 It is my great honor to open and share the Belmarsh Tribunal, here at Church House, at the Center, at the heart of Westminster, at a place where the meetings of the Parliament of the United Kingdom were being held during World War II, and also a place where the first meeting of the UN Security Council was held. But we are not only in London today, we are everywhere in the world, not only thanks to the Internet, but also thanks to millions who are ready to fight injustice and demand justice. What and whom are we putting on trial? The bloody crimes that have been committed by Western governments, the United States, but also the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, Ecuador, under Lenin Moreno, and other governments, the CIA, the NSA, and the military industrial complex, from war crimes to crimes against journalism and civilians, and crimes against publishers like Julian Assange. We are here so that torture, secret killings, rendition, surveillance, character assassination, and real assassination won't be forgotten and will be put on trial. To whom are we presenting this investigation? As Bertrand Russell said, answering the same question about the Russell-Sarter Tribunal, we are presenting it to the conscience of humankind. And today we should add, we are presenting it to all the women and men, mothers and fathers, children and future lawyers, current politicians and journalists, judges, and all those who will come in our wake. What do we expect of this Tribunal today? We came to London in time of disorder. We came to London in time of turmoil. And we are presenting our evidence and accusations to you and to those who shall resurface following the flood in which we might perish. We know very well no Tribunal can bring justice to the victims of war crimes. I incidentally come from a country which went through a bloody war after the collapse of Yugoslavia. Yes, there was the International Criminal Tribunal for the former of Yugoslavia at the Hague. And of course, its rulings brought some satisfaction to the families of the victims. But it is enough to come to ex-Yugoslavia to see former war criminals being successful businessmen. Well, you don't have to go to ex-Yugoslavia. You can come to the United Kingdom and find Tony Blair. Or you can go to the United States and you will find plenty of them, war criminals who have never been put on trial. So what do we expect of the Tribunal today? Our position is strong because we do not seek to send a few individuals to prison, Jean Paul Sartre said of the Russell Sartre Tribunal, but to reawaken in public opinion at an ominous moment of our history the idea that there can be policies which are objectively and legally criminal. Now imagine a capital city in Western Europe, in the heart of so-called Western civilization. Whatever this means, you probably remember Walter Benjamin who said that every document of civilization is a document of barbarism. Imagine a journalist who was for seven years entrapped in an embassy of a country that was friendly to him. But times changed and he became an enemy to almost every country. For what? For speaking the truth and revealing the dirty and monstrous crimes of the military industrial complex. Then he was put in a high security prison together with terrorists and fundamentalists and then it was revealed that another country, not Saudi Arabia or Russia, but the United States of America would kidnap him or kill him at the soil of that capital just opposite to Herod's, yes, here in London. But still a British court is still deciding whether to exerdite this journalist precisely to the United States and this is nothing more but assassination in broad daylight. So since the Russell Sartre Tribunal was started by philosophers and that happened to be one as distasteful it is to describe oneself as a philosopher, you will allow me a philosophical reference. All of you here and I'm sure the judges who are watching us who will decide on Julian Assange's fate will remember the apology of Socrates, written by Plato in 399 BC. What was Socrates charged of? There were two charges. The first charge was that he was corrupting the youth and the second charge was the charge of Assybia of not believing in the gods of Athens. He could have escaped just like Julian Assange but he didn't and the jury condemned him to death. So what does Socrates say at the moment when he's being accused that he's corrupting the youth and not believing in the gods of the Parthenon? He says the following sentence, this is my first appearance in court of law at the age of 70, well not many could say that, and so I'm a complete foreigner to the language of this place. And I think this is a very important sentence. He asked the Athenian judges whom he sometimes calls the Athenians to treat him like a foreigner, like Aksenos. The great French linguist Emile Benveniste reminded us that Aksenos would later in Latin become Hostis, this is also the source of the English word hostile, while in the original ancient Greek meaning it meant at the same time foreigner and guest, someone who still had some rights and it was also the right of hospitality. So Socrates says that he's not even treated as a foreigner, as Aksenos. In front of the nomos, the law, he was treated as an enemy, as Hostis. Julian Assange together with Edward Snowden, Chelsea Mening, Daniel Hale and many other courageous truth-tellers finds himself in the most respectable company of Socrates. And it is not just Socrates who was accused of Assybia, the list is long. Cessulus, Anaxagoras, Aspasia, Aristotle who fled before the trial, and Protagoras who was sentenced to death or exile. So if the British judges decide either to exerdite Assange to the US or to keep him in the British Guantanamo, they will basically condemn him to death. To conclude and to launch, and it's my great honor to launch the Belmar Tribunal today, let me quote the great German playwright Bertolt Brecht who said, said is the country which needs heroes. Today we should say, said is the world that needs Edward Snowden, Chelsea Mening, Daniel Hale, Julian Assange and so many courageous publishers and whistleblowers. It is said because it means something is deeply wrong with our world. But we are lucky to have them. And we are lucky to have the following members of the Belmar Tribunal today with us, either in person or on screen. Tari Kali, Renata Aviglia, Absana Begum, Richard Bergen, Jeremy Corbin, Rafael Correa, Oslem Demirel, Dipa Govindarayan, Driver, Daniel Ellsberg, Selay Gaffar, Haike Hensel, Scott Ladlam, Eni Mashaun, Stefania Maurici, Ian McCaskill, John McDonnell, Stella Morris, Edward Snowden, Yannis Varoufakis, Ben Wiesner and Eyal Weitzman. So without further introduction, let me invite our first speaker, my dear friend and original member of the Bergen-Russell Tribunal, Tari Kali. Thank you, Strajko. The Bergen-Russell Jean-Paul South War Crimes Tribunal was set up because the two philosophers publicly stated that the crimes that were being committed during the war in Vietnam were neither being acknowledged nor recognized by the powers that be in the Western world. It was basically directed to the rulers of the United States, but also those who were backing them, which meant all the NATO countries, though no one else had troops there, apart from the United States, Australia and South Korea. And we launched that tribunal, investigating teams were sent to North Vietnam to experience the war, myself included. And we sat through hours and hours of bombing every single day. I saw with my own eyes the day after they'd bombed hospitals and schools in Tanuah province. So it was a searing experience which really left its mark on me and made me who I am in many, many ways. And the tribunal was consisted of intellectuals and historians and the lawyers from different parts of the world. They met for four weeks in two different sessions. After the British Labour government and the French government refused to allow them to meet here, the Swedish social democrats under the leadership of Olaf Palmer permitted them to meet in Sweden, interestingly enough. That is where the meetings of the tribunal took place. Witnesses were assembled. The United States was invited to give evidence and refused and said this was a joke. No war crimes were being committed in Vietnam. A few months later, the huge war crime at Milai, when they wiped out women and children and it was recorded, became public. And the entire argument against our war crimes tribunal disappeared in a flash in the middle of a tragedy. And I don't like to say this, but the recently deceased General Colin Powell, who's been, you know, subjected to massive praise and effusions in the media, was one of the senior officers, not then a general, a colonel, who helped to cover up the Milai massacre for a long, long time. So criminal enterprises like this are part and parcel of the wars that are waged. Now Julian exposed another set of wars. Basically, he exposed the so-called war on terror, which began after 9-11, has lasted 20 years, has led to six wars, millions killed, trillions wasted. That is the only balance sheet of that war. Nowhere has it redeemed itself or done any good, as we've seen most recently in Afghanistan. So what do you say to people like Chelsea Manning and Julian, who's the principal target of the legal and judicial brutalities taking place when they reveal stuff which everyone knows it's true, since some of it is on video? Americans bombing Iraqi families totally innocent, totally innocent, laughing about it, and are recorded killing them. That's a big joke. Well, it isn't a big joke for the millions who've died in the Arab world since these 20 years war began. And Julian, far from being indicted, should actually be a hero. He's not the first, and if they think that punishing him in this vindictive and punitive way is going to change people's attitudes to coming out and telling the truth, they're wrong. They always think this when whistleblowers come out. They thought it when one of our colleagues today, Daniel Esberg, blew the whistle on the crimes being committed in Vietnam and revealed secret Pentagon documents, which The New York Times published. Just like The New York Times, The Guardian, El País, Republica published the documents that WikiLeaks released. It wasn't so different. Edward Snowden did what we know, exposing surveillance, hardly remembered but important for Britain was Clive Ponting, a very senior civil servant of the Ministry of Defence, who exposed the lies on the Falklands war that was being fought. And Clive Ponting was tried mercifully and fortunately for him that it was a jury trial. And though the charges were very strong breach of this, breach of that, the jury acquitted him. So he walked free. Julian is unfortunate to be captured by this particular state and its different apparatuses in order to appease the United States of America. He should never have been kept in prison for bail. He should not be in prison now waiting a trial for extradition. He should be released and I hope that acts like the Belmarsh Tribunal will help to bring that nearer. Thank you Tarik and thank you for mentioning Afghanistan, which brings us directly to our next member of the Belmarsh Tribunal, which is Selaig Afar, the spokesperson for the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan. Dear comrades and friends, I'm thrilled and honored to join you on this historical tribunal. All Afghans, particularly the families of the war victims, expect the Belmarsh Tribunal to heal their wounds by holding the United States accountable for the thousands of innocent Afghan slaves they destroyed in the future they stole. And I salute the progressive international for this remarkable initiative. In the week of the U.S. humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, everybody asks this question. How did the two decades of the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan and the pretext of fighting terrorism ended with the Taliban terrorists gaining a swift and easy victory in Afghanistan? Well, so far, in my opinion, only one person by the name of Julian Assange possibly had the answer to this mystery. In 2011, he unmasked the truth through a set of documents called the Afghan War Diary, where he exposed the tyrannical U.S. policy in Afghanistan and said that one of the goals behind sustaining the war was to to wash many out of the tax bases of the U.S. and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of the transnational security elite. Two decades of U.S. occupation brought us nothing but ruin and loss of lives. And while the main history media tried to portray a rosy picture of Afghanistan, the leaks by Assange, on the contrary, revealed bloody atrocities committed by the U.S. and NATO occupying forces. For instance, in 2007, the U.S. special forces dropped 62,000 pounds bombs on a compound where they believed a high-value individual was hiding. However, locals reported that up to 300 civilians had been killed in this raid. None of the media reported that incident. According to reliable sources, about 241,000 Afghans have been killed by crossfire between the U.S. forces in the Taliban, of whom 48,000 civilians have been killed by U.S. occupation forces in a number of unknown incidents. But in my belief, the real number is much, much higher as many incidents are not reported and not documented. Well, the U.S. occupation has also inflicted invisible wounds. In 2009, the former Afghan Ministry of Public Health reported that fully two-third of Afghans suffer from mental health problems. The war has exacerbated the effects of poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of access to healthcare, and environmental degradation on Afghans' health. Therefore, U.S. and NATO allies are responsible and accountable for all the past 20 years misery of our tormented people, particularly our ill-fated women. Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to be among you all today in this tribunal, and I hope Julian Assange will be free soon. Thank you. So, from Afghanistan, we are back to Church House, the heart of Westminster, and I'm really glad that I can present the next member of the Belmarsh Tribunal, who is a member of UK Parliament, Jeremy Corbyn. Thank you very much. Thank you for hosting this tribunal, and thank you to all those that have organised it, because it couldn't be more important at a more timely moment. We're just reminded by Tarik of the heroic role played by Clive Ponting in a former generation doing so much to expose lies and dishonesty, and also, I may say so, the heroic work of the late Tam Daliel, a member of parliament, and doing exactly the same over the Falklands War and others. And following what Salai just said about Afghanistan, I would like to concentrate my remarks about Iraq, if I may. I was a founder member of the Stop the War coalition, which was founded immediately after 9-11 to try and prevent the bombing of Afghanistan, and it gives me no pleasure to say 20 years later, trillion spent, tens of thousands died, many in exile, including 457 British soldiers who died, that there should be some lessons learned from that. John McDonald, who's on the tribunal, is one of myself, we're both members of parliament during this whole period. And we deposed the Afghan War, and then early part of 2002, there began to be various stories planted in various media, which sort of suggested that somehow or other, Iraq was the same as Bin Laden, and Iraq was somehow or other linked up with the Taliban, and we had to be very wary of Iraq, which was quite a stretch for the imagination of quite a lot of people, particularly as not very long before, in the late 80s, Britain had been arming Iraq, and indeed I made myself extremely unpopular with many parliamentary colleagues for opposing arms sales to Iraq in 1988, not long before the Gulf War, and the buildup in 2002 was saying that Iraq was a severe danger. The claim that Iraq housed weapons of mass destruction, the attempt by weapons inspectors to find these weapons of mass destruction which they were unsuccessful in doing, indeed everybody was going to be unsuccessful in doing them, because they simply didn't exist, and also the claims that Iraq was within 45 minutes of a major attack on various places, obviously within the region of Iraq, but right over into Western Europe, and what scared me was the gullibility of so many of the media that just swallowed this stuff that was given to them by Downing Street and by many others. I was one of those that organized the enormous demonstration in February 2003 in Hyde Park, the biggest ever demonstration in British history, and if I may quote myself at that big event, I said if we go to war with Iraq it will not bring peace, it will bring the wars of tomorrow, the refugee flows of tomorrow, the bitterness, the hatred, and the terrorism of tomorrow. Sadly, every single thing that I predicted then has come to be the case, and so when many of us challenged what was being said by the government, what was being said in the media about weapons of mass destruction, about the plans of Iraq and so on, we then later learned through the many inquiries that took place, and ultimately through the Chilcot inquiry, that the role of the security services was enormous in this, and the implications being that when opinions or information arrived at the political heart of the whole operation, if they didn't suit the political narrative being put forward, they were simply sent back to be rewritten. If we have a society where there is secrecy and untrammeled power of government and taking us into war, where there is an unaccountable security service and unaccountable security information that's being put forward, it is extremely dangerous. Therefore, the role of the media and of real journalists is absolutely enormous in that, and Julian Assange has paid a very, very, very high price for his lifelong determination to expose the truth. Why? Is it because he has some idea that he can make himself famous by exposing the truth? Or is it something much stronger and much more moral than that? The belief that by exposing the truth, you can save lives, you can stop wars, and you can make sure that democracies function properly by holding all public officials, elected or unelected, to public account, and that's why the role of Julian Assange in all of this is so important. His information exposed the dishonesty surrounding the claims on Iraq. His information exposed the dishonesty of the continuing reporting of Iraq after 2003 with hidden information about the numbers of people that had died from friendly fire in Iraq, but also the dangers to all journalists, to everyone who believes in free speech, of the concept of the embedded journalist embedded on an aircraft carrier sent into a barracks or whatever else to produce reports that are to the liking of the military. So those of us who want to live in a peaceful world and do not believe that a repeat of Iraq will do anything other than bring about even worse consequences than the Iraq war did are here because we want to support Julian Assange in the bravery that he's shown and the price that he's already paid for that bravery of ensuring that the whole world knows the truth about it. And as my colleague Tariq Ali was saying earlier, in a different place, in a different country, in a different society, Julian Assange would now be hailed by every aspect of the British media for being a hero because he's exposing the truth. But because the uncomfortable truths that he exposed have been revealed, he's not in that case. Now as one who has been a member of parliament throughout all this period and was very proud to lead the Labour Party during this period, I thought long and hard about what it is like to be in government when you are challenging those people that are handing you information, which is why I believe that there has to be a War Powers Act in Britain, which is what I placed into both of my manifestos. And there has to be real accountability of all aspects of the security services and the military and the role of their special forces as well. Now, democratically elected politicians are elected to hold government and others to account. Holding people to account is of course the political process, but it's also the media. And I think the role that Julian Assange has played in exposing uncomfortable truths is something that he should be very proud of and all those that work with him and support him should be very proud of. And that's why I'm so pleased to be able to take part in this tribunal today. Thank you, Chair. Thanks a lot. And we are also very proud to have you among the members of the Belmers Tribunal. We are also very proud to have the next speaker who is the director of forensic architecture and a professor at Goldsmith, Eyal Weitzman. I'm going to speak about an aspect of the wars of terror of this millennium. And to a great extent, I think that drones embody the kind of violence and the paradoxes of this war. And my reference to Wikileaks' contribution is their 2010 revelation. The two years earlier in 2008, Pakistan approved U.S. drone strikes. This image that you see is actually part of the leaked Snowden trove. And it shows an Israeli drone intercepted by British secret services. Drone strikes also connect the violence inflicted in the context of Israeli colonial, settler colonial violence in Palestine with first assassinations in 2000 with the imperial wars of terror in amongst others, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, starting a year or so later. Drone strikes are interesting also because they're argued as the perfect poison dart, a humanitarian technology allowing for a humanitarian form of violence. So their response somehow to those two terms of international law, proportionality, because they're supposed to minimize collateral damage, and distinction because they're supposed to be or always argued to be more precise than they are. So in a sense, I think that I chose to speak about drone strikes because they embody an important politically philosophical justification at the heart of the terror wars. And that is the principle of the lesser evil, which leads to that precisely to those humanitarian wars, just as it led in the past to the civilizing missions of high colonialism. And this is why we should also have a pause and think whether the use of human right principle and international law need to be accepted without reservation. Drone strike also embody another principle confronted by WikiLeaks work, and that is the destruction of evidence and the insistence on deniability. Until 2012, 80 years into the killing spree along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier that began much earlier, the CIA could still neither confirm or deny using these weapons. And what helped this deniability is actually the minuscule evidentiary signature of drone strikes, small holes in a roof that are actually smaller than the pixel size in the satellite images that sometimes we use to look into those areas. So small missile hole in the ceiling would not be seen in the satellite images. The photographic resolution of those satellite images is actually made by a political resolution. U.S. law defined the size of the pixels that we see into those places at 50 centimeters, the size of a human from above. In Israel, there is an exception. It's the size of a car from above. It's much bigger pixel, and under that veil of resolution, crimes are actually committed. So if we look at the one of the first videos smuggled out of Pakistan, six hands until it arrived in Islamabad, composite together as the group I represent here, forensic architecture, 30 of us doing this minuscule evidentiary work on those videos, looking at one of the first documentation of drone strike, marking each one of those shrapnel holes in a wall in a room in which we know four people were killed, we don't see the human figures. Unless we look more carefully and actually see that the gaps within the shrapnel create the shadow of those people killed, those people received the shrapnel in their body and the shadow was inscribed on the wall of that building like a photographic film is working. In a sense, I think that this embody that principle in which small-scale munition in a case of drone strike, and we've exposed and gave evidence to the use of those poison dart called the Hellfire Romeo used to strike architecture, that perception of a humanitarian technology is precisely what allowed that violence to proliferate. And for strikes to be continued across the entire cities, towns and villages of Waziristan, such as in other places in Yemen, Somalia and Gaza, so that the greater evil is arrived at cumatively and arriving at least only from that type of violence according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 4,000 casualties. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, and it's my honor to present the next speaker, also a member of the UK Parliament, Absana Begum. It's been long clear that the charges relating to Julian Assange publishing activities must be dropped and that the UK authorities must reject any notion of the extradition to the US and that there must be really an end to the suffering and torture of one person for the simple act of telling the truth. And we know that without a doubt Julian Assange would face a real risk of serious human rights violations if deported to the US. And in fact, the UK government's conduct in relation to Assange has revealed such gross hypocrisy when it comes to any professed commitment to human rights and the rule of law. When just a few weeks ago it was revealed that only a few years ago the legal attack on Assange came very close to becoming an actual physical assault, kidnapping and possibly an attempted murder. Now US lawyers have repeatedly asserted that this is not a political case and this revelation in the last few weeks shows that it absolutely is and questions are indeed needed to be asked as to the role of British authorities on this and any willingness to participate in this grotesque plan and to participate in potentially gun battles on the streets of London in the pursuit of Assange in this illegal way. Now if Julian is extradited to the US it will have far-reaching human rights implications and set a chilling precedent. We know that any such extradition would have profound consequences for press freedom around the world and this really goes to the crux of this issue for many whether or not we support freedom for journalists to publish classified information that is in the public interest because as has been mentioned already Assange's whistleblowing activities about illegal wars mass murder, murder of civilians and corruption on a ground scale have put him where he is now and many communities across the UK and around the world know this too well. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unlawful under international law and resulted in large scale death and destruction and including as the previous speakers mentioned human rights abuses committed on a large scale by occupying troops. Those wars have destroyed the lives of so many Iraqis and people in Afghanistan and caused destruction to the regions but it's also devastated communities in this country as well. Communities such as the Muslim community communities, ethnic minority communities across East London and up and down the country and the consequences are felt to this day. I know in my part of the country and in the Muslim community we know too well that we must never embark on illegal wars and imperialism abroad and the collateral damage video and the evidence that WikiLeaks and Julian were able to release and provide confirmed to so many of us what we already knew but and what was being done in our names but gave voice began to give voice to communities to be able to begin to hold governments to account properly as well. Now since the Iraq war we've seen extraditions, renditions and the work of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange helped expose that but we know our state's actions have helped foster the climate of hostility at home as well and in the last two decades we've seen our communities being spied on in our schools, in our mosques, in our universities and this government's approach increasingly being draconian authoritarian is seeking to strip away the freedoms that so many communities hold dear and we've seen that on clampdowns on dissent particularly in the last 12 months whether that's been built such as a spy cops bill or the policing bill trying to curb protest and so it was it's in this context it was that it's really hard not to understand the appeal against the verdict and the verdict early this year on extradition as another iteration of the expansion of international state suppression of people and and the criminalization of journalism and it was clear that we were misled then and even and even now the truth continues to be obscured and suppressed and legislation by successive governments have continued to assault our human rights in an even more emboldened way. Those that pursue Assange for publishing information about serious human rights violations and those responsible for these crimes continue to enjoy impunity and we should never forget that the perpetrators are state actors or agents of the state and that is why Julian Assange is a threat and other publishers who do the same are a threat. They are a part of people trying to hold those in power accountable and of course those in power don't like that. Assange's case is so important to us all because it's about people power versus state power and imperialism and it's about truth versus deceit and cover-ups and it's about seeking justice in an all too often unjust world. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Our next speaker and member of the Belmer Tribunal is Özlem Demirel a member of the European Parliament. Dear friends I'm happy to be with you today even when the subject we have to talk about is sad. Today we have to talk about war and war crimes about the truth and lies. Yes when we talk about wars in these days we have to talk about the reasons and justifications for wars. It is European history that has shown the world what armament and military-sized competition for markets and resources leads to this first and second world war and this is the reason the real reason even today for wars and these reasons were not accepted by the people. So at the beginning of wars we have heard other justifications by our governments. It was said that the war on Afghanistan for example was about values human rights or the freedom of women. It was said that it was about nation building and democracy. Never it was said that it's about power or geopolitical interest. In Iraq it was said that it's about a dictator and his weapons. Never it was said that it's about oil and economic interests. Even though we surely have no sympathy for these regimes or terrorists, we have to speak out the truth about wars also from the west. And in this war and in all the wars things are happening that should not happen. When they happen, attempts are made to conceal them. If not already at the beginning of the wars then at latest hear the role of journalists, whistleblowers and brave ones who speak the truth is very important. The war in Afghanistan was hypocritical. It cost lives, civilian lives. By drones civilian had been attacked. Human rights violation had been part not just by the side of the terrorists or Taliban also of the other side even on the side of the west and the NATO countries. In Kundas airstrike innocent civilians were killed under German command with American air power. To date neither victims nor relatives have been compensated. On the contrary it was rejected. Not only in America's wars like Afghanistan also in Mali where France is the driving force, wedding was turned into a blues bus with drones. Even after the withdrawal from Afghanistan after the disgusting IS attack the U.S. killed again innocent children and a family. But to rally it is spoken or written about. And this makes independent and critical journalism indispensable. Wikileaks was an attempt to do this. But Julian Assange has been punished hard for exactly that and this is not acceptable. If you ask me what crimes should be in the dark not journalists whistleblowers who makes the crimes public. The silence of the European Union in the Assange case is not acceptable for me. They pretend the European Union pretend to be guided by values and human rights. But could it be the truth regarding the Assange case? No, these are always sacrificed for geopolitical and economical interests. But in the past, present and in the future there will be always the brave ones who speaks all the truth out. And the truth will prevail sooner or later. So we are back to Church House and our next speaker is a member of the UK Parliament, John McDonnell. Thanks a lot for joining the Tribunal. Thank you, thank you Chair. I'm a member of the UK Parliament but I'm also in that capacity Secretary of the National Union of Journalists Parliamentary Group within the United Kingdom Parliament. Our role as a parliamentary group for the NUJ is to protect and promote the rights of journalists within the United Kingdom and to also link with other parliamentarians across the globe to promote the rights of journalists globally. And we have a long record of interventions and representations opposing attempts wherever to suppress the right of journalists to pursue their profession. At the heart of that profession is the ability to report the truth, to expose wrongs and in doing so to enable lessons to be learnt so that those wrongs are redressed and possibly egregious acts prevented in the future. And it's been a in the United Kingdom at least it's been a 400 year struggle from the early pamphleteers of the Civil War to now to establish that right. Journalists have sacrificed their liberty and their lives to secure the right to speak truth to power. This is the country of Tom Payne, the author of The Rights of Man. Inherent was the freedom of expression to the work he undertook. The chair has already mentioned that we are meeting in the building which is hosted in the past. The UK Parliament have also various international bodies who've met to secure the in law the protection of human rights including the freedom of expression. The tragedy is that we now have in the United Kingdom a government that is complicit in the persecution of Julian Assange which has become now a stain on the history of this country and the people struggle to secure a free media. And he's being persecuted purely and simply for pursuing the profession of journalism and inherent within that whistleblowing. His crime, we need to be absolutely clear, his crime is telling the truth, exposing atrocities of war and the brutality of imperialism. He's been hounded by various states and his life is now threatened by the various states responsible for the war crimes he exposed. I find it the deepest irony that is these criminal states that are seeking to criminalize the very person who revealed their criminality and its consequences. I visited Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison. I believe I'm the only member of parliament so far that's been allowed to visit him. He's imprisoned in a high security prison. By all accounts it is a brutal regime. It's resulted in many harms self-inflicted amongst the prisoners including many suicides. I have to say nobody that endures that regime can do so without having a serious impact upon their health and their well-being. But I found Julian to be bearing up courageously to the regime under which he's been placed. But let's be clear this is the punishment of an innocent person and it has an impact beyond the harm to Julian himself. Again let us be clear this is a campaign not just to silence Julian Assange but as a message to all those other journalists out there globally, all those other whistleblowers to prevent them coming forward in the future. Why has this tribunal been convened? It's because we seek to stand for Julian Assange to secure his freedom. Julian Assange the journalist, the whistleblower. But we're also in this tribunal in doing so making a stand for the fundamental freedom, the freedom of expression and the fundamental freedom of journalists to pursue their profession. We stand for fundamental human rights and if we permit and stand by and allow Julian Assange to be persecuted in this way have no doubt about it the fundamental freedoms that we thought had been secured over centuries in the United Kingdom and elsewhere will be at risk. Thanks a lot. Our next speaker is the former finance minister of Greece currently a member of the Greek parliament and co-founder of the movement dm25 Yanis Varoufakis. Hello this is Yanis Varoufakis feeling deeply honored to be part again of the Belmarsh Tribunal. We live in an era when the 1% of the 1% controls the planet life not just humanity in a manner that has never been seen before never before has so much power exorbitant power being concentrated in the hands of so very few who are using it so carelessly and very often with destructive effect what do you do when you have such a huge concentration of power we can have a revolution we can change the world we're trying to but that takes a while in the meantime how do you control primarily the manner in which these supremely powerful forces are controlling what we know what we see what we don't know and what we can't see a young man in Australia a long long time ago well before we ever knew about WikiLeaks had an idea the idea of using big brother's technology to create a large digital kind of mirror to turn to the face of big brother so as to enable us to be able to watch him watching us a bit like turning the mirror to the face of the medusa WikiLeaks is based on that idea I remember spending a very long night with Julian in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge when he called upon me to help him decipher and transcribe a conversation between officials of the International Monetary Fund having spent in the previous year a very long time negotiating with them listening to them on that tape that Julian had procured through WikiLeaks through this blind digital postbox was such a splendid experience it was so liberating because I could suddenly hear with my own ears the very same officials effectively agreeing with everything that the good people of Greece were saying that we were saying that I had been saying to them now of course WikiLeaks has done far more important work than simply revealing that the International Monetary Fund knew that they were committing crimes against the Greek people and other people in Latin America and so on while perpetrating them WikiLeaks and Julian as we know are being persecuted for revealing to the world especially to liberals, democrats, Tories, social democrats revealing to them the crimes against humanity perpetrated by our own elected leaders in our name behind our backs this is why they are now killing Julian Assange so our message as the Bellomars Tribunal must not simply be one of support for Julian or a call to have him released no we are a tribunal we are trying the criminals that are killing Julian as we speak for crimes against humanity not just for the crime of slowly murdering Julian Assange your criminals and we are going to pursue you to the end of the earth and back for the crimes you're committing all over the world against humanity while also murdering slowly Julian Assange and other whistleblowers who are revealing your crimes this is our job as the Bellomars Tribunal we must be brave and we must not mince our words at the same time we must remember especially those of us who happen to be white and male that there are many non-white non-male whistleblowers out there all over the place in Africa in Asia in Latin America even in the west whose names you don't even know and who are suffering as we speak who've been murdered who've been incarcerated and we must act on their behalf as well the Bellomars Tribunal must act in order to persecute and to prosecute their murderers their torturers I'm Yanis Varoufakis representing team 25 I'm in Athens I wish I were with you the Bellomars Tribunal is a serious contribution to international justice to the extent that we continue not to call simply for the release of Julian Assange which of course we do but to the extent that we continue to persecute and to prosecute those murderers who are acting on behalf of the 1% of the 1% Carpe diem thanks a lot Yanis so now from Athens from the Greek parliament we are traveling to the German Bundestag and I'm very honored to have a member of the German parliament with us today Heike Hänsel dear friends and colleagues my name is Heike Hänsel I'm member of German parliament thank you for inviting me to participate in this important event of the Bellmars Tribunal the so-called war on terror declared by then-president George Bush has now lasted for 20 years the war in Afghanistan lasted just as long in Afghanistan NATO has experienced the greatest defeat in its history the Afghanistan war which was launched without a UN mandate was not only a disaster for NATO but a big crime against the Afghan people the Boston University costs of war project estimates the death toll in Afghanistan in Pakistan at at least 243,000 people according to a study by the medical organization IPP and W the number of indirect casualties could be far higher at more than 800,000 dead more than four million people have been forced to flee and Afghanistan remains one of the 10 poorest countries in the world the German government alone accounts for at least 17.5 billion euros for the war and the US is at over two trillion dollars for direct war costs the parliamentary group delinke in the German Bundestag is lobbying for committee of inquiry in parliament to look into the 20-year Afghanistan mission and also to investigate possible war crimes committed by the NATO troops for this purpose the information revealed by WikiLeaks in the Afghan war diaries is invaluable it is a disgrace for Europe that the journalist and founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange has been locked up innocently in the British high security Belmarsh prison for over two years now solely to secure his possible extradition to the US where he faces 175 years in prison for revealing US war crimes Belmarsh prison which has gained additional notoriety from the new James Bond film for its extreme prison conditions as shown in the film those who started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq violating international law would have to sit there Julian Assange must be released immediately and extradition to the US must be prevented the parliamentary assembly of the council of Europe already called on member states to do this in January 2020 in a resolution on media freedom after a corresponding amendment was adopted by consensus even after Brexit the UK will remain bound to the European Convention on Human Rights and the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights they guarantee Julian Assange the right to a fair trial and protection from torture and inhuman treatment which are threatened in the UK currently and especially after extradition to the United States consequences must finally be drawn from this resolution I therefore appeal to the European Union and the German government to protect the rights of Julian Assange to defend press freedom on European territory and to work for his release especially in view of new publications about murder plans of the CIA against Julian Assange this again impressively shows the criminal energy behind the political prosecution of Assange so does the fact that US prosecutors have been using shady board witnesses like Tottenham against Julian Assange thus a significant part of the prosecution case also collapses on October 27 28 therefore nothing can stand but the immediate release of Julian Assange thank you very much thank you as well for your contribution to the Belmarsh Tribunal well I didn't watch the new James Bond movie but I had the unfortunate or rather fortunate because he's also my friend to visit the Belmarsh prison and just to say for those who still wonder why is the name of our Tribunal Belmarsh Tribunal we named it after the prison where Julian Assange is being held so that everyone remembers the name of the prison and so that hopefully he is released soon we are coming to our next member of Tribunal who is also member of the UK parliament Richard Bergen please the floor is yours thank you chair from its inception modern colonialism and imperialism arrived dripping in blood violence and slaughter from the wiping out of millions of the original inhabitants of what is now Latin America to the slave trade and the later carving up of Africa profit has been squeezed drop by drop out of human suffering later empire took new forms as the United States became the most powerful nation on earth in which Martin Luther King described us and I quote the greatest purveyor of violence in the world a remark he made about the Vietnam War that left millions of Vietnamese dead but a remark that could have been made about the 2003 Iraq war which left many many hundreds of thousands dead of course that war was part of a new era of conquest for oil and control across the Middle East which 10 years ago also led to the seldom discussed US led invasion of Libya which Barack Obama once boasted deposed a despot at the cost of less than what we spent in two weeks in Iraq but the human cost the human cost was much greater for the Libyan people Libya's human development indices once the highest in the region have collapsed human trafficking networks thrive in the anarchy as warring factions vie for control of the economy slavery markets slavery markets have appeared where black people are sold to the highest bidder to work in factories as one account in time magazine described by the time his Libyan captors branded his face sunday cabaret had already run away twice and had been sold three times the gnarled scar that covers most of the left side of his face appears to show a crude number three his jailer carved it into his cheek with a fire heated knife cutting and cauterizing at the same time this this is the Libya of 2021 not 1821 so where are the trials of those who organized these wars embarked upon as they were with complete contempt for international law where is the justice for these victims of 21st century slavery and today where is the justice for those being deliberately starved to death in Yemen by that most loyal western ally Saudi Arabia that war has already caused nearly a quarter of a million deaths and that includes 130,000 deaths from indirect causes such as lack of food as Saudi Arabia uses hunger as a weapon of war alongside the arms sold to them from the west yet the united states despite talk from biden about breaking with some of trump and obama's backing for this Saudi war still refuses to demand an immediate end to the Saudi blockade of Yemen and regrettably britain along with the united states has been involved in too many unjust wars in recent years wars of conquest the control for oil much of what we know about these crimes was exposed by the fearless work of a journalist whose award-winning journalism was carried out here in britain a journalist who was exposed unlawful killing a journalist who exposed us rendition and the crimes of guantanamo bay a journalist who is now held in a uk high security prison solely because of his journalism what an indictment of the world that we live in were those who pursue wars are decorated and celebrated whilst those who expose war crimes face extradition to the united states and the rest of their life behind bars in a super maximum security prison the world needs more julian assanges the world needs more edwards nodens the world needs more of the fearless journalism of wikileaks because as julian himself once remarked if wars can be started by lies peace can be started by truth thanks a lot before we switch to the next speaker and member of the tribunal we will have a short interlude which is a sort of evidence and i invite everyone who is watching us today to closely look at the people who appear in this short video which will show which we will show some familiar faces from hillary clinton to joe biden and then i invite you to look at the people who are here today in the room i invite you to look at the people who are with us at the belmarsh tribunal and i invite you to look at the courageous supporters of julian assange and other whistleblowers and choose your side hi tech terrorist cyber terrorist information terrorism shut it down we're gonna hang you we use a drone or something put bullet in the brain illegally shoot the son of a information warfare is warfare and julian assange is engaged in warfare information terrorism which leads to people getting killed is terrorism and julian assange is engaged in terrorism he should be treated as an enemy combatant wiki league should be closed down permanently and decisively should the united states do something to stop mr assange we're looking at that right now the just department is taking a look at that i would argue that it's closer to being the hi tech terrorist than the pentagon papers this disclosure is not just an attack on america's foreign policy interests it is an attack on the international the the head of wiki leaks is not a particularly credible source in my mind he's he is a you know to my mind he's a he's a criminal and he ought to be hunted down and grabbed and put on trial for what he has done here i think the man is a hi tech terrorist um he's done in the suns yet he needs to be prosecuted to the full fullest extent of the law and if that becomes a probably need to change the law well i think a son should be assassinated actually i think obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something you don't want to act panicked and have the well you don't have to act panic you can act tough and say if we catch you we're gonna hang you yeah whatever we heard some of that from holder julian assange is a cyber terrorist in wartime he's guilty of sabotage espionage crimes against humanity he should be killed how is it how is it that the wiki leaks guy remains free you know back in the old days when men were men in countries were countries this guy would die of lead poisoning from a bullet in the brain and nobody would know who put it there the way to deal with this is pretty simple we've got special ops forces i mean a dead man can't leak stuff this guy's a traitor a treasonous and and and he has broken every law of the united states the guy ought to be and i'm not for the death penalty so if i'm not for the death penalty i want to do it illegally shoot the son of a it's time that the obama administration treats wiki links for what it is a terrorist organization whose continued operation threatens our security shut it down shut it down it is time to shut down this terrorist organization this terrorist website wiki links shut it down attorney general holder and we are back at west minster the next one who will testify is a Pulitzer winning journalist someone who spent more than two decades at the guardian this is you and mcaskill and i'm really glad that you joined the belmer's tribunal as you said i was on the guardian for 22 years and throughout that time i owe a big deal to whistleblowers and it was interesting seeing these interviews in the last few minutes i was in washington at the time and i covered some of those meetings and i came face to face with some of those critics and i was part of the guardian team at the time that covered the diplomatic cables another whistleblower that i owe much to is edward snowden i went to hong kong in 2013 with glenn greenwald and laura poitris and spent over a week holed up with snowden in a hotel room in hong kong whistleblowers are essential to good journalism and they allow reporters to get behind the walls of secrecy the walls of secrecy built up by officials and press officers um the whistleblowers reveal abuses and wrongdoing within governments companies the military intelligence agencies these whistleblowers should be rewarded for their courage instead too often they end up facing prosecution or jail and there's been a war being waged against journalism and free speech and it's been going on since at least 9 11 it's not a general war it's a specific to national security and the intelligence agencies the intelligence agencies are um waging it to try and dissuade future leakers within the agencies and try and dissuade the journalists covering the national security beat and this is what assigns has been caught up in and what assigns has been accused of is fundamentally no different from the normal interaction between whistleblowers and journalists on the national security beat there's no fundamental difference between what julien assigns was doing and the what i was doing and when i was in hong kong with snowden i spent a week with him discussing the ins and outs of his work at the national security agency i spent a week going through tens of thousands of secret documents and he passed me a memory stick with tens of thousands of secret documents on it me how is that fundamentally different from the relationship between the whistleblower chelsea manning and the publisher julien assigns and i said part of the reason is assigns is viewed as a easy target and there was a reluctance in the part of the us or the british governments to take on media organizations like the new york times or the guardian um you know then it ends up as an argument about press freedom so they go they go for the easy target and that was julien um if julien is to be prosecuted but there's a equally good case for the editor and journalists in the guardian or new york times der spiegel el pae la republika and all the other organizations involved um in this coverage being prosecuted too um obama in spite of his liberal background uh failed to stand up to the pressure from the intelligence agencies um he used the draconian 1917 the espionage act and other laws against the whistleblowers and journalists in fact obama was responsible for more prosecutions um and action against journalists and whistleblowers uh then all the other presence in the us combined um and it's not being particularly different in britain either the official secret's act that's been revised at present um under the proposed reform journalists can be prosecuted for publishing leaked intelligence just one quick footnote has been mentioned so far i'd like to thank asange for sending seara harrison from wiki leaks to hong kong and helping get uh edward snowden out of hong kong to the safety of russia otherwise snowden be suffering the same fate as asange i hope that the courts show some backbone and resist this attempt to extradite thank you a lot and thank you a lot for mentioning sarah harrison we should also mention jacob applebaum and many others who worked with wiki leaks and whose lives are in a way still in danger um and it would be been great if a country like u k could greet them here at this tribunal but unfortunately this is not the case uh our next member of the tribunal uh is joining from australia uh he's a former australian senator scott ladlam hi i'm scott ladlam and i'm speaking to you from ewin country on the south coast of new south wales in australia i'm honored to be able to speak at this tribunal today where collectively we will make clear that the wrong people are being punished for the crimes of the powerful events like these allow us to pause and remember the bigger picture remember that we're not fighting a single injustice or an individual despot but something systematic today we hear of the torture camp at guantanamo bay today we hear about war crimes in afghanistan and iraq of white collar crimes in janeva and washington dc unpunished crimes from nirobi to new york speaking of the broadest scope of what he found in the state department cables julien assange said that only by approaching this corpus holistically over and above the documentation of each individual abuse each localized atrocity does the true human cost of empire heave into view so we've come together to speak of the true human cost of empire and today our eyes are on some of the accomplices who have allowed these abuses to fester in the dark anybody who's been following the extradition proceedings against julien assange will understand that this is a calculated abuse of the court system calculated to wear him and his supporters down in an endless cycle of appeals and counter-appeals where the prosecution gets what it wants no matter the result because no matter the result julien assange remains in prison unable to speak for himself a form of judicial warfare that the un special repertoire confirmed amounted to torture all the while ceding the public debate with disinformation and character assassination our growing global movement and our presence here today means that this disinformation campaign has failed julien's continued defiance from behind the walls of belmarsh prison means that this torture campaign has also failed so this is the first essential step to protecting the right of publishers everywhere to tell the truth about the crimes of the powerful president joe biden dropped the appeal julien wrote this to a supporter in 2019 knowing that you are out there fighting for me keeps me alive in this profound isolation for us knowing that he's in there still fighting must be our motivation to bring this campaign to a conclusion so that he can see sunlight for the first time in years and be with his family and his friends and supporters to recover from the harsh cruelty that he has survived and to start the next chapter of his life and work free julien assange thank you scott our next member of the tribunal and i'm really glad that she's here in person is dpa govinda ryan driver who is a lecturer a trade unionist and a legal observer at julien assange's extradition hearings so i think at this moment it would be very useful and great if we could hear about your experience how did this extradition hearings actually look like and why could they also present a sort of legal crime if i'm not using too harsh words but i'm a philosopher so you will forgive me thank you very much for allowing me to speak and i'm testifying to this tribunal about what i observed and what i have been made aware of in the case of a journalist and publisher who has revealed corruption in kenya murder rape and torture in iraq in afghanistan toxic waste dumping off the ivory coast systematic manipulation of the law and state sanctioned torture at guantanamo and of course the role of other so-called advanced western democracies in subverting democracies all over the world and sustaining war and torture and for the purpose of increasing weapons sales and intelligence operations and states across the world have a history have a long history of extolling human rights and supposedly supporting press freedom while willfully interpreting or misinterpreting the law to silence dissidents we see this today in the case of daniel hail entombed at the communication management unit in the u.s and steven donziger who was under house arrest and now sentenced to prison and of course closer to home in the case of craig murray sitting in a scottish jail during a covid outbreak in the case of julian what i have witnessed has against the grandeur and the and the beauty of the beautiful courts and the the formality of the courtroom and the respect shown and the deference shown to the judges is cruel treatment now this cruel treatment goes back a long way it includes isolation and confinement deprivation of sunlight and association a huge amount of physical and emotional trauma which then turns into degrading treatment in the courtroom where the defendant who is known to have a serious mental health condition as a result of five nation states stamping on virtually on his head and having to kneel in the courtroom given that he is somebody who has osteoporosis and speak to his lawyers through a small gap in in the in the plexiglass it is seen in the being given a laptop with the keys glued down so that he is able to so that they can pretend that there is a defense being mounted in this case when actually he is not being given the right to talk to his lawyers in any depth he is denied his glasses for a period of three months when he first entered belmarsh and he of course has serious neurological and other symptoms including the lasting effects of physical torture for example from a shoulder injury which took place since 2012 and teeth injury which has taken place you know many of us know how painful it is to have a sore tooth but to have your tooth pulp exposed and not to be allowed to leave the embassy to get medical treatment is indeed cruel and inhumane treatment he also experiences of course hyper vigilance and flashbacks and these are the result of a continuous and long smearing campaign which has been sustained through lawfare where where accusations and court processes have been kept in limbo to prevent justice and the british state has been very complicit in this including kerstarmers cps we are also interested in of course the the complete and utter denial of access to the attorneys during the under the guise of the pandemic to prevent julian from even receiving the documentation or being served the second superseding entitlement until the first day of trial the constant contesting of the use of witnesses and the judges engaging in many arbitrary detention the serious conflicts of interest that we can see amongst judges who have a son who is you know linked to dark trace which is a which is a company that militates against data leaks and who has a husband who is deeply connected to the military establishment we are concerned about judges who who cause people to who are like 90 old year old daniel elsberg to be called at 4 a.m. in the morning or 5 a.m. in the morning in the u.s. to to provide testimony when there are other time slots available we're also concerned about other clearly despicable processes such as we have seen in the case of abdel rahim al-dashiri in guantanamo where a mic was placed in his room and a similar thing being done in relation to julian in the use of laser microphones to to um to spy on privileged legal conversations to spy on medical conversations and to prevent julian from having any reasonable chance to defend himself and lastly um the the presence of a process which seems to provide a semblance of justice when actually um what is taking place in these courts is a complete and utter travesty and an injustice and i i urge you to stand with everybody on this tribunal as we watch the war criminals as we watch the judges and as we watch those like julian craig and others who stand up for the truth and stand up for us because torture is aimed at destroying not just individuals but also the will of communities we stand together against this torture and against the ill treatment and dehumanization of julian assange thanks a lot for your important contribution and thank you for reminding us that julian assange during the hearings is entrapped caged in plexiglass so i guess everyone here might remember who was the other one famous person a war criminal who was also in a in a in a in a glass cage it was adolf eichmann a war criminal guilty of genocide and on the other side here in the uk which tells a lot about the legal system in this country you have a whistleblower a publisher journalist put in a glass cage through which he cannot even communicate to his lawyers so much about the legal system in the uk the next speaker and member of the tribunal is renata avila a human rights lawyer and formerly also a lawyer of wiki leagues thanks renata for joining good afternoon my name is renata avila today the 22nd of october of 2021 we are gathering here at the belmarsh tribunal to discuss to study carefully and to announce to the world a series of human rights violations perpetrated against julian assange by the government of the united states and the government of the united kingdom with the assistance of the allies and with the complicity and silence of many mainstream media outlets i have been part of julian's legal team over the last 11 years or more and over this time i have witnessed an unprecedented case of loafer what is loafer loafer is when the case is used not when the law is used to attack to destroy to undermine someone instead of using to protect and defend one's good in society and what is good in society is to have a free press and what is good in society is to have freedom of exercising journalism and the right to know and the right to truth and that those are the rights and those are the values that julian assange upholds even during his arbitrary detention and that has extended over the years even imperious of harsh isolation he had defended and upholded those rights but there's also another right together with the terrible violations to to his right to work and he write his right to a family and his right to have freedom and that had been exercised against him and that has been a massive violation of his privacy the privacy of his family the price privacy of his friends and more seriously the privacy of his lawyers i experienced that firsthand to my surprise this year no authority contacted me a non-member of the u.s prosecution team or the uk prosecution team contacted me to to ask me if i wanted to open an investigation because it was exposed that my computer that my legal documents that my files were used against my client in the union's process so not only i had to go in each and every meeting inside the embassy through an unprecedented level of surveillance by private security company and by all the agencies that were like as it has been exposed recently by the press surveillance to the to the degree that i had to whisper in the ear of my client and to scribble things hidden from cameras to communicate and prepare a legal defense in the multiple cases against him but also during my visits my computer was compromised and evidence was handed handed over to the united states of my files of my personal information on information of my client that violation of ethics that violation of my right to exercise as a lawyer to practice in private and to have the private discussions with my clients was completely ignored by two governments and it should be completely dismissed as evidence but i don't want to go to the details what i want to convey today is a strong message from beginning to and from beginning to today this case is weak this case is not a legal case it's a political persecution and revenge and the revenge why revenge why revenge what the only thing that julian did was to expose the truth it's a revenge because they cannot the the only the only thing that the that they can try is to silence him but we have seen with many revelations over the years with the crisis in afghanistan this year how overwhelming the truth is how overwhelming and how accurate the information exposed for weak ilikes was uh we have in our hands and we have this tribunal as a vehicle to expose the unprecedented violation of rights that go beyond the rights of julian sanj and the legal team and his family and his friends the violation of rights that we have witnessing today is the violation of youth rights is the violation of your right to know is the violation of your right to truth justice and accountability i hope this tribunal finds both the government of the united states and the government of the united kingdom guilty of this crime and i hope that this sends a very strong message to end this case now thank you members of tribunal i'm happy to provide thank you renata as a member of the tribunal and thank you also for mentioning a very important detail and this was revealed in el país that everyone including the lawyers who were visiting the quadorian embassy in london were spied on directly or indirectly by the cia i wear it as a badge of honor that i was also spied on uh and the next speaker uh an investigative journalist one of the best investigative investigative journalist today stefania marizzi from italy was also spied on uh her phones were opened her computers were opened people were surveilled and probably this is not finished yet but stefania will speak about another perspective of juliana sanchez case and thanks a lot for joining us today so good afternoon and i'm honored to be here at the belmarsh tribunal let me introduce myself i'm an italian investigative journalist who has spent over a decade working on all weekly secret documents i have done this hard work for my newspaper initially the italian leading news newspaper news magazine lespresso and the italian daily la republica and currently for the major italian daily fatto quotidiano it was only thanks to juliana sanchez and the wikileaks journalists journalists under sources especially chelsea manning that i have been able to reveal crucial information in the public interests such as war crimes in afghanistan in iraq tortures in guantanamo from iraq to guantanamo extrajudicial killings by drones political pressures to grant impunity to state criminals involved in the extraordinary in the ci extraordinary rendition program and it was only thanks to juliana sanchez that i i was able to reveal how my country italy has become the launching pad for us wars from iraq to the secret drone war i have published thousands of investigations and articles based on such revelation but while i have been able to to do this journalistic work completely safely with now was never arrested i was never questioned juliana sanchez has been destroyed let me use this strong word that he has been destroyed for me that's been very very sad to witness how he has been destroyed and the way he has been treated should make you very very angry it's a massive scandal it's not an exaggeration to call it a massive scandal i'm here to call out to the u.s. authorities the u.k. authorities the swedish authorities the australian authorities and the ecuadorian authorities under liene moreno for such massive scandal i have spent the last six years fighting court to access the full documentation on the case under the freedom of information laws i have been in this because i think it's crucial to get the facts to reconstruct the facts rigorously to have solid evidence i have been fighting in the united states in the united kingdom in sweden and in australia i'm represented by seven lawyers i'm doing this work completely alone just because i want i don't want these people green i want to discover what they have done i want to unearth evidence of their abusive orrific treatment of juliana sanchez and i have and i want facts four powerful nations are using all their legal resources to deny a journalist access to the documentation on the case it means that this documentation is something like dynamite i've been bureaucratic correspondence they would have never spent the last six years trying to fighting against my uh attempt to access it but in any case even if um it i experienced such a rubber wall uh thanks to this five year six years uh litigation in us uk uh sweden australia i have been able to i was able to obtain some really important documents very very few but indeed very relevant because they provide indisputable evidence that it was the uk authorities the uk crown prosecution service then headed by sir keir starmer which contributed to create the legal and diplomatic quagmire which has kept juliana sanchez arbitrarily detained since 2010 and finally resulted in his arrest and his detention in belmarch and it was the crown prosecution service which was against the swedish prosecutors dropping the case in 2013 when they were considering to do doing so why did the crown prosecution service behave like this why did they write to the swedish prosecutors don't you get cold feet i'm quoting from official documents no one can dispute these official documents because they have been provided to me after years of litigation litigation by the uk authorities and other authorities involved in this case and why did the crown prosecution service write to the swedish counterpart please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request when i try to dig into these facts and try to understand why the crown prosecution service had behaved like this the crown prosecution service gave me a pretty incredible answer they said they had destroyed the documents about this case and even if the case was still ongoing highly controversial and very high profile it's incredible to me that they destroyed such documents and it's even more incredible that they don't even know what the document contained they claim so they they say that they don't know what the document contained and they have been fighting years trying to discover why they destroyed this document and what the document contained you have to realize that the crown prosecution service which was in charge of the of this attempt to extradite julien asan to sweden is the very same agency in charge of the extradition to the us the very very same agency the us is acting through the crown prosecution service and the crown prosecution service as such a record it's the agency which did this during the swedish case it's the agency which destroyed the documents though the case was still ongoing it's the agency which claim they don't even know what they destroyed so i wonder whether during our litigation the crown prosecution service made no mystery that they are dealing with this extradition the extradition of a publisher who revealed war crime as if they are extraditing a criminal like any other a drug dealer or perhaps a mafia killer so it's time to demand transparency and accountability from the crown prosecution service in the handling of the julien asan's case from the very beginning and it's time for the journalists activists and the public opinion to call out the us and the uk authorities especially the judicial authorities for these monstrous injustice free julien asan's drop the charges jail the war criminals the next to testify is the former president of ecuador from 2007 to 2017 during his president during whose presidency julien asan's got the political asylum at ecuador in embassy in london rafael corea senors magistrados senores y señores lo saluda rafael corea presidente constitucional de la republica del ecuador desde el año 2007 al 2017 para mí es un gran honor estar el día de hoy como ustedes en el tribunal de belmars y contribuir a la verdad histórica contribuir a la justicia en junio del 2012 el periodista australiano julien asan's entró en la embajada en london y pidió el asilo del estado ecuatoriano casi dos meses después y luego de una profunda investigación un extenso informe dicho asilo en ejercicio nuestro derecho soberano fue otorgado sobre todo fundamentado en que no había las garantías para el debido proceso puesto que había un riesgo cierto real de que julien asan's fuese extraditado los estados unidos donde había sido condenado por los medios de comunicación y donde querían aplicar una ley que incluía la pena de muerte pena prohibida en todos los instrumentos interamericanos era hecho en todo los instrumentos mundiales a más fue nuestra intención interferir con la justicia sueca siempre estuvieron abiertas las puertas de la embajada para que se interrolla julien asan's julien asan ni siquiera estaba acusado en su decir querían interrogarlo eso se puede hacer en embajada lo habían hecho antes la fiscalía sueca no lo quiso hacer al final y después hay muchos años cuatro cinco años demostrándose que siempre pudo interrogar a julien asan's en embajada del ecuador en london jamás fue nuestra intención interferir con la justicia sueca pero sí defender los derechos humanos de alguien que había solicitado el asilo del estado ecuatoriano en mayo 24 2017 entregue democráticamente el gobierno mi sucesor lenin moreno ya el 30 de mayo se reunía con pol manafor xf campaña en altron esto se conoce porque ustedes saben que pol manafor ha sido condenado se declaró culpable del lavado de activos y otros cargos y en esa investigación del fbi de estados unidos varios testimonios indicaron que el 30 de mayo pol manafor se había reunido con lenin moreno una semana nada más tenía el presidente lenin moreno en quito y que lenin moreno había ofrecido entregar a julien asan's a cambio de financiamiento las estados unidos luego pues realmente julien asan's lo que lo que recibió fue una tortura en embajada ecuatoriana maltratándolo quitándole mucho servicio mucho derecho comunicación e internet espiándolo deliberadamente y presionándolo para que decidiera salir por sus propios medios de la embajada lo cual no lograron finalmente después de un acoso brutal inhumano atentatorio a los derechos humanos de julien asan's por primera vez en historia un gobierno permite que entre una fuerza armada a su embajada y la policía británica entra en la embajada del ecuador para capturar a julien asan's y el estado cuatro no entrega julien asan's quiere decirles que esto también contradice totalmente brutalmente frontalmente la constitución ecuatoriana que dice leo articulo 41 se reconoce los derechos de asilo y refugio de acuerdo con la ley en los instrumentos internacionales derechos humanos las personas que se encuentran en condición de asilo refugio gozarán de protección especial que garantice el pleno ejercicio de su derecho el estado respetará y garantizará el principio de no devolución repito el estado respetará y garantizará el principio de no devolución artículo 41 constitución del ecuador este artículo fue destrozado por el gobierno moreno nadie dijo nada a nivel nacional porque la prensa es cómplice de esto la prensa ecuatoriana y a nivel internacional tampoco no porque todo el caso y blanche fue terriblemente politicado pero decirles que no conozco personalmente a julien asan's no necesariamente he hablado una vez con él antes de asilo cuando me entrevistó para roce atoday jamás habló telefónicamente si quiera con él después de que fue asilado y no es que necesariamente concuerdo con todo lo que hizo pero sí con sus derechos más no detener a un proceso justo y si estoy totalmente en contra de la doble moral c como ex jefe de estado que los estados requieren mantener cierta información confidencial pero no se puede tener en la confidencialidad crímenes de guerra crímenes de la eshumanidad y no se puede perseguir y condenar al que debela esos crímenes más aún ser perseguido por los criminales por lo que cometieron esos crímenes o ala se inaugura la justicia o ala se ponga fin a tanto ole moral o ala se ponga fin al suplicio de un ser humano como julien asan's que lo que dijo fue la verdad un inmenso abrazo y mucha suerte el mayor de los éxitos en el sentido de que prevalezca la justicia la verdad en este proceso muchas gracias muchas gracias mr correa and thanks everyone for your patience we have four more members of the belmer's tribunal giving their testimony today the next one is annie mashon i hope i pronounced it well blame it on my balkan origin and my balkan english she's a whistleblower and a former intelligence officer of mi5 it is my very great pleasure to join you today to support julien asan's and to hope for the best in his legal case and i come to this area because i myself was a whistleblower many many years ago because i used to work in the early to mid 1990s as an intelligence officer for the british security service mi5 and it that was where i met my former partner and colleague a man called david shaler who became a very notorious whistleblower in the late 1990s and by doing so we automatically broke the draconian terms of the official secrets act in the uk and we fled the uk went on the run literally for a month around europe lived in hiding in a remote french farmhouse for a year and then another two years in exile in paris i and our family and our friends and even some journalists were arrested around the scandal of this case and david himself paid a very heavy price he went to prison not once but twice first of all when the british tried to extradite him from france but failed in 1998 and also when he returned voluntarily and then was put on trial under the official secrets act and went back to prison so it was a very difficult seven years and we had to work exclusively of course at that point with the mainstream media the old legacy media which because of various laws in place and various ways that the british establishment can control the mainstream media in the uk meant that they can sometimes work as a blockage there was also a slight problem because david took carefully created documents nothing containing agent names to his journalist co-workers and those documents were held by the the newspaper and those documents were handed over when the police came knocking with a production order so the proof of what david was saying was lost because of this so fast forward to 2009 when i first had the pleasure of meeting julien assange and he was describing the vision of wiki leaks which was to get rid of that sort of media blockage the old media blockage and present information directly from the whistleblower to the citizens so that they could make up their minds about whatever it was corruption of intelligence agencies corruption of government corruption of big corporations around the world and for this rightly he has been lauded as one a high-tech publisher of incredible vision and two as an award-winning journalist and this takes me on to his current situation because he is being persecuted for being a publisher and being a journalist and yet his vision with wiki leaks was to protect the whistleblowers and not persecute them to offer a degree of anonymity to offer a degree of proof to show exactly what they were revealing and it's a wonderful wonderful thing to have built both technologically and from a humane point of view and also as a media outlet so i salute him for that however despite all all these awards and all these plaudits he is not being accorded the same degree of respect as other more mainstream old-style journalists have been for exposing exactly the same situation most notably what is known in the u.s as the new york times example where they were working at one point very closely with wiki leaks producing information that uh wiki leaks had given them and yet they are not being prosecuted but wiki leaks founder julien assange is we also have another very weird case of a guy called christopher steele who was a former mi6 intelligence officer who has now set up his own mercenary spire company for hire and he was the person who created what became known as the dirty dossier on donald trump and his visit to russia which has been discredited and he was then sued by some russian olgax in u.s courts and he has been accorded u.s first amendment rights which is the freedom of expression and this basically means that even though he is a uk citizen and resident in the uk not in america not a u.s citizen he can have first amendment rights as a journalist and a publisher under u.s law and yet this is precisely what is being specifically denied to assange if you were to be extradited to the usa this is something i find absolutely disgusting so i just really want to finish by saying um it has been a pleasure over the years to meet with julien assange um he is one of the most ferociously bright people i've ever met but also very good company and incredibly witty and very humane and protective of whistleblowers who might be vulnerable um going forward and trying to expose the crimes that their fellow citizens should be able to read about i really hope in this particular case coming up at the end of october just for once that uk justice will prevail do the decent thing and release this very brave very courageous um very visionary and very humane man so that he can try and rebuild his life and um potentially the legacy he's left with wiki leaks is going to preserve and protect other whistleblowers in the future so all courage to julien assange in 1971 uh vladimir dedier and john polsarter published an article in the new york times review of books where they speak about the importance of pentagon papers 50 years later i'm really proud to say that one of the greatest whistleblowers in history daniel ellsberg is joining the belmer tribunal hi i'm dan ellsberg 50 years ago i was the first american to be prosecuted facing the same charges that julien assange is facing today in my case i copied 7 000 pages of top secret material that realized the history of vietnam as a history of lies law-breaking war crimes many of the things that the government was concerned to conceal from the public and uh it was the first second because having fought a revolutionary war against the empire a product of that revolutionary war was our first amendment which forbids legislation that would abridge freedom of speech and freedom of the press obviously to go against me as a source raised questions about whether that was really constitutional and that's never been fully decided yet by the supreme court which hasn't addressed that case but the case against julien as a journalist uh obviously contradicts the first amendment's protection of freedom of the press that's the first prosecution that is going against the journalist and if julien is extradited and prosecuted and probably convicted in our court by a recent precedent with new judges in the court that will be the first time that a journalist but it won't be the last every journalist will have a target on his back from that time on and not only americans julien himself is not american and did not take the oath of an american official to uphold our constitution which is violated every time these secrets of crimes and deception and law breaking are concealed from the public julien were an american official haven't revealed this he would be fulfilling that oath in a way that almost none of his colleagues have ever done but in my case there's further when i was being prosecuted for the pentagon papers revelation which ended in 1968 before president nixon was in office who prosecuted me he was afraid that i had information and documents about crimes he was committing and lies he was making which i did although not as much as he feared but to keep me from revealing that he took criminal acts against me illegal warrantless wiretapping uh overheard many times and even in a uh the psychological profile of me by the cia uh meant to uh manipulate me if possible and actually uh sent cia assets men who were veterans of the bay of pigs operation to incapacitate daniel ellsberg totally on the steps of the capital in a rally on maverick 1972 uh they actually didn't do that obviously because they feared they were being set up to be caught and uh and backed off from it but it did show a willingness of the president the government actually to commit crimes against an american citizen uh in order to keep wrongful secrets exactly the same has been revealed about julien the son we now know that uh see the contractors were carrying out illegal surveillance even of his talks with lawyers and doctors in the ecuador and fc uh information was going to our covert operations to cia probably to nsa as well and they even considered seriously kidnapping him or killing him with perhaps poison just as i say an effort was made actually carried out but uh not fully to incapacitate me in my case crimes revealed my case was dismissed and in fact they figured in the impeachment proceedings against president nixon which actually made brought nixon out of office and made the war endable nine months later the revelation of these acts against julien assange should obviously result in his in the dismissal of all charges against him and prior to that uh an english judge taking account of this should maintain her forbidding of extradition and reject president biden's shameful appeal uh of that order to extradite julien our freedom in the press depends on it julien assange's health very clearly depends on it but more broadly uh our ability to learn the truth about what is being done in our name uh we are coming back here to west minster and our next member of the tribunal is the partner of julien assange and member of his defense team stella morris thanks a lot for being today with us thank you we're meeting five days before julien's before the u.s. appeal at the high court here in london and i want to remind everyone that julien won the case on january fourth and the trump administration two days before leaving office um lodged the appeal and uh julien's bail application was refused so he's been in prison in belmarsh prison for over two and a half years and we're meeting in this building where the un met to construct an international rules-based order one that was founded and centered around human rights and we're meeting here to denounce the dismantlement of that international rules-based order a departure from human rights and that departure is julien's case is emblematic of that departure and having lived through what has been done to julien i especially have a responsibility to try to make this situation understandable and interpretable um to everyone else because it matters to everyone else because what's being done to julien his rights that are being violated they're your rights too and if he loses this we all lose so julien's uh what's being done to julien is part of a continuum that started with the war on terror uh a chipping away at individual rights and freedoms uh the extradition act that is being used against julien is actually a tool of the war on terror it was enacted in 2003 to make it easier to extradite people and um we have to see what is being done to him through the prism of the war on terror the tools that were developed through the war on terror julien was a single the person who in our generation has done the most to expose the war on terror and the war on terror isn't just about illegal wars it's not just about institutionalizing torture and rendition it's about bringing home that uh dismantlement of our rights now in the last few weeks the mask has fallen in relation to the case against julien it's fallen because there was uh an article well it's been progressively falling over the years there is no case as others have said this is just a naked political persecution but there was an article published by yahoo news just a few weeks ago a 7500 word investigation with over 30 sources named and unnamed high level sources from uh current and and past us administrations from the national security council from the cia and that story revealed that the extrajudicial assassination of julien in london was discussed at the highest levels of the u.s government that the seventh floor of the cia in langley which is the director's office requested sketches and options for how to kill julien inside the embassy of ecuador they talked about kidnapping him too about rendition rendition extraordinary rendition which is what the cia developed to kidnap people and take them across jurisdictions to disappear them and then put them in a black site somewhere and the embassy was essentially a black site towards the end i felt that anything could happen there julien's lawyers were targeted by name not just incidentally um uh spied on their emails telling uh the security company company to target gareth pierce to target itor martinez to target julien's legal team and their documents were stolen and baltazar garrison's office was broken into just as the cia was planning to murder julien and our six months old months old baby's nappy was uh instructed to be stolen so that they could use that uh analyze the dna to check whether julien was a father this is flagrant criminality we're dealing with criminals who have instrumentalized the law instrumentalized the extradition arrangements with this country and their good relationships with this country to politically persecute an innocent man a journalist for doing his job it didn't start with julien and it's not gonna end with julien this article which i recommend everyone reads said that in 2013 um the u.s. government was uh trying to classify um glenn greenwald and laura poitras and possibly ewing mcaskill as well as information brokers in order to treat them as national security threats that same year james rosen from fox news was described as a co-conspirator because of um his his dealings with his source at the state department who was convicted of espionage this continuum that uh from the war on terror it's not just affecting julien it's uh exposed in the attempt attempted reforms to the policing bill in this country to the attempted reforms to the official secrets act to the event attempted censorship of the internet julien's case is not some sweet generous thing it is emblematic of the society we live in of the undermining of all our freedoms but we can win this it's touch and go but we can win this if we come together to defend our rights defend defend julien's rights which is defending our own rights and all the major human rights organizations all the major press freedom organizations recognize this they're all calling for julien's freedom because they can see that this is an attack on press freedom itself on individual freedoms themselves julien is holding back a tide of authoritarianism and if we win this we can push back but if we don't we won't thanks a lot uh for for your contribution and we will win this i'm sure in that uh our next one uh next member of the tribunal to testify is ben weasner from the american civil liberties union and uh he was also the lead attorney of edward snowden and after ben weasner uh we will get uh edward snowden directly live streamed uh from moscow so please stay with us and let's continue hi this is ben weasner i'm an attorney with the american civil liberties union in new york for the last eight years i've had the privilege of being the principal legal advisor to nsa whistleblower edward snowden it's an honor to be with you virtually today for this important event uh my brief remarks are going to focus on the threat that the prosecution of julien assange poses to press freedom both in the united states and abroad uh recently a coalition of press freedom groups in the united states petitioned the department of justice to drop the extradition request and to drop the charges against julien assange because of the existential threat that this prosecution poses to national security investigative journalism uh now the u s government would have you believe uh that this case does not implicate press freedom because julien assange is not a journalist and wiki weeks is not a traditional publisher rather they engaged in a criminal conspiracy uh to bring true facts to the public of the united states in the world well i'm here to say that all national security investigative journalism properly understood is a criminal conspiracy uh good journalists conspire with sources to liberate information from government classification regimes and share it with the public in the public interest uh in support of democracy and almost all of the most important stories about u.s government misconduct in the war on terror we have learned because courageous sources and enterprising journalists have published that information even though it was classified at the highest level of secrecy so if not for courageous whistleblowers and enterprising enterprising journalists uh we would not have known that the u.s tortured and sexually humiliated prisoners in obu grabe that the cia operated a network of secret prisons outside the law uh that drone strikes routinely killed civilians and not just their intended targets that the u.s established a global network of mass surveillance without the consent of the public these and many other stories we learned only because of that conspiracy uh the conspiracy to bring the truth to the public against the wishes of governments and so there is no meaningful way to distinguish this case uh which says that julien assange committed a crime by helping to publish uh evidence of war crimes released to him allegedly by chelsea manning and the kind of national security journalism that routinely wins the highest journalism awards around the world but i think there's a second reason why this case is a particular threat to press freedom globally that has not received enough attention and that is that to me it is the height of hubris for the united states to suggest in this indictment that our own secrecy laws bind foreign publishers mr assange is an australian publisher he never agreed to be bound by u.s secrecy law and for the u.s to drag him across the ocean into a u.s prison into a u.s court and charge him with felonies for doing that will set a hugely dangerous president around the globe every day journalists from u.s newspapers uk newspapers the new york times and the guardian pry loose and publish secrets of foreign governments the new york times has in the last years published top secrets from the government of china from the government of iran and one can imagine how the u.s government would respond if iran or china tried to extradite the u.s reporters or their publishers for having violated those country's secrecy laws and we would cry bloody murder and we should and that's because it makes no sense in this world for each country to be able to bind the rest of the world to our own regressive secrecy laws like the u.s espionage act and so i worry that if this case is allowed to go forward if mr assange finds himself in a u.s courtroom the next time a country like china or iran demands the extradition of a french journalist a british journalist and american journalists of course our governments won't comply but they'll have no principled basis for not doing so we will have essentially opened the door to every country enforcing its overbroad secrecy regime in this way so let me close by saying that right now this issue is in the courts the courts like to believe that they are immune to public pressure and public opinion but i can assure you that the opposite is true they are paying a lot of attention to how this case will be received by the public and if the public is quiet then they will think that they can move ahead with an extradition and a prosecution but if the public is allowed and the public says this is unacceptable in our open societies for us to go forward with a prosecution like that the judges will hear it so my message to you today is let them hear you thank you so much thank you so much and now the moment has come to to greet great guest a member of the tribunal who is joining us live from moscow this is edward snowden i'm sure we don't need more introduction who he is i think everyone knows who he is and i'm really thankful ed for joining us today and raising your voice at the belmarsh tribunal thank you very much it's a pleasure to be with you it's difficult to be here i struggle to understand how we can be here after so many years there has been there have been so many stories told there's been so much criticism there has been so much deception and where has it brought us has this been constructive is this a victory for us for the state for humanity for our rights when i came forward in 2013 i said the reason that i came forward was that we have a right to know that which is done to us and that which is done in our name by our governments um that was already under threat and when you look at the world since it seems that that trend is accelerating do we still have that right do we have any rights if we don't defend them well today we see someone who has stood up to defend that right who has aggressively championed that right at an extreme cost uh and it's time for us to defend his rights what we're witnessing is a murder that passes without comment and i want to say that it is difficult for me to comprehend the spectacle of the the press of the nation or the developed world aiding and abetting with full knowledge a crime not only against this man against this man but against our public interest however at at this moment that we are we all see this we all feel it it it's no less familiar than the shoes on my feet everywhere we look from afghanistan to economics from pandemic to pervasive surveillance the obvious has been made unspeakable it has become unspeakable because the truth of our circumstances could be taken as evidence in the defense of the actions of the out of favor and in the eyes of the american state few represent this class a greater object of hatred than the person of juliana sanj he has been charged as a political criminal something that i understand quite well but he has been charged as the purest sort of political criminal for having committed the transgression of choosing the wrong side the the charges which are they are absolutely an unadorned legal fiction we we are told to believe that the state has these these powers over what can be said and what can't be said the the things that can and cannot be said but what happens if we permit that where does that lead what are we can we be said to be free if even our power to express ourselves to understand the facts of our world can be fenced off from us that we look beyond through the gauze through the veil at what could be the facts of the world but we're not permitted to um acquire them juliana sanj did not accept that and the charges against him reduced to an allegation to commit the crime of journalism uh in the first degree which is to say when we look at it applied elsewhere the same sort of publication of classified material that we see in the new york times or the washington post aggravated by a conspiracy to accomplish the same which is simply uncovering an uncomfortable truth but something distinguishes juliana sanj from the greatest newspapers of our day and that is his independence uh juliana sanj is not a person who will be told no lightly i remember uh in the case of 2013 when i came forward and revealed evidence of mass surveillance uh which the government of my country had constructed the apparatus of mass surveillance an entire scheme that spanned the globe uh with the participation of australia new zealand canada and of course the united kingdom and when the newspapers of all of these countries began publishing these things one of the papers who held the archive of material originally included uh the guardian who was was headquartered in the united kingdom still is uh and i remember reading a story of course i wasn't there or personally i'm getting the second hand who knows what we can rely on this the state of journalism as it is today but they were approached by the british state who said okay okay you've had your fun you've done enough now it's time to stop and they uh had to send their archive of material away to the united states to a partner publication because they no longer believed that they were safe to continue publishing and they were right agents of the british state went to the guardian they destroyed their laptop computers they've got it on film the putting angle grinders to computer chips trying to erase any trace that these stories had been written from within the the confines of the newsroom now julian was not deterred by that and he never would be when you perform the level of surveillance against a person that has clearly been performed and is being performed even today certainly in prison against julian assange you understand at least something about that character you understand what the breaking point is you know what it'll take to make them bend um and he didn't bend he will break before he does he has consistently and continuously dared to speak the unspeakable in the face of opposition uh in the face of power and that is a remarkable and rare thing that is the reason that julien assange sits in prison today if you love the truth as i i think everyone here does you you wouldn't be listening to this you wouldn't be watching this you wouldn't be participating in this you wouldn't care about this unless something in you told you it's something important what's happening here and if you do care as i think you do uh you are a criminal of the same category as julien assange in the eyes of the state uh what differentiates you what divides you from him is only the degree we share the same guilt each of us share in the crime uh and we are unindicted co-conspirators in his quest to raise a lantern in the halls of power each of us shares in the forbidden desire to see justice done not merely to the instruments of these darkest moments of the human condition that we've heard about all day here torture extra judicial killings aggressive war but to see justice done to their architects and i have to say um here each of us will also share and to me will happen without the faintest regret in his ultimate fate if we do not stop what is happening now what is happening to julien assange is a crime and he must be freed if we're going to free the world we have to free assange thank you and stay free thanks a lot edwards noden for joining the belmarsh tribunal today i would also add that what is happening to edwards noden is also a crime and similar to what tarik ali said at the very start of the belmarsh tribunal he should be considered a true hero in the united states in other countries he is already considered a hero uh we are reaching the end of today's belmarsh tribunal uh but we are certainly not reaching the end of this tribunal and our common fight uh so before we conclude the tribunal i just want to announce a few important informations the first and most important information is that this tribunal early week early next week will publish verdicts and findings which will be public you can follow it on the progressive international website also i have to mention that already tomorrow on saturday they will be hopefully big march for julien assange starting at 1 p.m at the bbc broadcasting house at portland place and marching to the high court the strength then next week during the extradition hearing which is happening on wednesday and fursday 27 28th of october there will be a massive protest outside of the royal court of justice where the extradition hearing is taking place and i also want to thank all the members of the tribunal who who granted us their precious time and their precious testimonies i want to thank the team of the progressive international who made this happen i want to thank our partners from dm 25 courage foundation and novara media and also the church house for providing the space for this tribunal but before we end i also have to mention that the work of the progressive international and the work of the belmarsh tribunal depends on small donations so please everyone who is watching this subscribe to the progressive international and consider helping and supporting our work which is definitely not ending today also before we end i just got a message from our common member of the tribunal a l whitesman who would love to share an important information about atrocities which are happening as we speak is that is that all okay as we're speaking here about the horrendous silencing of julien sanjad his characterization as a terrorist we've heard that in the in the break i've received messages that our friends and partners in palestine the oldest and still largest human right organization al-hak has been currently designated as a terrorist organization by the israeli ministry of defense so al-hak is literally exposed thousands of human rights violation in the occupied palestinian territories its crime is pursuing israeli international tribunals and and supporting the icc prosecution the international criminal court prosecution so i think that you know it's a reminder that as we are speaking those kinds of designation and silencing is going on thank you al and instead of me closing the tribunal let me invite my dear friend and the original member of the sardar russel tribunal tarik ali to conclude this tribunal today i think it's been an extremely useful meeting wide variation of views very useful information which has been provided for us and i am particularly happy myself that there are members of parliament present because this is a body which has very few members who in fact defend and fight for things they should be fighting so very grateful to jeremy absana comrade bergen john mcdonnell uh for for you know making it possible to come here we need i would have thought some bill at least presented in parliament demanding even if it's just signed by people demanding julian's immediate release after the trial if it takes place so with that i declare this session of the tribunal closed