materials to be provided, with a last deadline of March 4. Then they left and it was over.

I am conscious that this account flows less well and reads much more bittily than the account of day one. That is simply how it was. On the first day, Assange’s legal team set out a planned and detailed exposition of the case. On the second, the USA and Home Office responded, and did so in rather disjointed fashion, essentially just reiterating the accusations. There was little legal argument as to why Baraitser and Swift had been right to accept them. The rebuttal was thereafter a series of quickfire returns on individual points.

It was impossible not to note that the judges were distinctly unimpressed by some elements of the prosecution. The possibility of discrimination by nationality over applying the First Amendment appears to be an argument to which the judges were searching in vain for an adequate answer. They were also plainly dissatisfied with the lack of an assurance on the death penalty.

But the British security state is never going to accept that the publication of state secrets is justified where it reveals state crimes, and the judges were desperate to hang on to the ruse of avoiding that question by saying this is only about the publication of names of innocent sources. They are also never going to entertain the wider criticisms of the US system such as sentence enhancement.

So my prediction is that a further appeal will be allowed, but only on the narrow grounds of discrimination by nationality and the death penalty. If their hand is thus forced, the Americans will produce an assurance against the latter and the appeal will be on discrimination by nationality.

That appeal will be scheduled for the Autumn, and its result dragged out until after the US election to avoid embarrassment to Biden. That is my best guess of what happens next. Of course all the time the Establishment has achieved its objective by keeping Julian in a maximum security jail for longer.

The point in the whole proceedings which struck me most strongly, was that in the initial hearings the US was keen to downplay the possible sentence, continually emphasising 6 to 7 years as likely. Now an earlier decision has removed considerations of US prison conditions and Julian’s health from the case, they have radically changed tack and were emphasising repeatedly 30 to 40 years as the norm, which is in effect a rest-of-life sentence. That shift, together with the refusal so far to rule out the death penalty, gives a measure of the ruthlessness with which the CIA is pursuing this case.

My apologies for the delay in producing this report. I caught quite a serious chest infection, I think from the cold and wet in London those days, and was really very ill.

This YouTube parody is perhaps relevant to (and mentions) Julian Assange's case: Honest Government Ad - Whistleblower Protection Laws.

Kashmir: Asif Sultan, the journalist who keeps getting arrested (BBC)

On 29 February, journalist Asif Sultan arrived at his home in Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir after being held on remand in jail for more than 2,000 days. He barely spent five hours with his family before he was called to a local police station, where he was re-arrested. "We had no idea that he would be arrested again," says Mohammad Sultan, his father. Asif Sultan, 36, was first arrested in August 2018 and charged under an anti-terror law called the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) which makes it extremely difficult to get bail. Police accused him of helping and sheltering anti-India militants, which he denies. His colleagues have alleged that he was targeted for writing an article in 2018 about Burhan Wani, a young militant leader whose death in a gun battle with government forces had sparked protests and deadly violence two years earlier...

Amb. Murray's update -- in which Scotland transforms itself into a global black hole for free speech.

https:// www. craigmurray .org. uk/ archives /2024 /03 /scotlands -hate -speech -act-and-abuse-of-process/

Scotland’s Hate Speech Act and Abuse of Process
March 21, 2024 in Uncategorized by craig

On 1 April Scotland’s notorious Hate Crime Act comes into force. I have explained before why it is so noxious. It has been condemned by every civil liberties body you can think of. Police Scotland have made matters still worse by telling their officers that the measure of whether a Hate Crime has been committed should be whether the person reporting it feels offended or threatened, and that the officer should make no objective judgment as to whether that is reasonable from the facts of the case.

But I want to concentrate on one very specific aspect of this legislation. It will apply to social media, and indeed it is highly probable that a very significant proportion of the “Hate Speech” will be found on social media.

It is a well-established principle in Scots law that anything published on the internet, which can be read in Scotland, is deemed to be published in Scotland. The act of publication is not deemed to be the person actually publishing the item, let us say in Tahiti. The act of publication is deemed to be the reader opening the item on their device in Scotland.

(To emphasise the total illogic of this approach, while it is the person opening it which constitutes the act of publication, it is not the person who opened it who is deemed to have published it but the original creator/publisher. To emphasise the state’s dishonest thinking still more: if however what is being opened is not, say, libel or hate speech but rather illegal pornography, then it is in that case the person who opened it who is deemed to have published it.)

So a person in Tahiti who publishes a tweet which is opened by and offends somebody in Scotland because it offends a protected characteristic, had committed a crime in Scotland, even though they never left their home in Tahiti and may never have been anywhere near Scotland.

I know this sounds completely crazy, but I do assure you it is absolutely true. As kindly confirmed here by the Dean of Faculty.

( https://twitter.com/cormaclovett/status/1768743943439602164?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%... )

This means, beyond a doubt, that hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of new crimes will be committed in Scotland every year from 1 April. Committed in Scotland by people who were, at the time, all over the world.

If you think that is bad, let me tell you it gets infinitely worse. In addition to holding that Scots courts have jurisdiction over anything published on the internet anywhere in the world, because if it can be read here it is published in Scotland, Scottish judges have also invented the doctrine of “continuing publication”.

As it is the act by the reader of opening the matter online which constitutes publication, every time it is opened by someone in Scotland from the internet that constitutes a new publication. So any “hate speech” that has been online for ten years constitutes a new offence if you read it in Scotland now. “Hate speech” as defined in the Act, anywhere on the Internet, no matter when or where it was published, is going to be a new crime in Scotland if someone opens it or reads it after 1 April.

What I have said is simply true. It is irrefutable. There may sometimes be argument over who committed the crime – for example, it may sometimes be the author or sometimes the publisher who is guilty (though on social media they are in most instances deemed the same person). But that a crime has been committed in Scotland is not in doubt.

So how will Police Scotland and the Crown Office cope?

Through selective prosecution. With literally millions of available criminal offences being committed annually, the authorities have fantastic latitude to choose who and who not to pursue.

In theory of course all crime should be pursued equally. In practice that will be impossible. Scotland will have put itself into this impossible situation by the combination of two terrible bits of law. Scotland’s legal doctrine on internet publication is appalling and Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Act is appalling. The combination of the two is almost indescribably bad.

Scotland’s internet doctrine that the entire internet is published in Scotland if you read it here, is a claim of universal jurisdiction over the internet. It should be derided into vanishing.

But the internet posed a dilemma for the courts. Either they had to accept a massive increase in freedom of speech, or claim jurisdiction over the entire internet. How do you enforce an injunction if somebody can simply publish the information from their home in Tahiti and you cannot touch them? Needless to say, the stupid and arrogant judges of Scotland went for the universal jurisdiction path and not the freedom path (to be plain, so have the courts in England and Wales).

There is, however, a real problem here. Outside the UK, Scottish judges can only get their hands on our “criminal” from Tahiti if they happen to come here, or by extradition. But extradition depends on the principle of dual criminality – the act has to be a criminal offence in the country being extradited both to and from. As there are few countries in the world willing to jail you for telling a story that starts “An Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman went into a pub”, extradition will be difficult in most cases.

It will, incidentally, certainly be an imprisonable offence in Scotland from 1 April to tell a joke beginning “An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman went into a pub”. The police just need someone to complain.

But this opens a very interesting question with England and Wales. Plainly there is an enormous amount of online social interaction between Scots and people in England and Wales. The Scottish courts do not need to extradite people from England and Wales, the police just truss them up and deliver them. But is England really going to accept that a woman sitting at home in Leicester, who made a bad taste joke online whilst in Leicester that is perfectly legal in England, can be sent to Scotland and imprisoned?

Did anybody actually think that through, in passing this Act through the Scottish Parliament?

The Hate Crime Act makes it a criminal offence to insult somebody. You can go to jail for seven years for insulting somebody. That does not have to be your own insult. It includes by “displaying, publishing, distributing” “giving, sending, showing, playing” or “making the material available”. It includes giving someone an album that contains offensive lyrics, or acting in a performance that contains offensive lines. It really does.

(Original posts snippet of document)

The most basic notion of liberty has been discarded.

To make plain the culture wars motivation, three of the six protected characteristics are sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics. I genuinely do not know what the last one means. It does not mean being male or female. Strangely enough it will still be perfectly legal to insult women or men.

Rather worryingly, much of the opposition to the bill comes from people who want to make more things illegal, rather than give the state less arbitrary power to bang up huge numbers of people.

The truth is that this appalling legislation was always a part of Nicola Sturgeon’s grand scheme to destroy the Scottish Independence movement from within through culture wars. Everybody sentient in Scotland knows that the entire intention is a massive abuse of process. Of the millions of people who could be prosecuted for online content read in Scotland, the intention is selectively to attack those who are gender critical.

Now I am in fact not gender critical myself. I still find the intolerance puzzling. But I absolutely defend the right of those who are convinced that trans people are a threat to women’s rights to state their position, free from the legal harassment that is about to be unleashed upon them.

What we are seeing is terrible repressive legislation, amplified by a terrible legal doctrine, leading to massive power by the state over individuals. We are going to see monumental abuse of process. The state will take completely arbitrary decisions on selective prosecution according to a state-political agenda, and will refuse to prosecute millions of other “crimes” under the same Act. This is fascism.

In the short term, I have no doubt that the Israeli lobby will be generating thousands of complaints of alleged anti-semitism aimed at those criticising Israel for its genocide. There is an extremely high correlation between Scottish unionism and Zionism which doubtless will be in play.

The situation contradicts, at the very least, articles 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights. A nightmare is coming.

British judges were right to allow Julian Assange’s appeal. The next three weeks will show who cares about justice (Guardian)

It is hypocritical of the US to seek to lock up Assange while boasting about its commitment to press freedom...

Julian Assange faces further wait over extradition ruling (BBC)

The US must assure Julian Assange has freedom of speech protections and will not receive the death penalty before he is extradited, judges have ruled. The UK High Court said the Wikileaks founder could be allowed to launch a new appeal against being sent to the US without those commitments... The court has adjourned its final decision on Mr Assange's extradition by three weeks to give the US government time to comply with its order...

Russian police detain journalist who filmed last video of Alexei Navalny alive (Guardian)

A journalist who filmed the last video of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny before he died, Antonina Favorskaya, has been detained by authorities. Favorskaya covered the trials of Navalny for several years and media freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders said on Thursday she was one of six journalists across the country held this month. Russian authorities detained Favorskaya late on Wednesday and accused her of taking part in an “extremist organisation” by posting on the social media platforms of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, the Russian human rights group OVD-Info said. Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, said that Favorskaya didn’t publish anything on the foundation’s platforms and suggested that Russian authorities targeted her because she was doing her job as a journalist...

Evan Gershkovich: Waiting for her brother, Putin's 'bargaining chip' in Russian jail (BBC)

One year ago Danielle Gershkovich got a call from her mother. She could hardly believe the news. Her younger brother, Evan, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, had just been arrested: he was the first US journalist in Russia since the Cold War to be charged with espionage. The maximum possible punishment: 20 years in prison... Referring to Evan Gershkovich last month, Vladimir Putin said that he would "like him to go home eventually. I say this sincerely." But there is a "but". From the unsubtle hints Moscow's been dropping, it is clear that the Kremlin wants something - or rather someone - in return. That someone is thought to be FSB security service officer Vadim Krasikov, who is serving a life sentence for murder in Germany. The Russian authorities barely hide the fact that they see Evan Gershkovich as a bargaining chip... "It's often referred to as hostage diplomacy, which I absolutely hate because there's nothing diplomatic about what's going on. Evan is a hostage. He is a bargaining chip. Putin is holding him as currency. And that is just the brutal reality of it. It makes it very difficult for governments to know how to approach this. Because there's a lot at stake here, including what might happen in the future." "Russia is stockpiling Americans in its jails in order to be able to trade them at a later date"... And Russia knows that America trades...

>31 John5918: The grounds for allowing the appeal were, however, severely (and perversely) curtailed. It smacks of a political decision meant to kick the matter into the long grass during a US election year.
Amb. Murray covers it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6GjbrGgMhE
(Though due to accidental injury, he's having trouble producing a write-up as of yet.)

Israel Gaza: Journalists injured in al-Aqsa hospital air strike (BBC)

Seven journalists have been injured in an Israeli air strike in the courtyard of a hospital in central Gaza. Four members of the Islamic Jihad (IJ) militant group were killed in the attack in the grounds of the al-Aqsa Hospital, the BBC understands. The Israeli military said it struck an IJ command centre in the hospital courtyard in Deir al-Balah. Hamas and medical staff deny Israeli accusations that militants use hospitals as bases... The journalists were among hundreds who are sheltering in makeshift tents in the grounds of the hospital... "They hit the tent without any warning, we were staying in the tent as a group of journalists peacefully with no terrorists among us," Ali Hamad, a photographer, told Reuters news agency. "We were preparing our cameras and all of a sudden the tent was hit, everything went dark with debris and rocks flying above our heads and there were flames"...

Iranian journalist stabbed in London discharged and ‘residing at safe place’ (Guardian)

The Iranian International TV presenter who was stabbed outside his home in west London last week has said he has left hospital and is staying in a safe place. Pouria Zeraati, 36, said he was on the mend after his traumatic ordeal on Friday afternoon and thanked people for the kind messages and “love” they had sent him during his stay in hospital... Iran International is the most popular news channel in Iran, according to independent surveys, in spite of being banned in the country by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has labelled the organisation as a “terrorist” channel, Baillie said. Iran International returned to its London broadcasting studios only last September, after taking up a temporary sanctuary in Washington DC in February 2023 over a “significant escalation in state-backed threats from Iran”. Counter-terrorism officers are investigating the attack on Zeraati...

Al Jazeera faces ‘security threat’ ban as Israel passes new law (Guardian)

Israeli legislators have approved a bill paving the way for a ban on Al Jazeera and other international news outlets perceived as posing a threat to security. After the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, promised to take prompt measures to force the end of Al Jazeera’s operations within the country, parliament granted senior ministers authority to shut down foreign news networks. Netanyahu confirmed the decision on social media, declaring that the Qatari satellite television station will no longer be aired in Israel and vowing immediate action under the new law. “Al Jazeera will no longer be broadcast from Israel,” Netanyahu wrote in a post on X after the law was approved in its final readings on Monday. “I intend to act immediately in accordance with the new law to stop the channel’s activity.” Telecommunications minister, Shlomo Karhi, announced that the closure of Al Jazeera was imminent. Al Jazeera condemned Netanyahu’s remarks, calling them “a dangerous and ridiculous lie” and saying they were the prime minister’s justification “for the ongoing assault” on the media network and press freedom. In a statement, the network vowed to persist in its reporting with “boldness and professionalism”. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre expressed concern about the ban. “We believe in the freedom of the press. It is critical. It is critically important, and the United States supports the critically important work journalists do around the world, and that includes those who are reporting on the conflict in Gaza,” Jean-Pierre told reporters...

Sudan suspends work of Al Arabiya, Al Hadath and Sky News Arabia channels, state news agency says (Reuters)

Sudan on Tuesday suspended the work of Saudi state-owned broadcasters Al Arabiya, Al Hadath and UAE-owned Sky News Arabia channel "due to its lack of commitment to the required professionalism and transparency and failure to renew its licenses", Sudanese state news agency (SUNA) said. The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate condemned the decision by the information ministry, saying it was a clear violation of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. "Closing satellite channels and restricting those working in the profession would silence the voice of the professional media, and would also open the door to the spread of rumors and hate speech," the syndicate said on Tuesday in a statement. The decision comes as a continuation of intimidation tactics imposed on journalists who have been working under extreme conditions since war broke out last April, the statement added...

Biden says he is ‘considering’ Australian call to drop Julian Assange charges (Guardian)

Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he was considering a request from Australia to drop the decade-long US push to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing a trove of American classified documents. For years, Australia has called on the US to drop its prosecution against Assange, an Australian citizen who has fought American extradition efforts from prison in the UK. Asked about the request on Wednesday, as he hosted the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, for an official visit, Biden said: “We’re considering it.” Biden’s comment is the latest indication that his administration may have cooled on the idea of putting Assange on trial, which could prove politically toxic in an election year. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration was exploring the possibility of allowing the WikiLeaks founder to cut a plea deal that would see him admit to a misdemeanor offense of mishandling classified documents in return for an early release. The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said on Thursday that Biden’s comments were “certainly encouraging”...

Malawian journalist arrested over article accusing businessman of corruption (Guardian)

Human rights watchdogs have condemned the arrest of a journalist in Malawi in connection with an article accusing a wealthy businessman of corruption. Police in Blantyre detained Macmillan Mhone on Monday over a story that was published online last August on the Malawi 24 news site. The 34-year-old reporter has been charged with “publication of news likely to cause fear and public alarm; cyber-spamming; and extortion” and released on bail. Mhone’s story, which has not been taken down from the website, reported allegations that Abdul Karim Batatawala was operating a network of proxy companies to secure Malawi’s government contracts while he was awaiting trial on allegations of corrupt practices. Batatawala is facing criminal allegations of fraud and corruption. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. Mhone’s article included his denial that he had used proxy companies...

US provides assurances to prevent Julian Assange appeal against extradition (Guardian)

The US has provided assurances to the high court in London in an attempt to prevent a last-ditch appeal by Julian Assange against extradition, but the WikiLeaks founder’s wife has dismissed them as “weasel words”. Last month, two judges deferred a decision on whether Assange... could take his case to an appeal hearing. They granted him permission to appeal but only if the Biden administration was unable to provide the court with suitable assurances “that the applicant {Assange} is permitted to rely on the first amendment, that the applicant is not prejudiced at trial, including sentence, by reason of his nationality, that he is afforded the same first amendment {free speech} protections as a United States citizen, and that the death penalty is not imposed”. On Tuesday, details emerged of the assurances given by the US, which stated that he “will not be prejudiced by reason of his nationality with respect to which defences he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing”. It referred specifically to him having “the ability to raise and seek to rely upon” the first amendment but also said that its applicability “is exclusively within the purview of the US courts”. The assurances also state: “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange”... Stella Assange, his wife, tweeted: “The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the first amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. “It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no first amendment rights because he is not a US citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the first amendment if extradited"... The sides will argue over the worth of the assurances at a further high court hearing scheduled for 20 May. However, Assange’s lawyers have previously described US assurances given in other cases as “not worth the paper they’re written on”, echoing similar criticism from human rights group Amnesty International...

Terry Anderson: US journalist held hostage in Lebanon for years dies at 76 (BBC)

US journalist Terry Anderson, who was held hostage for nearly seven years during Lebanon's civil war, has died aged 76. Anderson was the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when he was captured by Islamist militants in 1985 during what became known as the Lebanon hostage crisis. He died at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, on Sunday, his daughter said. Sulome Anderson said he had found peace in recent years after the ordeal...

Two Russian journalists arrested over alleged work for Alexei Navalny foundation (Guardian)

Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin face at least two years’ jail on ‘extremism’ charges, which they deny, amid continuing crackdown on dissent...

BBC Gaza reporter: My struggle to keep family safe while covering the war (BBC)

For about three months, Adnan El-Bursh reported on the war in Gaza while living in a tent, eating one meal a day, and struggling to keep his wife and five children safe. The BBC Arabic reporter shares the harrowing moments he faced covering a war that pushed him to his limits...

Media freedom ‘perilously close to breaking point’ in several EU countries (Guardian)

Media freedom is declining across the EU and “perilously close to breaking point” in several countries, a leading civil liberties network has said, highlighting widespread threats against journalists and attacks on the independence of public broadcasters... “Media freedom is clearly in steady decline across the EU – in many countries as a result of deliberate harm or neglect by national governments,” said Eva Simon, the senior advocacy officer at Liberties. “Declining media freedom goes hand in hand with a decline in the rule of law. There’s a close correlation between the two. This is the playbook of authoritarian regimes.” She said new EU media legislation “has potential” but must be properly implemented...

Tributes paid to veteran Northern Ireland journalist Stephen Grimason (Guardian)

Tributes have been paid to the veteran Northern Ireland journalist Stephen Grimason after his death at the age of 67. The former BBC Northern Ireland political editor etched his face into history as he broke the news in April 1998 of the Good Friday agreement. Grimason, originally from Lurgan, County Armagh, later went on to work for the Stormont administration as the director of communications. He spoke publicly over the past year about having cancer and said he had received well wishes from the former UK prime minister Tony Blair, among others...

Across the world, journalists are under threat for sharing the truth (Guardian)

Last year was the most dangerous to be a reporter since 2015. Without the courage of correspondents risking everything to report from conflict areas, we could be at risk of ‘zones of silence’ spreading around the world...

'I watch my back': Spike in BBC World Service journalists working in exile (BBC)

The number of BBC World Service journalists working in exile is estimated to have nearly doubled, to 310, since 2020. The figures, released for the first time ahead of World Press Freedom Day, reflect press crackdowns in Russia, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia. Journalists from other countries, including Iran, have lived abroad for more than a decade. Many face jail sentences, death threats and harassment, both on and offline. "The only way they can carry on reporting is to be forced out of their homes," says the director of the BBC World Service, Liliane Landor. "The increase we're seeing in the numbers of journalists in exile is extremely concerning for press freedom"...

The Taliban targeted us, beat us and chased us out. This is how we run our Afghan newspaper from exile (Guardian)

thanks to the extreme bravery of reporters on the ground... In the two decades before the Taliban returned to power, Afghanistan had a vibrant media sector. There were newspapers, television channels, periodicals, magazines and more, invigorating the public discourse by allowing citizens to express their views on national and local issues. That is completely gone now... But operations that have been forced out of Afghanistan, like ours, did not bend to the will of the Taliban. While in exile, many Afghan journalists regrouped and relaunched their media outlets, despite huge uncertainty and financial pressure. As the Taliban quashed all independent media and the vacuum of information within the country became deeper and wider, newspapers, television channels and other online platforms launched by journalists in exile became a lifeline – the only sources of credible information for people inside Afghanistan...

Violent attacks against environmental journalists on the rise, report finds (Guardian)

More than 70% of environmental journalists have been attacked for their work since 2009, according to a Unesco report, which warns of rising threats against those covering the climate crisis. At least 749 environmental journalists have faced violence and intimidation in the last 15 years, the UN body found. It said that 44 reporters were murdered between 2009 and 2023 but that resulted in just five convictions. Unesco and the International Federation of Journalists, which jointly conducted the research, said that environmental journalism had become an increasingly perilous field. The often-remote and isolated nature of the work, and the subject matter reported on – including fossil fuel companies, mining firms, land grabbing and deforestation – contributed to the danger...

‘I decided to not let anybody silence my voice’: the journalists in exile but still at risk (Guardian)

Threats from the state have led many journalists across the world to flee their home countries to report from elsewhere. But for many the intimidation did not stop when they left...

Iran charges journalists after BBC report on teen protester's death (BBC)

Iran's judiciary has filed charges against "a number of journalists and activists" after the publication of a BBC report alleging men working for the security forces sexually assaulted and killed a 16-year-old protester. The judiciary-run Mizan news agency described the BBC Eye investigation into Nika Shakarami's death in 2022 as "fake, incorrect and full of mistakes". It did not identify the individuals summoned for allegedly "disrupting the psychological security of society". But two Iranian journalists who had commented on the report online said prosecutors had opened cases against them...

Journalists under attack, media devastated amidst Sudanese conflict (Sudan Tribune)

Sudanese journalists are facing a relentless assault as the country’s ongoing conflict between the military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to wreak havoc on the media landscape... Al-Sayed revealed that the Sudanese government is targeting journalists, with 20 facing arrest based on accusations of belonging to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Three journalists, Shuqui Abdel Azim, Maher Abu Al-Joukh, and Sabah Muhammad Al-Hassan, are in even greater peril, facing charges that could carry the death penalty, including war crimes and genocide, in connection with a case against civilian political leaders. Further, she stressed that the conflict has decimated Sudan’s media, with an estimated 1,000 journalists, half the union’s membership, losing their jobs. The intimidation and harassment have driven many journalists, particularly women (at least 200), to seek refuge in neighbouring countries, with Egypt being a popular destination. Fadl Al-Sayed stated that since the conflict’s outbreak on April 15, 2023, the media has become a target for both sides, forcing many media outlets out of business and leaving most journalists unemployed. The Syndicate estimated that 90% of media infrastructure has been destroyed or looted, leading to closures and “the absence of professional media and the assassination of truth due to a lack of credible information and news”...

Sudanese Journalists Syndicate: ‘Media targeted by both sides in Sudan war’ (Dabanga)

World Press Freedom Day, marked globally on May 3, this year coincided with the first anniversary of the start of the devastating war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Sudanese journalists are living in tragic situations, in light of the comprehensive collapse the country is witnessing. Sudanese journalists were by no means an exception. They were harmed by the war, but they faced targeting of a different kind, related to their identity as journalists. They remained targeted by both sides of the conflict, unable to carry out their duty of providing journalistic coverage and reach the site of the event...

Al Jazeera office raided as Israel takes channel off air (BBC)

Israel's government has moved to shut down the operations of the Al Jazeera television network in the country, branding it a mouthpiece for Hamas... Police raided the Qatari broadcaster's office at the Ambassador hotel in Jerusalem on Sunday. Al Jazeera called claims it was a threat to Israeli security a "dangerous and ridiculous lie". The channel said it reserved the right to "pursue every legal step"...

Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices in ‘dark day for the media’ (Guardian)

Foreign Press Association decries move under new law based on claim network is a threat to national security... Critics called the move, which comes as faltering indirect ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas continue, a “dark day for the media” and raised new concerns about the attitude to free speech of Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government...

Northern Ireland police spied on investigative journalists, tribunal told (Guardian)

The Police Service of Northern Ireland covertly surveilled a group of journalists on a six-month rolling basis because they were conducting unwanted investigations into the force, a secretive tribunal has heard. Details of what the PSNI are said to describe as a “defensive operation” were heard at the latest hearing of the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) into whether two Northern Irish investigative journalists, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, were spied on by UK police and intelligence services seeking to identify their sources.
After they produced No Stone Unturned, an award-winning documentary about apparent collusion between the police and the suspected murderers in the 1994 Loughinisland massacre, in which six Catholic men were killed by loyalist paramilitaries, the homes and offices of the pair were raided – a move later criticised by Northern Ireland’s top judge...

Sudanese female journalists face threats, harassment (Sudan Tribune)

Sudanese female journalists are increasingly targeted with online threats, harassment, and even physical attacks. This has driven some to flee the country, while others bravely continue their work amidst the dangers. The Journalists Syndicate is taking action. They’ve documented cases of abuse across various states, including physical assaults, harassment, and death threats. To improve safety, they’re implementing measures for conflict zones and launching a nationwide support hotline within days...

‘My heart still hurts’: The personal sacrifice of revealing a K-pop scandal (BBC)

The lives of Park Hyo-sil and Kang Kyung-yoon, two female journalists based in South Korea, took a shocking turn when they helped bring to light a sex scandal involving famous K-pop stars. Little did they know, their pursuit of truth would come with immense personal sacrifices... The journalist was bombarded with abusive comments online and malicious emails. People posted images of her face and body on the web and insulted it. "What a face. Makes me want to stamp on it," one message read. She says people phoned her newspaper editor and threatened him: "If you don't sack her, we're going to set fire to your building." Park says: "They were sending me death threats. My husband was incredibly worried and told me not to go into the office, not to leave the house because it seemed so dangerous"... "I started receiving phone calls in the early hours... and they would continue for about three to four hours. When I didn't answer the phone, they started sending obscene images"... as justice was served, the trolls subjected Kang to many "unfathomable personal attacks". Kang says: "At the time I was pregnant, right? So they called me femi-bitch. Pregnant femi-bitch. Left-wing femi-bitch... My heart was incredibly lonely and exhausted"... Kang says the "most shocking" comments that "I can't even utter" were directed at her child in a harassment campaign that lasted three years, but "I have no regrets", she says...

Assange wins right to challenge US extradition (BBC)

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can bring a new appeal against extradition to the US, the High Court has ruled. He was granted permission to appeal against the order that he be sent to the US to stand trial for leaking military secrets. The decision means Mr Assange will be able to challenge US assurances over how his prospective trial would be conducted and whether his right to free speech would be infringed... In a short ruling on Monday morning, two senior judges granted him permission to appeal against an earlier order allowing his extradition to the US. They ruled that he needs to be given a full appeal in the UK...

The case against Julian Assange has been a cruel folly. His right to appeal is a small step towards justice (Guardian)

Successive home secretaries and the courts have been spineless in pandering to the US government... The high court decision to grant leave to appeal to Assange was a further reminder to the US authorities and their apologists in Britain of the folly inherent in their attempt to extradite and jail a man whose main offence is publishing the shameful secrets of the US government and its armed forces. In a just world, the court would have brought this whole absurd legal process to an end there and then, but the fact that an appeal has been granted is both a defeat for the US and renewed cause for hope for Assange...

Israeli officials seize camera from US news agency, cutting live feed of Gaza (Guardian)

Israeli officials have seized a camera and broadcasting equipment belonging to the Associated Press in southern Israel, in the latest moves against media covering the Gaza war. Officials accused the US-based wire service, which has subscribers around the globe, of violating a new media law by providing images to Al Jazeera. The Qatari satellite channel, which is among thousands of clients that receive live video feeds from AP, was forced to close its offices in Israel on 5 May after a government vote to use new laws to close the satellite news network’s operations in the country...

MAGA RAGE BAIT
Trump’s Ugly, Hateful Attacks on Media Suddenly Take a Dangerous Turn
Greg Sargent / May 28, 2024

{Trump's} posting of a video of a man cursing at Joe Scarborough sends a broader message: If elected, he’ll use state power to come after countless other Americans...

...the news here isn’t this one man’s anger at Scarborough, it’s that Trump elevated it. And moments like these require context: This one should be placed alongside Trump’s other recent threats, such as his vow that news organizations will be “thoroughly scrutinized” if he wins, his promise to persecute his “vermin”-like political foes, and his threat to prosecute a range of enemies without cause. Looked at this way, is it really a leap to suggest that Trump is broadcasting the idea that liberals should feel threatened en masse by a second Trump term?

There is a mini-cottage industry of punditry that is forever on the lookout for the merest hint of disrespect toward conservative voters, particularly rural and working-class white ones. But the fact that the GOP nominee for president approvingly posted a video that declares a large ideological subgroup of Americans “done” and “gone” if he is elected—never mind the vile epithets directed at them—appears to have garnered almost no headlines. Few if any top shelf pundits have scowled with disapproval...

https://newrepublic.com/article/181973/trump-media-attacks-media-dangerous-turn

Trump’s Boast About Putin’s Hostage Was Ignored—Why?
Real or imagined, Trump’s “deal” for Evan Gershkovich’s release is outrageous.
A.B. Stoddard | May 29, 2024

AT 1:30 IN THE MORNING LAST THURSDAY, Donald Trump posted a deranged message on Truth Social declaring not only that Russian President Vladimir Putin would release imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich after Trump wins in November, but that Putin “will do that for me, but not for anyone else.” ... If Trump has this influence, why wouldn’t he use it to free Gershkovich now?...

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-boast-about-putin-hostage-evan-gershkovich

Israeli journalist describes threats over reporting on spy chief and ICC (Guardian)

An investigative reporter with Israel’s leading leftwing newspaper, Haaretz, has said unnamed senior security officials threatened actions against him if he reported on attempts by the former head of the Mossad to intimidate the ex-prosecutor of the international criminal court. Amid growing concern over Israel’s censorship regime, enforced by the military censor’s office and by gag orders issued by the courts, Haaretz published an article on Wednesday with blacked out words and sentences to demonstrate the scale of redactions. In an article published on Thursday, the investigative reporter Gur Megiddo described how two years ago security officials blocked an attempt by the paper to report efforts by the then Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, to threaten the then ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda...