 Maen nhw wedi gweld y defnyddio'r hoffiad bwysig anffraedd yma o bod ystod y cynhyrchu. Mae'r hoffiad yma yma gilydd o ath dibuidd i swydd ac ymgyrchu'r hoffiad. Rwy'n ymweinydd i'r Llywodraeth Bly署, clwyddoedd hwnno a ddelygiad wrth os o boblion chiliau a flyfnodau yma yma perfatwch. Rwy'n meddwl i'n credu trafnod o'r wrthyn nhw, i'r darllechiad mewn bywyd. Dwi wedi'n gweinio gweithio'r agorau'r gwybodaeth yr Unedig Dlaid Gweithgrifonwyr, ac yn enw i'n ei fod yn gweinio'r cymryd am yma'r ysgol yn ysgrifennu cymryd? mae'n meddwl i'n meddu i gyrfaen econoedd. Beth a chi wedi dod i'n trefnod felly i ddiweddio unrhyw o'r wych, ac wedi'i ddim y pwysig o chymdeithio i chi oedd Julian yn valwg a rhywfodaeth y gwladoo'r ddweudol. Gyda dwi'n ei ddefnyddio, ac rydyn ni'niant ddim o'r prosied y bobl, y rhai wneud yn rhaid i hollwllion o'ch cyalnız i gynhywbeth, yn ei ddechrau a'r ddechrau ar gyfer y bydd yng Nghymru. Felly mae'n cwestiynau am ymweld nhw'n meddwl yn cyfnodol, oedd y Gweithfyrdd y Gweithfyrdd yn ei ddechrau, oedd y Gweithfyrdd yn ei ddechrau, oedd yn cyfweld yn cael ei ddechrau. Mae hynny'n oedden nhw'n cael ei ddechrau. Mae yna y gweithfyrdd, mae'n cael ei ddechrau, Mae'r ystyried fyddion yn swydd gyda'r gynghor i'r cyfnod n系, mae'n pethau i com cyfrwyllfa yma, gan ymlaen chi'n cael ei cyfrwyllfa'n ddod a hollu wirni, mae rhai'n gwybod ei preferredau yn ymrydd yn amser. Mae'r ddaeth yr adroddau os yna bydd hyn yn dylunio eu rhai, ac mae'r cyfrwyllfa'n ddod yn gysyllt mor defnydd. Felly, oeddaeth iddyn nhw i hynny o'r cyfanithau sydd gyda ceisio cymryd. Mae'n oeddaeth fod ymlyn cardiol, i eu digwydd, rydyn ni wedi'i hyn yn ddod i chi ei bod yn rhan i'r cyfrifiad. Dys hedge your response to some of the points raised here? Mae'n arwinell y bydd yn sielio. Rwy'n dweud yr ysgol maen nhw bydd yn gwneud, dim yn y dystun nhw gallwn gweld yn ddweud? Mae'n ddweud i'r ysgol maen nhw erbyn wedi ddgyrch ddeithas y Côr? Le, mae'n meddwl i'r umnig. Mae'n meddwl i'r cyfleoedd dechrau gael rhan. Rwy'n meddwl i ddim yn storio, mae througho'r Côr i ffermwydy. Mynd i chi'w beth sydd yn fath unio'r ysgrifennidau. Mae'r cyfrifennidau a'r ffurmannidau a'r ysgrifeith mae'n meddwl i'ch cyfrifennidau a'r ffordd. We have had that continuously. So it is hopeful to hear that they behaved in a half decent way. Of course we have read in publications, especially in the US, that both judges are very deeply entrenched within the British establishment and one makes one very doubtful of the outcome. But it is an opportunity for the defence team to put across all the important points is an extremely important for the historic record which will revisit this case, being a very historic case, that as much as information is put out in the public record and especially in the court records, and so I'm glad to hear that it was allowed to be so, so thank you for being there and letting us know. Yes this I think was the first time that the defence was able to address their points on appeal before a court, y ffroedd yn cael ddweud y llefydl gan yma, o'n credu'r Fawr? Chris, mae'r athes yma yn y ffroedd gyda'r cast hefyd. Rwy'n dechrau dyma? Diolch arwinellu gan y Dня? Diolch arwinellu gan'r wneud i anghybu nesafwyd o ffraeg yn y Rhaidol. mae'r drws yn cael ymddiw Creg yn ysgrif wedi'i ddweud y gallwch yn gyfleu'r llynigol. Mae'r drws wedi'i'n meddwl gyda'r hyfforddiol, ond ar hyn o'r perthyniad, i ddweud y llynigol, a'r llynigol yn ei wneud hyfforddiol. Felly, y gymryd y deilig yn geisio, ond mae'n credu'n ddweud. Mae hyn yn ddweud i'n ddweud ychwanegu, mae cyntaf y defnodd yn gweithio'r ddeud. Mae'n ddweud i'n ddweudio'r ddweud i'r cyfnodd a'i cael y cyd-dweud i'r ddweud. Mae'n ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r cyffredin bach yn yn gweithio, a'r llaw, wrth gwrs, mae'n rhoi'n cael ei wneud i fawr bydd y gallu cyfnodd yn arwefynol, yna'n ddweud i'r cyffredin, ond ond mae'n rhai iawn o'r ddweud o'r ddeud. I think was the correct focus by the defense on Vault 7, because he's not charged. Vault 7 was the leaking, what was it, 2017 credit or something like that? To the leaking of the CIA hacking tools, their ability to use our smartphones, even our cars, internet, TV, anything, even when they're off, to monitor us. And that really triggered the fiercest animus against Julian, that's when Mike Pompeo, shortly after that, he was then the head of the CIA and the Trump administration, attacked WikiLeaks and Julian as what non-hostile, non-state intelligence agencies, I may have that slightly garbled, and then you really saw an acceleration towards the extradition, which the Obama administration had not pushed for, what they call the New York Times problem, because of course what Julian and WikiLeaks did was no different from what the Guardian, El-Baïs, Lamon, Derspiegel all did in terms of publishing, they published this in a kind of joint project. And I think that was an important point, because although he's not charged for the release of the publication of the information in Vault 7, it's very clear that the engine of the extradition, the forces that are pushing for his extradition come out of the CIA, and that if he is extradited and ends up in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, which is a kind of bastion of CIA, it's very close to the CIA and the jury pool is all pulled from people who have relatives, friends, connections to the CIA and other national security agencies that are all head court in that area, and that's why the government wants it there, because they win those cases. I don't see, and I don't see what Joe and others think, Craig, I don't see how they're not going to hit him with these charges, and potentially, I mean at that point, and I think that the defense was correct in raising not only would these charges exacerbate, facing 175 years already, but then it really becomes, you know, the potential of even the death penalty becomes possible. So that was, I thought, the most interesting aspect that I saw this afternoon, yeah. And of course they gave the alleged whistleblower 40 years. Well that's right, and also one of the expert witnesses, Maureen Baird, she did point out after a question on reexamination by Mark Summers in the extradition hearing that it is the CIA that if the charges are not aggregated to death penalty, they can make it actually worse than death by imposing SAMS anytime they like, and I think Mark Summers really pointed that out today. And we should explain what SAMS are. Special Administrative measures. I've watched them at work, because they were used after 9-11 when the American government at the behest of the Israelis shut down all of the Palestinian activists and all of the major Palestinian organizations like the Holy Land Foundation. These people are still sitting in jail. So I covered the case of Fahad Ashmi and he was put in isolation in the MCU in New York for 23 months. And now Fahad had his crime was that he was smart and articulate and had been a leader of the Palestinian movement. At his trial they actually played surptitious tapes or recordings that they had of him speaking about Palestine at the university to convict him. He was doing a graduate degree, I think, at the University of London, London School of Economics, and his roommate had sent waterproof socks. I didn't even know such things existed to the Taliban or Al Qaeda or something, and it borrowed his cell phone. I mean it was just really flimsy, but the point is when they brought him into court, he didn't know where he was, they had broken him, and they know how to break you scientifically. And of course they're applying these psychological measures of torture to Julia. And so these SAMs are very pernicious. They isolate you, they restrict your ability to see the quote unquote evidence used against you, even your lawyers can't see it. It's extremely difficult for you even to have contact with family members. It's complete social isolation. But just to throw that out in the diplomatic note, which has no legal validity really, they said they won't impose SAMs on Julian. This is part of the assurances. They won't impose SAMs on Julian unless of course he warrants them. But it's important that we have other SAM-like measures of MCUs, management control units that really replicate. I mean one of the things they said in the diplomatic note is he won't go to Florence, Colorado, this high-tech, supermax prison pretrial without saying that nobody goes to Florence pretrial. So it's really cynical. But they have lots of ways to break you. And I also teach in the prison system and have for 14 years through Rutgers University in the college. I kind of see it up close and even there on a smaller scale they'll pull my students for minor like having a cell phone which was sold to them by the guard of course. And throwing them in for a year and they come out. They just say after six days they start to lose it. But having taught students that even after a year in isolation they don't ever fully recover. So it's important to know that they have all sorts of mechanisms within the bureaus of prison that are designed to destroy you. It's routine within the American prison system and what they do is they break you and then they drug you. So what they want to do is break you in isolation and then give you psychotropic drugs where you're basically a zombie and you go down the hall to the mess hall shaking. This is routine within the American prison system. But it's especially used for high profile cases as it was for these Palestinians, as it was for Fadashmi and as it will be for Julian if he is extradited. Well it's very interesting that the judges who didn't seem to know all that much about what had happened in the past were asking questions about the assurances. And do we have these assurances here? They wanted to read them. But one question they asked is if there was an assurance that would assure against Julian's charges being aggregated to a capital offence in the United States and of course there aren't. So for everybody listening right now I just want to give some additional background information. Initially it was stated that Mr Sange would be subjected to SAMs or special administrative measures. Chris outlined what that is very clearly. This is beyond solitary confinement. Now of course later on during the extradition proceedings the United States then came forward and provided a so-called assurance that he would not be subjected to SAMs or special administrative measures. But we do know of course there's a loophole with this particular assurance in all of them in fact which allows for them to be overturned basically at any moment. And another point just to make clear for the listeners again that once Julian Assange is on US soil if he is extradited again still unclear at this point and we would all hope for that certainly not to be the case and those who do in fact care about press freedom. If extradited additional charges could be brought forth which would make him eligible for the death penalty. And that was also another point that was addressed in court today by the defense before I handed over to Joe because I would like you to weigh in as well on this point if you would like. I do want to welcome another guest joining us Fidel Narvias former employee of the Ecuadorian Embassy. It's great to have you with us. I'll get to you in one second first I'll hand it over to Joe for a few comments. I'd like to set the scene. This court tried to limit the amount of coverage in previous cases in the extradition hearing in 2020 and in the high court hearing in 2021 October. You could be anywhere in the world if you were a legitimate journalist you can get a link to watch it. This for some reason they have limited it to people that you had to be on English or Welsh territory. No explanation for this why this is different now and then. Before and then we went into the courtroom. It's quite a beautiful courtroom. Very small however. I counted seven rows about 15 people across and against this I think Walnut wooden paneled walls and bookshelves with law books is an iron cage on the top left that was empty because Julian decided what we learned from the court confirmed by his lawyers that he decided not to come today. He could have come. He also didn't want to watch it on video link. The story was that he was ill so you can imagine what he's going through and he wouldn't want to necessarily watch this travesty anymore. However he may have been encouraged and not overly as Chris is pointing out by this incredibly strong presentation by his lawyers left me feeling and I tried to resist this feeling of some high expectation. How could they lose this case when you hear this argument? This is no way if there's going to be any kind of semblance of justice here. But I particularly like was the simple way they laid out a timeline to show what the US motives were here and that there's no difference between any authoritarian state crushing a journalist who is reporting and revealing their crimes at the United States. I think this is a hurdle for Western leaders for the public because we're continuously thinking that only other countries have this type of behavior by their leaders. We're not capable of that. We're the good guys. It's all the others that do that and I think that's a huge hurdle to overcome. But today we heard the US and their war crimes and Julian is posing that is why they clearly went after him and we saw that Vault 7 yes was important. Milestone in this because that got Pompeo after him and he is the driving force behind this prosecution and it's terrible, horrible what we saw. We also saw a lot of good arguments about the difference between the extradition act and the extradition treaty because the extradition treaty between the US and UK says there cannot be an extradition for political offenses. That was left out of the act at the implementing act in Parliament but as his lawyers argument that didn't mean that they didn't in some way refer to it and in fact there is a referral to correct me if I'm wrong and correct that you cannot extradit someone if you violate their ethnic or religious or political opinions. There's another reason you cannot extradit someone. So even the act does prevent a political opinion and they went through great lengths to show that he had a political opinion. That espionage being a supremely political crime and that there are studies and many authorities say this is not just colloquial. So all in all it was an encouraging day but again I don't think one should be carried away with this because we're not dealing with a necessary level playing field here. Yes back to the diplomatic assurances of it. It's remarkable that in a court of law a political instrument like diplomatic assurances is given a difference because we had the Home Office minister referring to the court's opinion. And then we had the whole court referring to accepting diplomatic assurances which is a political instrument. This is just a very highlights to me that it is a very much a political case which they're trying to make an appearance of legality or legal process or court process. But they adhere and remain faithful to the political objectives that this particular prosecution is trying to achieve which is of course limiting free speech, diminishing the First Amendment and putting the fear of God in every truth-telling journalist and publisher around the world. I just want to add that the judges are senior judges as we were discussing on the way over here there's really no promotions they can get which is a good thing. So it would be hard to pressure them as they did with the magistrate in this case who was a young judge and got a promotion after that case was over. So I think they showed some that they were intrigued by this case. They clearly had a lot of knowledge. You could tell by the way they were reacting. They didn't really know this case at all. So I think that's something encouraging that they're intrigued by this and particularly when there was a discussion about the fact that he would not have First Amendment rights, not being abroad, but when he's on US soil. I think they seem to be taken aback by that or they found that to be something that they should find out more about. I think there were a little trouble maybe, maybe reading too much into it. Let me just ask him, and I may be wrong, but it's my understanding that we don't know that they have talked, was a Pompeo, I think, who said that he would not have First Amendment rights. And Cromberg. Cromberg, it was Cromberg, the judge Cromberg, but it's not, we don't know for sure, do we? Cromberg said he could raise that argument. He could. Pompeo said it would work directly, he will not have it. Right, Pompeo did. But there's actually no legislation that says that he should have First Amendment rights. So there's an absence there, this point. Right, but I always interpreted that as still open or not. Do you think that it's a fate of complete that if he is extradited he will not be granted First Amendment rights? I think when it comes to the Espinage Act, that's challenged. This is a conflict with the First Amendment since he's acting as a journalist. I think that might be when they decide. Cromberg said that he doesn't have First Amendment rights, so it becomes a critical issue in case. Just to provide some background here, we heard a little bit in court today about this particular issue where Mr Assange may not be afforded First Amendment rights to free speech and that of the free press. Even if on US soil, the reasoning behind that potentially is because he is an Australian citizen, not a US citizen, so he would not be granted these rights. However, he is subjected to the US Espinage Act, so just some background information there. Well, I'd just like to say that Mark Summers' point was that there's nothing really written in stone about what happens to foreign nationals, right? So in fact Pompeo and Assistant Attorney General Gordon Cromberg both have threatened to say that he doesn't have any rights. Summers' point was that the UK cannot expose somebody to the risk that they will not be protected under the First Amendment. Well, we should be clear that all of the detainees in the WT did not have First Amendment rights. But this is Europe. Under the European Convention of Human Rights, there has to be an equivalence with Article 10, right? They weren't on US soil, though, in WT. Technically, I mean, yeah, that's why they put them... One reason they're there. And they actually legally classified it as, I forget the term, it was kind of Orwellian, no place or something like that, that it didn't have any... Nobody had any jurisdiction because it was outside of all legal jurisdiction. But that might tell you that they're afraid that if they bring them inside the US that he would successfully argue that he had this right, that other world of rights had to come to him. And this really gets into the persecution of Julian Assange, the lack of rights that he has. And Videl, I know that you have worked in the embassy, you have seen him be subjected to very poor conditions, and that's putting it quite lightly. Would you like to weigh in with your thoughts? Here we are several years later since the start of the extradition proceedings, but you have been involved with this case for quite some time. So why don't you just give us your thoughts? Yes, sure, sure. Apologize for joining a bit later than he was supposed to. Anyway, before I go to that, I just want to comment a few things on what was said here. It struck me that the judges didn't know much about these diplomatic assurances because that's the very reason we are having this now. Exactly. That's why the courts reverted the original decision not to extradite him, the diplomatic assurances. They are called diplomatic because they come through the State Department, FCO, but they are signed by the prosecutor. That's why they call it diplomatic. It's the prosecutor issuing that. I was hoping for the lawyers to mention, when they talk about Vault 7, to mention the current situation of the Vault 7 whistleblower. Who is subjected to SAMS, special administrative measures, and who is struggling there. That was not mentioned, I was hoping to. The other thing that I hope it could be mentioned is that the CIA has practically admitted that he was spying on the embassy. This comes as a result of the lawsuit taking place in the United States by these two journalists and two lawyers. The CIA is saying that this is somehow a state secret. That's an admission that they were doing something that they don't want to disclose. I heard yesterday an interview by BBC Ford to Stella. She did wonderfully and she talked about Pompeo. I assumed I was recording an interview because immediately after her, the journalist quoted Pompeo saying this is pure fiction. These journalists should be writing fiction or something. But there are some contradictions in there because in other occasions he has practically admitted. Absolutely. Something that I expect the lawyers could also bring into the court is that these matches perfectly and then we go to the embassy and the spying on UC Global. We know, because it's the case in Spain in UC Global, we know by the testimony of the whistleblowers and by the documents that are being disclosed on the investigation that there were plans to poison Julian Assange or to leave the doors open in order for him to be kidnapped. And we know that that was being done for the CIA, basically. And this is not a journalist writing a report with protective sources. These are documents that are being validated in court in Spain. So, I think we will hear that from lawyers probably tomorrow, I hope. Oh, I doubt of it. It's the prosecution tomorrow. Tomorrow is the prosecution? Yes. Craig, what are your thoughts on some of the comments that Fidelge has raised here? No, I think the case was made quite strongly that you are extraditing Julian to a country which plans to kidnap or even assassinate him and which made active plans to kidnap or assassinate him. And therefore, how can you be confident of how they will treat him in custody if they were planning to kill him? And I think that's an extremely important point. And the fact that it's not just dependent on the article in Yahoo News, but there is, first of all, we have protected witness too in the extradition hearings actually giving direct evidence to this happening. And so much has come out in the court case in Spain. This is not rumour or possibility. This definitely happened. The CIA was planning to assassinate him. That's true. But I'd like to make another point. I was saying earlier that I thought the court appeared to give more serious consideration to the defense case when I'd never seen the court to give it before in any of the signed hearings. And I'd like to consider why that is. And this is where I think the fact that public opinion has turned round on the case. The fact that there's so much more support out there from Julian. The fact that campaigns have been so successful. The fact that almost all major media organisations have now started opposing his extradition finally a bit seriously. Even things like the fact we had 16 members of a European Parliament in court today. And we had members of national parliaments all around the world. All of that campaigning is starting to pay off I think. And we're now in a situation where once you have the Guardian and the New York Times and the Washington Post and other outlets all saying actively this should not be happening. Judges can no longer be simply scornful or do not feel able simply to dismiss with no consideration the defense arguments. They feel under pressure to be at least seen to pay attention to the defense and listen to the defense. And I do think the different atmosphere in the court today wasn't in particular a reflection of the personality or character of the judges. It was to do with the way the whole atmosphere around the extradition has changed. There's now a much more heavyweight opposition if you like. And that comes down in large part to the success of the campaign and all the people who have campaigned and lobbied and worked so hard for many years. And I think that's very important. I think that shows that public opinion can be affected. And yes, I absolutely take Chris's point. He's absolutely right. We don't know how that will actually be affected by the eventual judgment when it comes. But the degree of respect shown to the defense case was new. I also agree with Joe. One thing that was very plain to me was that judges had read almost none of the background papers. But they knew very little about the case. It was frequently obvious. When the defense case were referring to things that had been said or done, they were always needing to be taken to the exact place. And it's fairly obvious they hadn't read it. They were learning things they had not heard before. Frequently, even though they were things which had been covered in the original extradition hearing. So my expectation after today is that these judges are going to go back and read through and read up and learn more. So I'm not expecting anything fast to happen after the American government replies tomorrow. I think we will then be in a position where the judges spend several months determining whether or not the hearing will go ahead. About several months in which we have more time to campaign to change public opinion further. But I do think what we saw today was evidence that campaigning and changing public opinion, changing media opinion, changing political opinion can actually affect the court. I think that's very, very important. Now when you mentioned Craig, the success of the campaigners, the advocates, the activists. I keep looking over here at Emmy because you have been a fierce advocate and defender of WikiLeaks, Jolene Assange, as I mentioned at the introduction. You are also a member of the committee to defend Jolene Assange. Can you speak about how you've seen over the past several years the support continue to grow and also expand and kind of cross beyond just, you know, the different political parties or other activist groups? Well, it's very interesting because from when I started to now, all those years that have gone past, each year that has gone past, Jolene Assange's situation has deteriorated year by year by year. Yet public opinion has improved, improved, improved more on his side. Since his arrest particularly, we've seen a tsunami of change both at grassroots level as well as political level, cultural level, internationally particularly. But I would like to make a distinction that this country, the UK, which has been the most ferocious polemist of WikiLeaks at Jolene Assange, has, the establishment has resisted every opportunity to accept the points put forward in the defence of Jolene Assange. An example this morning at Breakfast News at the BBC reported that Jolene Assange was wanted by the US for leaking classified information. I followed it immediately with a complaint in the official procedure for BBC complaints and it's something we've been trying to do for decades almost, trying to fight the narrative which is false. And the surprising thing is that even at this stage on this day where Jolene Assange is facing probably his last effort to avoid extradition, the national broadcaster produces a false reporting. False reporting which undermines his defence as a journalist, as a publisher presenting him as a leaker. So I'm extremely satisfied by the campaigning which has been remarkable and great recognition to his family, to Stella and to everyone at every level that has been involved in raising the profile and having such fantastic results. But in this country I find it, despite the popular opinion being on his side, very little opportunity politically to manoeuvre and influence the politics behind his extradition here, where the judges belong into this country. This is the establishment they listen to primarily. So there is this difficulty in this country in trying to influence the political environment. I was thinking Nils Meltzer tells the story over and over again how he was fooled by all the stories that things like on the BBC reported and then looked into it and his mind was open. So maybe this little bit of ignorance that the judges displayed today, like on the informants issue, it was clear in September 2020 that the US was going to push that informants story down everybody's thoughts. That was their main thing, at least that's what it seemed at the time. And then we started learning more and more. Mark Davis, the Australian journalist and lawyer who said he was with them the whole weekend in the bunker at the Guardian. And he was the one who was redacting. The Guardian went off playing golf. That's what he said, right? It was golf. And Julian did all nighters. And then we learned about the fact that it was, and it was mentioned in court today, or he didn't mention the newspaper that one of the partners leaked the password to the unredacted files in their book. And that's how it got out there. And then others, Pirate Bay, Frytog, Cryptom.org all published the documents with the informants names not redacted before WikiLeaks did. And that came up and the selective prosecution was an issue brought up today. But I saw the judges had no idea about this because they believed this informants story. But what about the informants? It's like that's all they knew about the case at times. They kept bringing that up. And I think they were a little bit taken aback by, that there's another side to this story. Let's hope that they don't start reading up on it. Yes. Mark Summers could have made it a little clearer that it was the effort and behaviour by one of the media partners that caused all that. He kind of did. Maybe there was a Guardian correspondent in the room. I don't know. Alan Lusbydger was in the room. He was in the room. Was he? Well, it's the first. I've been to every single court hearing the very first time. And I'm glad that he did. He has a moral responsibility for where Julian is now and is never too late to make amends. The judge referred to the joint statement that the newspaper did in 2010. Did you hear today when she was referring to the judgment of the first judge that she looked at it and she put in her documents. The statement made jointly by these big newspapers condemning the release of the cable gates. The response from the lawyer immediately should be, well, that was 2010. We know a lot more about all this now in the court. Actually this has been discussed. And the very papers that did the joint statement, all of them today oppose the extradition. Exactly. Again, speaking to how the support has continued to grow and expand. Do you have a report on that? You reminded me. I forgot about that. That really ticked me off because that was that statement that came out. They knew that they were responsible for the Guardian at least. And they tried to blame it on Assange, on WikiLeaks, but they knew the truth and they put out that line statement that winds up being quoted today, years later, in the courtroom. So maybe they'll open their minds, hopefully, and get the real story about the informants because... I thought he was weak on that. Summers? Yeah. I thought he was really weak because it wasn't... I thought he could have pushed back and made it clear that it wasn't WikiLeaks that was responsible for the leak of those names. And in fact, his argument was that there was no harm and we have to balance out the public good with possible harm. And I thought that was probably the weakest moment when you say, Craig? Yeah. He did mention, initially, when it was first phase, he did say it wasn't WikiLeaks. It was the action of one of the newspapers involved and he didn't specify the Guardian. It was almost as though he was protecting the Guardian at that stage. I found it strange. He didn't say, right, look, what happened is the Guardian, the deputy editor of the Guardian and Luke Harding of MI6, published the password as a chapter heading in the book. And Resberg is in the room to confront. At the time, I was sitting there wondering why he happened. I was thinking there's obviously a reason, because Mark Summers obviously knows that, and there's a reason why he hasn't said it, why hasn't he said it. And I kept wondering about it at various times during the day, and I never came up with a very good answer as to why he was trying to... To be fair, he was brilliant at other parts. Yeah, it was great, but it was clear that the judges were clueless. And that was a, let's call it a teaching moment. I mean, that was a moment when he could have laid out in detail, because they didn't have a clue. And I don't think that he got through. I think that he was too opaque on a very important issue, because the judges didn't just raise it once. They raised that issue several times. I wondered whether he had quite cottoned on to have little of the judges' news, to the fact that the judges... That was one of the cases when it just became very pain. The judges had not done their teaching, they hadn't done the bundle. They had no idea what we were talking about most of the time. But isn't that commonplace when it gets to a higher level? I'm not quite sure. A complicated case like that? I imagine it is, but the... Is there a convention, perhaps, that lawyers are not allowed to point out that the judges don't know what they should know because they haven't read papers? Was he relying on the judges now going away and reading the papers? I'm not sure. Well, you know, as an American watching all of this, it does have shades of Monty Python, with everybody with their wigs and your lord and my lady and the iron cage that looks like something out of Bleakhouse. I kept thinking of Bleakhouse, actually. But in every courtroom I've been in, a good lawyer is overly obsequious and engages in nauseating flattery of the judge, no matter how clueless they are. I think that there was one moment, actually, where I think it was Summers said something, and the judges reacted, and Summers was like... I don't know if you remember what it was, but he reacted like, I can't believe. You could see just this momentary, I can't believe you don't know what this is, and I wish I could remember what that moment was. But it was clear that he was cognizant of the fact that they had not done their homework. And they did not know the case. Right now, I do want to take a moment to welcome another guest who also happens to be the editor-in-chief of Truth Defense, which is the platform that we are streaming on. Also a journalist, Mohammed Al-Mawzi. Glad you were able to make it here. I know you've been listening to the conversation for a little bit now. Is there anything in particular that you would like to touch on or expand upon? First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone who was able to make it, which is apparently everyone who was able to make it before me. There was the point that I heard just a moment ago made about the arguments that Summers did and didn't present, or likewise with Fitzgerald. I think it is important to be fair to them and to note that, A, they only have a day. B, the oral arguments are only certain arguments that they felt necessary to focus on and accentuate for the judges. There are obviously substantial written submissions as well, which went into certain subject matter that the oral arguments didn't. And it's important to remember that this is a permission hearing. So they're asking for permission to appeal. This isn't actually the appeal, even though they've been arguing some of the appeal grounds. And the focus, therefore, needs to be on grounds that they think will lead to them being granted an appeal, rather than debating matters of fact, which could lead to a back and a forth and a back and a forth, such as, for example, who released the full unredacted cables first. Although Summers did note that it was krypton that did it. So I think the reason why he was focusing in part on the proportionality test in relation to releasing information versus the public interest on the one hand, versus the harm disclosures may have done on the other, is because they're trying to convince the judges that there is a balancing test based on jurisprudence from the European Court of Human Rights that says you need to apply it in cases such as this, that Vanessa Beretser did not apply. So, since they're saying she didn't do this, it's therefore an arguable ground of appeal. This is a failure in law, and that's what they're trying to focus on. They're trying to have as many points of law where they can convince the judges it is at least arguable that Beretser made a reversible error in law and had she decided something differently or had she applied the law correctly, then we could have ended up with a different result. So if they end up having more time with an actual appeal, then they can get into some of the other issues. But you have to be careful not to be drawn into factual arguments with the judges that could end up eating up your time where these are legal arguments they've got to be able to make. It was interesting to see which ones they chose to focus on and not focus on. Part of it will be based on what they think are most important arguments and the other ones perhaps the focus will also reflect the extent to which they think these arguments may be contentious and therefore they need to verbalize them and give the judges the opportunity to question them on it so that they don't just fail on the papers basically because, like I said, most of the arguments are written down. Excellent point. I see many of us here shaking our heads in agreement. A good point I also do understand the other points raised here. I had the same feeling as well that the judge seemed to be very fixated on this point about the redaction of the names. Anyone here want to follow up on these points? I think another thing we haven't really emphasised is that the defence spent nearly half of their time on the no political extradition point. I mean they absolutely hammered that point at a great length and I think I've always felt that unarguable. I've always found very strange the argument which was accepted by the magistrate that as the treaty is not incorporated in domestic law then the terms of the treaty do not apply even though it's a treaty under which you are extraditing. That seems to be quite remarkable and as Edward Fitzgerald put it, you can't at the same time apply the treaty for the extradition and refute the terms of the treaty and it almost seems like you don't have to say more than that In fact the first 75 minutes of the defence case were spent hammering that out and giving further examples because in many ways that seems to be the strongest and most basic point. I think also the fact that they did a very good job of defining espionage as a political act. That was very clever. So okay you want an extraditing for espionage. I thought he did the legal background material to justify the statement that espionage is political in the eyes of the law. Well also starting with Chelsea Manning and saying I was putting out the live tweets for consortium news and there must have been about 20 tweets in a row that where I was quoting Mark Somers saying the stressful court would say and how the stressful court would defend Manning would think that her leaking because it was the offences of her employer. That's one of the cases where it is permitted, it is protected. So they got from there by almost convincing the court that Manning should be protected and then it was described as frivolous by Somers to pass on to prosecuting the publisher of this information. Yeah, I thought that was really strong. It was very powerful. The fact that they were mentioning the stressful court, the European Court, the stressful court, I had the feeling that basically not that they are giving up when I got to the European Court anyway but kind of saying it's going to go there and it's going to back here correcting you and you are going to be humiliated. So let's avoid that because if you decide in this way it won't pass the test on the proper court in Europe. If I get it right the first time rather than get embarrassed by the more important you're right. That's very interesting perspective as well but you are correct Craig that especially at the beginning of the hearings there was quite a bit of focus about the differences with the UK US extradition treaty versus the UK extradition act of 2003 and it was also noted and this is just some background information again to help the listeners understand some of the discussion here. It was stated several times in court and also addressed previously that under article four of the US UK extradition treaty one cannot be extradited for political offenses and obviously espionage is a political offense as Chris was saying. It was very well outlined today and it seems that it has been historically viewed in this way. You have the textbooks and the case precedent or case law to show for that as well. I think we are reaching potentially the end of this evening's discussion so I just want to open it up any other points that you would like to address about this case. Whether it has to do with what took place in the courtroom today, what is yet to come or anything that has transpired over the past four years since these extradition hearings began. I believe the last time we were sitting here, some of you were returning guests, this was four years ago, almost to the day four years ago. So this has been a lengthy process for Julian Assange. He has been in Belmarch prison, that is the worst prison in the UK for nearly five years. So it's important to of course have these discussions which focus on the legal aspects of the case, the technical aspects, but to also remember this is a friend, a brother, a son, a father, a husband. Who is suffering tremendously, but I'll open it up. Anyone want to share their last thoughts? Well I would just say the pattern has been egregious violations of the most basic tenants of British jurisprudence, including eviscerating attorney client privilege, charging somebody who wasn't in the US and isn't a US citizen with espionage. I mean the list is kind of endless and I really think that's one of the reasons why they don't want to cover it. I mean at some level they must be cognizant of fact that they're just violating every legal norm to railroad Julian. And that has been the pattern from the inception. I don't expect that pattern to change. I think that I've seen others, Craig's followed it from the beginning of course, that has just been consistent. And so you know I was at Craig who said you know he how you know how could they possibly rule against him. And I think that if you were in you know in a court of law and a judicial system that wasn't a showtrial but function of course that would be completely. But the pattern has been so incredibly egregious and it doesn't matter what hearing or what court he's in and we should be cognizant of that as we you know go into whenever this decision is given. Absolutely. And of course we have to take into consideration that it's a man's life because he has been said before that he may choose not to go to the US, ultimately taking the ultimate sacrifice and is Britain and the society ready for the backlash of that. Oh he told that to Neil's mother didn't he? Yeah this is what he told. Exactly and so Britain is playing with its reputation. No matter what the outcome people in this country including myself will never stop pursuing the truth on this issue and the justice for him because the work of WikiLeaks is the reason why he's in there. The work of WikiLeaks has been an act of love of self sacrifice that the truest and most honourable motivation in forming the public for free and treating people equally because whoever goes into WikiLeaks website is equal. It doesn't matter who you are, what you are, if you're rich or poor, you're educated and educated, you're equally treated, you can read the information and learn and make informed decisions. There's nothing more honourable and nothing more expressive of the western values of knowledge and enlightenment than what Julian has created and to snap out after a long years of persecution this honourable individual is a stain in British history which will never be expunged. Very well said. Any other brief points? I think we have to remember this case is about political power and it's about the ability of the state to hang on to power by keeping information from the public. I think political power will dictate what happens next. My thinking is that it's very unlikely that the Biden people actually want Julian in the states before the election this year because it's a complication in an election year in a time when they've already lost the support of a lot of their left wing over Palestine and Gaza and it's going to exacerbate that division. So I think these things will play out and my expectation is nothing much will happen after tomorrow but the thing will be kicked into the long grass because in the meantime of course Julian is suffering, Julian is incarcerated, he's dying slowly in Belmarch jail, they have him where they want him. So delay to them does them no harm and my guess will be that after we hear the American evidence tomorrow the judges will take several months to make up their mind. Right November 5th. Well they'll take several months to make up their mind and then they'll probably allow an appeal on limited grounds and that appeal on limited grounds will probably be November, December, January. I would just say that having covered the CIA that's a state within a state. They are untouchable. They have decided they want him. They don't really give a damn of the political consequences to Biden. So I don't think any US administration, of course it was Trump who, the Trump administration that ordered the extradition, I think at this point the CIA is intent and we have to remember that the CIA has transformed itself from an intelligence agency into a paramilitary force. The CIA functions primarily now its own drone program, its own black ops program, its own death squads and I have friends who served in Afghanistan and the CIA teams would airdrop in the middle of the night into a village and next morning the Rangers would go in and blow them all away. I mean they're just out of control so following the institution I don't think any political figure in the United States is at this point capable of defying the CIA's demand that you bring Julian back here. And it is as we saw in the court today it has nothing to do with the Iraq war looks. It is false. That's my read of it. Well today was the Americans, their lawyers got a chance to present their side of the story and what they thought about the appeal points presented by Sandra's team and it was basically the CIA sending a lawyer. That's what it was. We had the CIA in the courtroom just trying to hammer down this point, rammed this down our throats that what Julian did is supposedly illegal and he released so many documents. These are just moot points. It's repetition of what we heard already back in 2020 and 2021. It's nice of course to get back to the crux of the issue instead of focusing on other things but nevertheless these are absurd arguments. I actually wonder how she could just stand there for hours talking about this. She tried to make the point that WikiLeaks publications harmed people. Of course there's no proof of this. The Americans had a task force that was run by the army. They couldn't find a single human being that was actually harmed by any of the publications. And then of course Sandra's lawyers responded by saying you have to wear this to go to the European Court of Human Rights. You have to carry out a balancing act where you say is it proportionate? What was in the documents? What was being disclosed? Torture, war crimes, drone killings, assassination. That is much more important than the supposed risk that was incurred to these informants. This is a very important issue because we always have to present the fact that what was in the documents is more important than whatever the United States claims happened and did not even happen. And then of course they talked about the extradition treaty versus act. This is again a very devilish trick that they planned already 20 years ago when they first drafted this legislation and signed it of course with the United States because they made sure there's a loophole. The treaty is the bilateral agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom and then when it comes to its implementation in English law they made sure to leave out the part that says you can't extradite someone for a political offence which opens the door to what we're seeing right now. So these were the main points of contention and I'm sure we'll get back to a couple of others. Just to make it clear for the listeners, on the first day yesterday the defense had the opportunity to present its arguments and then today it was the Crown Prosecution Service which is representing the US government and there were three lawyers representing the US government through the CPS. One of them was Claire Dobb and I think she spoke probably the most today and then the defense had another opportunity to rebut the arguments of the prosecution. So that's just for your information to understand the basic structure here. But now I'll hand it over to you Dustin. What is your general impression of what you witnessed today and yesterday? I had a similar impression because I had the opportunity to follow the proceedings already in 2020 and today it was like listening to the same arguments again like also yesterday from both sides but on speed or steroids. It was really short and also they always mentioned that I have to keep it short, we have to be fast and I think that made it quite difficult for both sides to present your arguments in a proper way which sometimes especially today for the US side led to some very unstructured arguments where I had difficulties following the arguments. Not only because of the audio issues which have been plaguing the court but also because of the arguments and still especially the treaty act stuff was quite technical, still quite interesting to see because for example I had the opportunity to look up the Max Planck Encyclopedia for Public International Law article on extradition which says that basically every single democratic country which has extradition treaties excludes extraditions for political offences and the funny thing is that they are there to discuss that usually the issue is what a political offence is so people discuss that and not the question if it's part or not and there because what they also say it wasn't even a political offence and if you look up the Encyclopedia what it says like there are like some clear political offences like East Burn Ash and she today even said like oh well that's not even a political offence and the political offence usually is an offence which is directed only at a stage so if you are of course like committing East Burn Ash because you want to hurt your neighbour then it's maybe not a political offence but then it's not East Burn Ash so it was quite weird some weird arguments but it was always the case and the big question is why back then the district judge disregarded the good arguments and there we can just hope this time that the two judges now will act differently absolutely now Matt I know that you were also present in the courtroom you've also been covering this case quite a bit but it was your general impression of today I mean I'm more hopeful coming out of this than I have been in the other hearings and I think a couple of people said that to me as well and just because the judges seemed more engaged it could always be a PR strategy from their point of view in that it's the end of the road and they don't want to appear to be as dismissive as the previous ones but I just felt they were engaging with the material in a way that I haven't seen before The judges previously were not shy to show open disdain towards Ahsange which you shouldn't do it's not formed to do that and I mean to judge when Ahsange first came out of the embassy was going to go on his way to Belmarsh judge Snow called him a narcissist in the courtroom for no reason and that carried on that disdain ac roedd yn gondol, ac soedd yn dwylo chi'n holleg yma rwy'n cael ei hunain a'i lleyb i'r rai o hynny yw cael yr oedd gymrydol yn gyfaint â'r ni. Dwi'n cael ei gandrech o beth o gyfaint, yn eithaf ei lleol, o'r ffordd, o'r ffordd, o'r ffordd of receiving and giving information. So, and it didn't get aired. And actually I felt like the the US lawyer today Claire Dobbins, she was struggling at different points. There was one particular point. There was one point she struggled but there was no sound, which was a theme, but there was one point she struggled which I heard, which was when she was talking about ac yn y bwrdd, mae'n ffwllt i'r mhwg ddaeth. Rhaid i'n ddif mondd yn dda i'n ddibyn nhw. Nod, rhaid i'n ddif wedi bod y gallai i'r cyfrifodau. Mae'n ddif i'r ddif i'r ddif, ac mae'n ddif i'r ddif. Rwy'n meddwl, mae'n meddwl am gyda'r systio Brits ynghyd. Dwi'n meddwl am Lloedd Lleidwch. Felly mae'n meddwl am gyda'r systio Brits, felly mae'n meddwl am gyhoedd yng Nghymru. Dypa e抗 calai yw'r cymryd, mae gennym rai atebydd yma. Tyfu i'r iawn i'r cymryd dechrau'r Eisteddfodau. Mae'r cyllid Fanolucanaethau yn gyda'r cyllid ddedig fe yw'r cyfrifiad ar ôl. mae yna yma yma e'r cyfrifiad ac mae'n nol i'r cymryd ni'r cymryd yr oedd yn gweithio'n rhywbeth ar ein collid rheineis��au ddechrau'n rhe Rhaid i'r ddweudio yma'r cyd-dwylo yn y gweld a'u ddweudio? Yn ystod yma, ac yna sy'n gweld y dyma, mae'r cychwynion gyda'r cyd-dwylo ar hyn o'r cyd-dwylo'r cyd-dwylo yn ystod lle i fynd o'n gwneud o gymhwyno'r cyflawn i'r cyd-dwylo ac mae'n olygu 775 yma i'r cyd-dwylo i'n eu gwirio'r cyd-dwylo ar y cyffredin, mae'n gwybod eich bod yn ffrindio'n cyd-dwylo, 40% was violent offences and all the worst crimes you could imagine. So clearly the state is acting and the political system is acting on a legal system which is an outrage in itself but really Assange exposed the U.S. Empire but I think he also has exposed the media secondly but he's also exposed British justice as a joke. In this case particularly today we've done a bit of work that's declassified about the judges in the courtroom today sharp and Johnson was it? Yeah, Johnson and Johnson has previously acted for MI6, the Foreign Intelligence Agency of the UK and Sharp's deeply embedded in sort of the Tory establishment in the UK, her father was a life peer, her brother was the chair of the BBC until then. Is he the one that got fired or he had to resign? Yes, exactly. So he was chair until last year when he had to resign. So in that context I'm not hopeful. Although I actually think, someone asked me where you're hopeful and I was like well I'm hopeful that they might win this decision but I think that might be part of the U.S. strategy anyway. The punishment is the process and at the moment you've got the prospect of a new Trump administration soon and do they want Assange there under Biden in the next six months or would it be better for them to have for it to go back to the appeal, keep him locked up in a hole in London for another couple of years which they could do because the other thing is even if he loses this ruling, he can then apply to the European Court of Human Rights and they can issue what's called a Rule 39 straight away which would stay the extradition, wouldn't stop it but then gives the European Court time to look at the case and I was told this week for a story I was doing, I interviewed Assange's lawyer in Europe and he told me that it takes a minimum of 18 months for the European Court to make a decision and in the case of Baber Ahmed who was a U.K. citizen that was extradited to the U.S. in 2012, I spoke to him the other day, his ECHR at least took five years to process so it could go on and on and on so it could be like if it goes back to the appeal court it could be talking about seven or eight more years if the ECHRs so I personally think that's what the U.S. want, they want him just they want because he's going to be a circus if he goes to the U.S. isn't it? So they want him dead here preferably in my opinion. I want to go back to your point about the line of reasoning of the prosecutor Claire Dobbin the way I understood her statements with regard to the release of these particular documents where she was stating that WikiLeaks did something unprecedented by publishing this information then she was questioned by one of the judges well by the way in fact these other organizations published first and they did not redact the name she seemed flustered by that and she made an argument stating that well he obtained those documents which made it possible for these others to obtain the documents and that doesn't make much sense because that told me that she thinks that he is therefore responsible for say the irresponsibility of others or other people's actions that is pretty absurd. Can I just add one thing to that? It's not a crime to publish the name of a human source that you get told anyway. Anyway so in fact when I was listening to her arguments that I was sort of like this is a nail in a coffin for any kind of national security reporting at all because if you signed an official secrets act in the UK or it's equivalent in the U.S. or wherever it is okay yes it is a crime. But if you're a journalist and you've received that information you are allowed to publish it even despite all these arguments that the U.S. is making so it really would be if they extradite them on the merits of those U.S. arguments it's a nail in a coffin for the rest of the investigative journalism also freedom itself because we're essentially giving the state the right to tell us what it is in our interest to know as journalists, as citizens and that's fascism. Can I just add the thing with crypto it's so funny because the owner of the website he submitted a written testimony to the court and he said I published them first and nothing happened to me. The U.S. government never contacted me they don't want to prosecute me. It really illustrated and underscored the absurdity of all this. It was a short and sweet thing and this is already back in 2020 during the time at the Old Bailey but it's been entered into the court and it's on the record and number one I'm shocked the judges don't know about this and number two I'm shocked that this is happening and this shows that it's selective that they want assange they don't care about the law and again it's not even a crime but on top of it it adds another layer and it shows it's selective. That's relevant to that is the practice in this country to use so-called denotuses and then expecting journalists to essentially obey and so these denotuses are government issued notices usually by the secret services which themselves are secret and so you're not meant to ever mention that oh we're here to denotus on that that's internal news when your editor tells the colleagues well we can't talk about this we've got a denotus. The denotus itself is supposed to be secret untouchable and you're supposed to be silent and it's really I think about enforcing that old system which by definition is not transparent is not democratic does not use principles of a free and democratic society and of course it's been challenged by the new technologies and the new forms of journalism where you don't just have the big media companies where there's collusion between big business big media companies and government as we know mainstream media but we have independent journalism and it's this sort of tug of war that's been going on in the last decade or two increasingly of course and I think they haven't come up with a proper solution how the system is going to handle this and I think Julian Assange's case is a way of trying to maintain the old order and of course he gets punished because WikiLeaks by definition was completely just ignoring all these establishment rules which were not democratic rules anyway and very hard to defend and so I think it's good that with this case at least awareness is increasing and all the good work of independent journalists is spreading the word and people are becoming much more aware of this and we've had great demonstrations also today after the court closed for business the public is increasing awareness some countries in Europe you know people are also demonstrating in Germany for example for Julian Assange and people just don't want journalists to be put in jail for doing their job I mean it seems crazy and that's really what it's about I think Can I just go back on this because we actually got a de-notice It's like you said it's a very sort of loosely defined system on purpose it's like a gentleman's agreement and no one ever says no so they sent us, the de-notice committee sent us an email saying we've done this investigation on Paul B who's the oldest dictator in Africa he's the Cameroonian dictator and my colleague Phil Mila had done a story about UK support for him and drawing up contingency plans and had the name of a special forces soldier who had drawn up or been involved in drawing up a contingency plan to keep him in power we published that, they approached us and said we are just approaching you in a sort of nice way just to say can you sense your article and Mark Curtis the editor was sort of, it's a really hilarious email chain because he's sort of trying to say is this a de-notice and they're like no it's not a de-notice and they're like well what is it it's just some advice and I was like is it official It's like a mafia talking to you and just recommending it but they're so used to no one pushing back so they didn't even know it like honestly you've got to read it and then eventually we refused and we wrote an article about why we were refusing to comply with the de-notice committee but as you say this happens all the time and no one ever talks about it it happened recently just to finish with this it happened recently with Gaza because there was a story in the Sun newspaper which is one of the most disgusting newspapers in the world but they got this story that the SAS had deployed to the British base on Cyprus for Gaza operations for hostage rescue apparently anyway the following day a de-notice was issued to every single editor in the UK saying do not publish any information about special forces, UK special forces involvement in Gaza that was published, no one publicised it it was eventually publicised by one newspaper that received it called The Socialist Worker which is like this tiny leftist weekly and they publicised it but it's never been talked about by anyone else and there's never been one more bit of information about the SAS involvement in Gaza since that day how is that not relevant? well and also any journalist that's a but because it's a voluntary system they say it's a voluntary system but any journalist that is complying with that de-notice is complicit in the genocide in Gaza in my opinion because you're withholding information and you're not even at risk of prison like Assange but it does go to how the system works which is a gentleman's agreement and they're all from the same boxbridge universities all from the same private schools all from the same private members club so they don't need the official rules this is why Assange kind of pushed the boundaries and took journalism seriously and then they had to say well actually shit we don't have an infrastructure to stop this because no one's ever tried it before and now we're seeing all the ridiculous arguments that they have to make to try and justify this prosecution which is ridiculous now I do want to take a moment here to introduce another guest who is in fact the editor-in-chief of Truth's Offence, the platform that we are streaming on welcome, Mohammed El Masi we're very happy to have you able to join us again this evening so I just went around asking the others for their general impressions about this case what took place over the past few days so if you want to weigh in on your general thoughts and then I do also want to get into the courtroom conditions briefly because a few of us have had some difficulties and it speaks to some of the struggles we had as journalists to cover this although it's not a big point it's still important for people to understand the hoops we had to jump through but first I'll hand it over to you for your general impressions thanks Taylor actually I just finished reading Kevin Costello's article on the way over here that he very quickly wrote up and published today about what is it then conditions the court plagued with problems for media access in which he quoted like a number of us in there so it was interesting to see somebody who's taking it seriously not least of which because he was not permitted to have a remote access link despite the fact that he'd covered it previously he'd both physically come to the UK to cover part of the extradition hearings and he's also covered them via video link and then for some reason he just couldn't do this one so I was covering the hearings for the dissenter I have to agree that it's one of those things which I agree with Matt but there's also I think Joe Laurie yesterday said this as well or was it Craig Murray that on the one hand I've had this bit of optimism on the other hand I don't want to feel optimistic because I know that disappointment is a function of expectation and the greater my optimism or expectation the harder the pain when you know the decision comes out which is not what I expected so the judges seemed engaged Johnson in particular the one who part of his career was representing the national security state maybe it's because of the articles that you guys wrote about that that he thought okay I'm going to really appear that to be really interested in this because the previous judge the original judge who oversaw Julian's extradition case stepped down after declassified UK published an article about her family's, husband and son's national security links and anti-wikiliings links that there's a causal link but there's definitely a correlation article came out and then she stepped down and then somebody who I'm not necessarily certain was better than replaced her so you have to be careful what you wish for so it was interesting today the one thing I'll say about this before we get on for other people to speak I suppose I was sort of surprised at the severity with which they pushed the Julian Assange and Wikileaks aren't legitimate journalists or journalists at organizations it's not that they hadn't said that before but that was sort of from my recollection from like two years ago they're sort of in the background it was there they challenged it it was an important point when they said their argument before seemed to be they have crossed the line he has crossed the line from legitimate journalism when he oppressed Chelsea Manning to give him information whereas now it's they're not legitimate they were never legitimate even before they even spoke to Chelsea Manning he was engaged in conspiracies to solicit confidential information that's also known as journalism conspiracies to solicit so if I go to somebody and I say hi do you have any information that might expose corruption or malfeasance wrongdoing that's a conspiracy for me to solicit classified stealing they started using the term stealing a lot this time as well not leaking which is what they were saying before so Chelsea Manning is not a whistleblower she stole classified documents and gave it to her co-conspirator criminal non-journalist Julian Assange and they're harming this for like a couple of hours so I was kind of surprised with that not the fact that they're defending their position with which they decided to take that position although as Mark Summers did a very good job reiterating which is a point they made yesterday as well the unredacted cables that they made a big deal about only represent three out of the 18 charges so the position was well what's your excuse if you're saying this is crucial to your case then what are all these other charges about that have nothing to do with unredacted cables okay are you going to dismiss those so it's not really about unredacted cables and like Matt mentioned the point about going to the heart of national security journalism not only in the United States is it not a crime and they've attempted to pass laws and failed in Congress is it not a crime to name the identity of a source or an asset but under the Espionage Act it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if what your motives are it doesn't matter what the documents say the prosecution you know admit okay no one was harmed these are strict liability offences so all they're going to say is is this national defense information if the judge agrees the next question is did you possess it without authorization yes? guilty ten years next charge same thing guilty ten years so when Claire Dobbin repeated the mistake I'll call it of Judge Vanessa Bracer when she said these are issues that Julian can raise at trial in the States it's completely false because he can't raise them at trial because if he attempts to raise any issue at trial that doesn't have to do with the technical aspects of possessing the documents the prosecution will stand up say objection that's immaterial the statute doesn't matter it's silent on the matter of harm or damage or motivation and the judge will say sustained and that's exactly what judges have done in previous cases in the Eastern District of Virginia under the Espionage Act exactly and it seems that the lower court judge Vanessa Bracer did often state in her judgment that she was going to leave it to the US courts to make determinations on several of these matters do you have any insight on this what do you make of that do you think it was perhaps out of just hesitancy out of fear or just not wanting to really bring herself into that controversy despite the fact that it is of course her duty to do so as a judge to make rulings on these matters and to issue opinions well in fact she can't because she doesn't have the necessary information to make such a ruling because they are secret so she just can't I think like in many aspects what we have to keep in mind is that and this is was a pretty big case for such a court for a district judge as well it's not about your qualification but usually those extradition cases are just rubber stamped someone committed some crime and then you just send them over it's fine, this is how it usually works but this is such a huge case and I have to admit that I don't want to be a judge like doing this like such a huge case and at some points I felt that she was a bit overwhelmed and then it is an easy way to push it away but also many and the US Baristas mentioned many times that this is something we can't talk about this is something we don't know we don't know about evidence this doesn't matter because it will be decided according to her of course it's a very comfortable thing to say well we can't talk about it here would be more difficult to address these issues also but this is like in a reverse mode I think this is something Julian's defense did yesterday is that they talked a lot about the European Court of Human Rights where they, what I felt wanted to give the court the impression that if you fail here you're gonna fail in Strasbourg and you're gonna look bad and whatever you think about your judicial system I think that the judges do have some judicial honour and they don't like losing and I don't think they want to get embarrassed in Strasbourg and I think yesterday Julian's defense was appealing to that like judicial honour this has nothing to do with honour because of journalism or Julian but only because of themselves and I think this is something that could work I don't think they want to knowingly lose in Strasbourg so they if they want to continue if they want to extradite Julian they have to make a better case because right now yeah well I think it would not sustain in Strasbourg very interesting I mean from my perspective when I listened to the judges questions it very much seemed as if they were almost poking holes in the prosecutions case they were obviously not aggressive or combative but they were challenging them and it was good to see that as you had said in several others yesterday really for the first time when you look back at the broader scope of these extradition proceedings now I do want to touch on just briefly here the courtroom conditions we did talk earlier before we started filming that there was some difficulties with being able to hear the judges and the lawyers present their case and there was also difficulty with seating and then as Mohammed was saying many of our fellow journalists who are not physically within the jurisdiction of England and Wales were prevented from covering this case remotely and this is a new policy in this case previously people were able to be anywhere in the world and have access and cover the case people have been covering it for many many years were prevented from doing so and of course we can only you know make guesses about why that is and it's not really helpful to necessarily go into the realm of speculation but any thoughts that you have about your experience I know that you are supportive of Julian Assange and free speech and free press what was your experience like in the courtroom as a member of the public exactly starting with the courtroom I mean attending yesterday as a member of the public I was in the overflow courtroom and the acoustics for the first I don't know almost hour or something at least 45 minutes was so bad people were shouting we can't hear anything the staff the clerks you know pity them they didn't know what to do they are clearly not IT experts and getting good acoustics and microphones working it was pretty much a disaster it got a bit better don't know exactly what they did but still it's very if you are a member of the public and interested member of the public who wants to make use of the right to witness an important public hearing such as this which has a high public interest content I think well maybe you didn't hear very much at all so definitely the logistics was very disappointing but there is this other point I want to come back to Mohammed's point on this attempt to delegitimize WikiLeaks and also independent journalism perhaps even citizen journalism because we've seen this particularly in the last four years this accelerating campaign against alternative opinions to me it's almost as if the state big state and big business they just want to control the information it's really about information control and they seem to have come up with this idea that just define what journalism is and sorry guys what you're doing and what Julian Assange is doing that's just not defined as journalism anyone can claim to be a journalist but it just doesn't pass our definition it's essentially what they're trying to argue if you work for a legitimate major news company and so on part of the cartel that is journalism wills and European digital media act and all this stuff freedom of media act and all these euphemistically called pieces of legislation they essentially distinguish if you are an ordinary person then well you can't do this and the other and you can be punished for spreading misinformation but if you are big business I think this is the recent legislation if you are a major mainstream media company then or you can make mistakes and maybe sometimes it's not accurate that's not misinformation and you won't be punished for it that is pretty scary what's happening and I think of course in many ways Julian Assange was still under the old approach as we discussed and so they have to use all the methods there but it's so relevant for everyone because they are working on easier ways to shut down dissent and to essentially suppress the spreading of important public interest information by simply having laws that just says no what you guys are doing is just not allowed because we define it as not journalism you do it like that so that you don't have to give them the Assange treatment right so institutionally structurally funding wise in terms of algorithmic changes on social media eventually it just becomes impossible for you to do any kind of meaningful alternative journalism they much rather that than having to use stormtrooper tactics the heavy handed approach with Assange I don't think is there I mean in Egypt and Turkey yeah they have no problem doing that with thousands and thousands of people in prison there a journalist in particular or media workers but countries like Britain and the United States they see how bad it looks and I think they are like okay we have delivered the message how do we grant future WikiLeaks from emerging and not even at the level of WikiLeaks even something like 1% of what WikiLeaks does yeah just to the you know the sound issues I mean you know this is England I mean we invented you know going back to the telephone and you know stereo itself scandalous this is the royal course of justice and you go in and the sound doesn't work and you go to the Obelli and the sound doesn't work you know this is it's not just because it's England but it's just it's really embarrassing for any country that wants to say it has open justice and it's a technological wonder it's really shameful it's so bad and it's not complicated you just gotta stick a microphone in someone's face you know I will happily buy the microphone for the bloody court if it comes to that and clip them on it's really not that complex they just don't want to so I think it's a mix of conspiracy and incompetence I don't know what it is what the the ratio of each part of that is but that is the cocktail that we're talking about and you know when it comes to the again I didn't want to tweak this earlier but I'll just say it here because it sounds better you know Clare Darwin I think she maybe speaks too prolly because she's ashamed of what she's doing maybe it's a conscience that's talking you know so maybe that's something to do with it but yeah this is really scandalous I mean forget like the content of the case for a second just the technological hurdles that they've placed and also the fact that people like Kevin and Mary and you know they haven't been able to cover this case I mean it's funny in a way because Mary is in Australia so I mean that's where Assange comes from but she can't see what's happening to her you know compatriot her fellow citizen and then when it comes to Kevin he's in the United States where Assange is headed hopefully not and he's not allowed to know what's you know what will become of him I think that's just really ironic and of course you know the this rant if you want to call it that that they went on about today regarding WikiLeaks I mean it's so farcical that we have to explain that yeah you know torturing people is worse than harming informants I don't give a crap about the informants you know why because they torture people they kidnap people from the streets of Europe and take them to black sites and then sexually assault them you can go read the case files that's what happened it's because of Julian Assange that we know these things and victims of the CIA could prove that in court just snatched up the streets in the EU which is supposed to be these are supposed to be safe democratic countries and you have to wait for Julian Assange to publish the documents and then go to prison for you to get some justice from what the CIA did to you and then your government will protect the CIA agents over you I mean this is so scandalous for European governments as well we have to underscore this England you know it's also Spain, Germany, Italy all of them the US have their claws in them firmly and that's not an excuse to say like it's just the Americans now the people in those countries are also complicit which we know because of WikiLeaks by the way WikiLeaks cables also showed that the US government was interfering in the prosecution the attempted prosecution because there were investigations being opened up against CIA and others and the US government was actively intervening to stop those cases from proceeding and we know that because of WikiLeaks so we even know that WikiLeaks itself was a target of the national security state in 2008 because of a leak to WikiLeaks that said that it should be considered a hostile entity and that was in 2008, this is well this is two years before Chelsea Manning and it was a much smaller organization and most people had never heard of it actually Krypton had a far wider reach was far better known among most journalists than WikiLeaks was at the time I mean even at the time of publication of the cables which is a point that was made actually by a computer expert it's wild to think about the product I know because who thinks of Krypton now but at the time of the publications Krypton was much more well known and more importantly the Google algorithms were more likely to link you to Krypton at the time than it was to WikiLeaks at the time one quick point on the media access so I applied early I have covered every single hearing since April 2019 I got in yesterday got into the press section with the table, great I came in today even earlier to make sure I got in, weighed in the queue when I got to get there no, in fact I do get in I sit down and then a clerk comes to me and said all of the press all of it inside are reserved for Associated Press and by that they don't mean the AP they mean news outlets that have been designated Associated Press status which is BBC The Guardian Sky Various Establishment Outlets and so they're like where am I supposed to go you go up to the public gallery up there and I'm like I have my computer I need to be actively typing I also have a physical disability I cannot write there's the public gallery there's nowhere to put your laptop on there I'm a member of the press this is the press section you're saying I need to go up to the public gallery where I can't do press work because some journalist who is not here and has not queued up just because of his association with the BBC or what I have you it's probably a spoof and you should have seen their face while they're standing by the position you could tell that like since I'm raising it I'm like this is outrageous I've covered every single hearing over four years now these people know the first fucking thing about this case I see people that who I know I don't have a problem with them personally but I have never seen them in any of the hearings dozens and dozens of hearings because their news outlet hasn't been sending them to cover it I've been paying my own way I've been paid by like in the outlets like hemorrhaging money so that I could cover every hearing in the end I had to go downstairs at the bottom where the press section was using the live video link because I couldn't even get to that after they threw you out me and Chris had just sat down and they threw us out and we had to go in the same room like just why, there's no one there I have to put the laptop on my knees instead of a table because there's an invisible journalist that goes like on the table we all did it on time we all did it early, we've been here before covering it and some people I was just what the fuck is the point of having a cue if you're going to say there's some press but not all press or all press are equal but some are more equal than others I just want to bring up one point which I found so unusual but very interesting I was actually outside the courtroom waiting to get in it was the first thing in the morning and one of the court staff members looked at my ticket and said okay you have to go upstairs in the lower level yesterday I'm a press I asked to be here, I've been approved and they told me that the judges decided that the press should go on the balcony on the second level and the public is to go on the first level and that was because they were worried that the members of the public could be angry protesters and if they're in the top, the second level that they could potentially throw things at those involved with this court case and say the judges or the attorneys which is such a ridiculous thing to suggest Wait, so they wanted them closer to the judges? Yes, exactly, it doesn't make any sense but that's what they told me I was fortunate enough I was able to be on the first level but they did also ask for my ticket, my card and they told me basically if someone with the AP comes in then you have to move but anyways I don't want to harp on this point too much because we should focus on the substance of the case but I thought it was important for the listeners but they want to hide what's going on because I think it goes to an important point which is that a central tenant of the justice system is open justice that you have to be able to access information about the judges if it's a jury about the jurors see the case get transcripts this case there's been no open justice it's difficult as possible to access him in Belmarsh even for civil society Rebecca Vincent, head of campaigns at RSF had an appointment to see him at Belmarsh and was turned away at the door and this is stuff that you see in places like Turkey in fact I was sat next to Cian Dundar today, I don't know if you guys know him he was editor of a major newspaper in Turkey but he was persecuted for journalism much like Assange's he lives in exile in Germany and I said to him how is this compared to what you put up with with Turkey he said Turkey is better and Rebecca Vincent said the same thing and you're just sort of thinking it's like you said there's probably not much point speculating how much is incompetence to conspiracy but they're definitely 100% no one is actively taking the seriousness of this case seriously the fact that there's going to be all these people you'd get a bigger courtroom you'd make sure the technology if it's shit which it is, make it better for this case there was one bit where it cut out they cut out all the time I could barely follow a lot of it and Chip Gibbons is one of the American Assange analysts and supporters who come from America he just turned around and went this is the trial of the century and I'm just like you're right this is insane it's like any self-respecting country and self-respecting justice system would make sure when all these people are coming from around the world to see this trial of the century the most important press freedom case maybe in history because of the extra territory it gives the US you'd make sure they could at least access it but they didn't and I mean it's brutal but you know the judge made a big deal about it after zero I've heard that there were problems that's not a K so if there are issues for people who are inside court or watching via live link please tell me that and of course I'm hearing this while now designated in the basement listening via live video links I was like well at least her voice came through then as soon as the bears who start speaking I couldn't hear anything they were saying and we're instructed do not put comments into the chat of the video link thing but it's like I have to so I put in comments we can't hear and then other people start doing it as well at some point the judge asked one of the US bearers there's something and he replied and then he was not speaking at the microphone anymore like that they have to speak directly at the microphone then it's fine so we told the clerk like we can't hear anything and he was like yeah it will be fine he will speak to the microphone again if he finishes his reply but we are not here for a selective stuff the maddest thing today was I left because I needed to go to the toilet from the precipit it wasn't a precipit and I'm walking out towards the toilet and the guys are like oh wait just to let you know you might not be able to get back in when you go to the toilet and I'm like what do you mean I can't go to the toilet and he's like no no no because it might fill up while you're going to have lunch I didn't have lunch because I was afraid that's mad that they've got a policy that you might lose your place as the member of the press to see the trial of the century because you need the toilet madness so long in the lunch area during lunch I couldn't get lunch so I had to run back to the press room because if you log out if you don't try to log in at least 5 minutes before the thing they won't let you into the video link so I had to run back there, start it and then run back out to try to grab a flapjack something to shove into my stomach what does it matter what time you join exactly why do they care it's all automated I have a suspicion that they are not able to mute everything so if people join maybe they're not muted because yesterday we had people popping up and like in the video like with the camera I think what I wanted to mention about the quality if the viewers can hear us clearly then the technical team here is doing a better job than the court technical team of a nuclear country to broaden out the discussion again so as you were saying Matt justice needs to be open transparent unfortunately there seems to be the reality of secret court trials in this country which is another story but it shows the attitude but you're right and everyone agrees justice needs to be transparent open and then the other point is in a democracy and we shouldn't I think we should just remind ourselves of this point democracy only works if there is true journalism and that means proper critical journalism investigative journalism alternative journalism not the board and paid for corporate journalism because who is there to hold the government the powers there be the establishment the big business interests to account if not proper journalism and everyone understands that and yet that's of course what's being targeted and being suppressed that's why it is the trial of the century because it's about everything really I do want to touch on the US assurances that were mentioned just a few times today just briefly because I know that this is something that you actually wrote extensively on because this is a point that's brought up by the prosecution often to counter the defense arguments especially when they're talking about the treatment of Jolene Assange if he's extradited to the United States and later on during this extradition process the United States came forward and said that he won't be subjected to SAMS he will not have to serve his pre-trial he won't be put in pre-trial detention in ADX Florence which is not a pre-trial detention center anyway so the assurances don't make sense on face value but there's a history of the United States breaking these assurances you've written about this briefly if you want to touch on that and then I also think we should speak about Assange's health which I do think ties into the assurances as well because that's after all why the US government probably felt compelled to bring these before the court he's scandalous that for two years now we've been talking about his health obviously I'm not saying it's not important but the trial the case should not center around whether he's healthy if he were at 100% mental and physical health does that mean you send him to prison what kind of threshold is that so the assurances which helped the US lawyers to then overturn the decision not to extradite him and okay the extradition were just based on what Taylor outlined and the United States this is a case cited by Julian's lawyers Mendoza and I he's dual citizen US and Spanish and I published these documents from his case from the US State Department and the DOJ and the Department of Justice because what he got is much better than an assurance an assurance is on a napkin it's just a meaningless piece of paper given by one foreign ministry to another that's it but what he got is a legally binding contract because the assurances are too weak the United States tried to play the same game initially what Mendoza's lawyers did is they went to the judiciary and they said can you really trust this so the Spanish courts told the Americans you either give us something more concrete or you're not having him and this was actually really just about his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights that he could be close to his family that he goes to America's service he gets tried whatever sentence they give him he comes back and he serves it in Spain so he can be close to his family this is a ride that everyone has under the ECHR you can't put someone on a penal colony 2,000 miles away from their family so they were forced to sign this contract and it was Spain that signed it the United States that signed it through the embassy in Madrid and Mendoza himself once he gets to the United States they start stealing millions of dollars from him because they wanted him for marijuana but he was actually already rich through construction so they started taking way like seven times more money than he had actually supposedly sold in marijuana and they never caught a single ounce of it the point is though that they started robbing him blind and then after that they refused to send him back and he asked for a copy of the document of this contract it's like a banana republic they gave him a copy without his signature so he can't go to court and then one of the judges in Spain anonymously sends it to him because he rallied so much support for his case in Spain and he sued the Spanish executive twice in the Supreme Court and one just because they violated his human rights and did nothing because we have to remember that Spain failed to tell the United States hey come here what are you guys doing give us Mendoza because they're another party to the contract and because they're controlled by the United States they did nothing so he won and when he got there he went to civil court against Obama's attorney general who was Eric Holder and then when that happened they said okay go back you're giving us a headache so you see it shows you the power of these contracts but again going back to Assange Assange is not even getting this contract and if we're here to get it we know the United States would break it anyway and the United Kingdom would not enforce the contract and so you know whatever way you look at it you cannot trust what the United States promise even if it is a legally binding contract on paper with the signature it is garbage it is toilet paper do you remember the how was the guy with the hook Abu Hamza was very similar there they also like give assurances there exactly they said he'd get proper healthcare and then put in Sam's I remember that during the hearings they told a story that they were like loosening the measures and stuff like it got better for him and then he wrote a letter to his son he said something like give my love to my grandchild tell my grandson I love him and then they declared it unauthorised contact to a third person and like said everything back to the worst so I also felt like even if they in the beginning stick to the assurances they will find a way to move away from it so especially I think what people have to keep in mind is the assurances only cover what happened until now so if something else would come up maybe like misbehavior or whatever they come up with they could always like okay this is not covered by the assurances so go to Sam's because the whole point is he's a substantial risk of suicide if they treat him in a particular way and they say fine we promise we won't help him commit suicide unless he says or does something that lets us to change our mind so it's like okay the High Court have literally just accepted meaningless assurances which even on their own face or have such a great qualification that it's basically like saying and this is what they tried to appeal to the Supreme Court on where they said like can you actually accept a qualified restriction on torture because you're saying that the High Court have accepted that certain conditions will lead to his death right that satisfies the definition of torture and they're saying we won't torture him to death unless we change our mind and decide we want to torture him to death the High Court said oh yeah well that's good enough for us and that it's absolutely shocking and that is and they refuse to certify that as an appeal ground to the Supreme Court and they didn't even go to the Supreme Court and I think they did that deliberately because the Supreme Court would have had to have considered that and would have been in a very embarrassing situation of either because Supreme Court cases are actually televised right so actually saying that the probation on torture in the UK is no longer absolute or saying that these assurances are worthless and they protected the Supreme Court from doing that by simply not certifying it as a bogus bullshit decision I have absolutely no respect for the judges and the High Court who made that decision because they're saying torture is fine if the US government decides they're going to do it and we'll dress it up The underlying theme here is that the secret services the deep state we have intelligence agency the so-called intelligence agency they're really operational covert operational agencies that engage in frankly illegal activities they are fighting for control and so they want to clamp down on everything and that's really we're witnessing isn't it and of course the biggest challenge to them is the public actually knowing finding out what's happening that we have these organisations engaging in illegal activities but being let off and there's a great book by Fletcher Prouty called The Secret Team who's really he wrote this in the early 70s he was the chief of covert operations special operations that joined chief of staff in the White House all his life in the CIA but then he became basically a whistleblower and wrote this book which was banned for two and a half decades but then later with the internet he created easily The Secret Team and he shows that the CIA is essentially illegal it doesn't even have the powers that it's in reality taking and exercising usurping and the way it works is because once you get into this and you've got the black budgets and there's these trillions missing they're all off the books then what they're doing is and because they always use national security as the excuse for those who are in a democracy are supposed to be the sort of checks and balances on such agencies you know securities agencies or for lease or anything they make sure it's their own people and then nobody is allowed to name who is CIA and it's a secret so nobody knows that say the congressmen or the senators in the various committees are supposed to watch this well they're all CIA and that's how they do it so the whole thing is actually illegal and the public needs to know and be aware that this is the battle that we're fighting and that Julian has been fighting and of course it's the battle against the most powerful enemy and he's exposed everything he's talking about because I agree I think that the left needs to engage on this issue they call it parapolitics all the different secretive agencies you're talking about they have huge amounts of power in fact they have executive power essentially because if you talk they call it the blob in Washington the confluence of different arms manufacturers national security officials blah blah blah it's becoming more and more obvious in the case of the science because you have Trump who issued the initial or the Trump administration issued the initial indictment it's been carried on by Biden who is apparently politically opposed to Trump but there's a bipartisan parapolitics consensus in Washington amazing and I think that's becoming more and more clear I mean it also goes I have to say for the judicial system as well because we feel like independent judiciary is this concept we have which is a fundamental tenant of democracy but we don't have independent judiciary in this country, we don't and we don't even have a the government we don't have a media to expose it that's maybe the scariest part for me because the work we've done at the classified government is in the persecution of a journalist this is a journalist that is on record as the country that wants to extradite him has plotted to assassinate him the country that wants to extradite him has spied on his privileged conversation with his lawyers it doesn't get more serious than that stuff any case would just be thrown out and in fact in the case of Daniel Ellsberg in the 70s with the Pentagon papers something much less serious they burglarized the offices of his psychiatrists to get dirt to smear in the media that got it thrown out but we found that the UK government had deployed 18 staff on the secret operation to seize him from the Ecuadorian Embassy Ecuador is a friendly country asylum is a right enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights and he's a journalist who's avoiding persecution which we've now seen the results of how can any government justify putting 18 staff on that secret police operation and the Vienna Convention you can't go into an embassy no but they've never had to justify it because we did that story first time it was revealed the amount and it's never been covered in the mainstream media that's why sometimes I feel like I'm living in an Orwellia because truth just doesn't reach a certain level even like today I felt it with that at the thing there's an amazing activist outside and people are engaged but it's still on quite small numbers on a sort of general level this is the trial of the century this is going to define freedom globally for decades if not centuries and it's barely touched in the mainstream media it should be on a front page of every single mainstream newspaper front page they should have been campaigning for years to get him out not one newspaper has launched a campaign that's why I sort of feel like we're already living in 1984 we have this guy rotting in a prison in the centre of London for five years and no one's mobilised the civil society has been exposed the media has been exposed everyone who should come to aid someone who is the victim of raw power exercised in the most crude way they've gone absent and it's scary because if they can do it to him they can do it to anyone exactly as you say you mentioned the Ecuador Embassy and of course why did Ecuador suddenly change its mind and this is where you see how these things are connected the International Monetary Fund suddenly gave them a loan for I think it was 7 billion dollars and of course there is the published conditionality but then there's always the not published the confidential conditionality and suddenly with billions of dollars at stake and there's usually ways for creaming off a few percentages here and there for intermediaries various parties for their personal accounts suddenly he was kicked out essentially and of course there's other cases where basically when big decisions are made involving money whether it's the European Union withholding 7 billion euros from Hungary and then there's secret agreements on what should happen and which people should be getting silenced and whatever or essentially badly treated for their for their work for truth and publishing important information of polyinterest that's how it works and so you've got all the major international international power players involved in this isn't it The weird thing about this whole system is it's like you were saying about this two tiered media where the establishment media is the official media but they don't do proper journalism all the rest of us that are actually doing proper journalism we're not proper journalism because we're doing proper journalism it is a william so the information is out there now but it just doesn't reach so the whole way propaganda is done here I believe having done the work we've been doing that we've classified for years now is a propaganda by omission they don't need to outright lie to you although they do do that sometimes but most of the time it's just to leave out any information you need to have a proper understanding of our stories but they're the ones I know best there was a minister who orchestrated the arrest of Assange and Asija from Ecuadorian Embassy in 2019 Sir Alan Duncan he is a 40 year good friend of Chief Justice Ian Burnett who green-lighted Assange's tradition if any media reported that if the Guardian had put that on the front page or the Times it was scandalous he would have had that ruling would have had to be revisited or if it had happened before he would have had to recuse himself but it's never been reported anywhere so we live in this discourse and this narrative control where any information which is not conducive to state or corporate power is just erased from the public record in a sort of mass sense in terms of mass media you can see it in alternative media and I think that's what the point you made is that I think that what Assange did which none of us have ever done is he made that kind of critical radical journalism which really is involved in exposing power mainstream he did it through the Guardian and stuff and that was like a short burst of democracy before they had to live backwards enough of that well we do know that the case is now left to these two high court judges who are going to determine if Assange can appeal before the UK courts once more or if he enters into the extradition process of course there is still an opportunity to pursue through the European Court of Human Rights Matt I know that your colleagues at Declassified UK have investigated both of these judges I think this is a good place to start to wrap up our discussion this evening if you would like to provide an overview of some of the findings that may be of interest to the listeners and then others who want to just share with the viewers your general thoughts on some snacks but I'll start with you Matt Matt what about the judges today Well the report yes I think it will be interesting for people to hear those details Well SHARP it basically is a theme we've been looking at judges all the way through this case because it's a rich scene and no one else seems to be doing it so we thought why not SHARP today Victoria SHARP she was appointed by Theresa May by a Tory father is a life peer or was a life peer we have an undemocratic system in this country where the second chamber is unelected and it's full of basically just aristocrats who have ruled the they've ruled the countries since the Norman invasion basically they divvied up the land and gave themselves nice titles and they're still there and then her brother was chair of the BBC another sort of establishment figure so she's just deeply embedded in the establishment and has all the views I imagine that someone who is deeply embedded in the establishment does about issues around democracy and the journalism that WikiLeaks practices and then the other judge has previously acted for MI6 which is the foreign intelligence agency of the UK and in fact this fuck-wise it's not funny is it but it's I guess it is quite funny but it's funny how blatant it is but Jonathan Swift the previous guy who took 10 months to write two pages and refused the appeal he had also previously acted for British intelligence and in an interview we found he had said that British intelligence were his favourite clients because they prepared their evidence really well and stuff so this is what science is up against and they're clear like I've actually talked to people who are not involved in the case and who are not really political in any sense and said like how what's the sort of threshold for conflict of interest where you have to recuse yourself and they said it's low if there's any hint that you have had some background that might influence your decision you remove yourself and in fact that's what happened with Lady Arbuthnot which Mohammed mentioned earlier we did a series of stories this is sorry I'll just give some context this was a judge that made two key rulings against the Sunday of 2018 when he was still in the embassy but if she'd ruled in his favourite would have given him a chance of safe passage to Ecuador as the UK was obligated to do but never did anyway she ruled against him her husband is a Tory lord and former defence minister but affiliate on the board of various arms companies and stuff she was actually personally funded by the foreign office the British foreign office in 2014 they paid for it to go on a trip with her husband and we published about six or seven stories just detailing it all and then she had we don't know if it was because of those articles but she withdrew from the case and that's as I say we're small and we'll turn it in media if the guardian or anyone else was doing this stuff he would 100% not be in the bell wash 100% I interviewed Stella a couple of years ago I asked her about the mainstream media she said if the mainstream media had mobilised in favour of Assange and revealed the irregularities the conflicts of interest there's no way he would still be there none of these wars he exposed would have happened and that is their role that's what you understand now and that's also why they hate him so much because he exposed them he exposed their real role so the judges to their a continuation of that trend as I say they weren't quite as dismissive but they're smart people that might be a PR strategy on their part but as you mentioned Dustin I think that was a really important point and I noticed exactly what you were saying as well that the British judges sorry the Assange defence lawyers seemed to be appealing to the fact that they were going to get their asses handed to them at the ECHR which I think they probably would because the case is so thin but I have to say the story I did this week was about a a UK citizen called Bevor Ahmad who was extradited to the United States in 2012 he was actually extradited in a batch with Abu Hamza and he was in prison with Abu Hamza a prison called Long Lartin up north and his description of the conditions that well he firstly said to me that one day in the US prisons was is like 100 days in Belmarsh he was like it's a totally different ball game he was taken there after 5 years the European Court took 5 years to look at his case and then okay the extradition he was taken and then put straight into solitary confinement he said he went there met with the medic and he noticed the medic have a little wink with the person who was the prison guard and he realised that they basically put him on suicide watched it even though he was perfectly fine he said it was just like they were laughing about it this kind of thing and he was in solitary confinement for 2 years he said the only conversations he had were out the sort of like holding the door with other people who were shouting into the atrium and I said to him how do you survive that how do you survive that this is really primitive and barbaric firstly he said what they're going to do to the signs will be worse and then I said he said the only way he survived it was his religion, Islam and he said a lot of people don't survive he said I had many sleepless nights of people just screaming non-stop but he was the rule 39 that he mentioned and is a possibility for signs again in this case as we've outlined tonight they can not abide there's no precedent for them not abiding by a rule 39 from the European Court but anything goes anything goes in this exactly and they can get him out of the jurisdiction there was one case in 2014 where a Belgian terrorist was drugged and put on a plane without even telling his lawyers and then the rule 39 was issued when he was out of the jurisdiction so they could totally do that because he was explaining to me that what happens is if the appeal if the ruling goes against the signs then it's literally as every day as they go on the website of the European Court and just do a submission for a rule 39 and then it can take a couple of days so the British government can just get him out and they take their orders from the CIA anyway so they get a plane at RAF Mildenhall which is where they are going to go and just get him out of the country so we'll see I'm not going to say a lot but a significant political backlash if they do that but they would risk doing it anyway for the Americans it's definitely a possibility