 Hi, this is Joe Lauria from Consordium News. We're here in London with Deeper Driver. Deeper is a academic and a trade union leader and she also served as a legal observer during the extradition hearings of Julian Assange. Deeper welcome to see in life. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today. Tell us about who you were a legal observer for. I've been nominated by the Holiday and Society of Socialist Lawyers. It's a very well respected society with a long history. Our current president is Michael Mansfield and our vice presidents include Gareth Pierce, who's Julian Solicitor. We have a number of members of the exec who are involved in various activities, including monitoring hearings in Turkey and Russia and elsewhere in the past. And I'm grateful to be nominated by both the European Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights and the Holiday and Society in these hearings for Julian Assange. And what was your role as a legal observer? What were you expected to do? Well, it's a range of things. I think amongst the many things you do is you try and understand whether basic rights have been respected within the hearings and whether standard processes have been followed. You also take a view not on the substance of the case necessarily, which is being argued before the judge, but on the way in which the various bits of evidence and the various bits of information that are provided to the courts are given in terms of access to both through the participants in the trial and also to everybody else who's observing from outside. And you're also concerned on things like the public's access, the public's right to know, to understand what's going on and open justice more generally. So were you supposed to be considered a neutral observer? Yes, who was it? It was Malcolm X who said that in times of injustice, you're trying, those who are not willing to take a side are essentially on the sides of those who are oppressing people. But in this case, my role has not necessarily to be to take a stance in terms of either of the sets of arguments, but to provide a socialist perspective on some of the issues brought up within the case. Because certainly your support, you're going to sign it and as you said, Gareth Pierce is on there. So your role was to observe and particularly see what kinds of things that you were looking out for. Originally when I went to attend the hearings, my recognition was that this is a case of global importance. And the Holiday Inn and the ALDs have been very concerned about the case because of three or four main things. One is the implications for democracy and human rights. Second is press freedom. Thirdly, the serious concerns raised not just by Gareth, but by others independently, including Amnesty Human Rights Watch and others, about the way in which this case has implications for the future of human rights and democracy in Britain. Were you always led into the courtroom or did you have trouble yourself getting in? Well, it's been actually quite difficult to get into the courtroom at the start. I mean, I began observing the hearings right from the very beginning when District Judge Barretta was hearing the case and many of the comments I will give today are in a personal capacity because formal statements will be issued by the ALDH and Holiday Inn. But we had, despite having a letter from the Holiday Inn about nominating me in the case and when we observe cases, for example, in Turkey or in Kazakhstan or elsewhere, we find that we are treated with basic respect. Instead, in this courtroom, I found that firstly, my letter was not really even acknowledged seriously when after several rounds of requesting for access to be granted, I was told that I should queue in the public gallery. At the Old Bailey, one of the things that was really disturbing was that there were two seats available in each of the days of the proceedings. And so you had to queue at 4 or 5 a.m. Sometimes others would help by allowing you to go out, go to the loo or do other things. And this meant that the public's right to know was definitely restricted. But also when legal observers such as myself or the Press Freedom Observer, Rebecca Vincent, was attending, it was difficult to get into court. We were not allowed to take in. I mean, one of the most, I think bizarre things that happened was I was told I could take in a pen and paper that I was not allowed to write. So note taking, which is an important part of recording what happened in the hearings and reflecting on it and offering commentary on that part, doesn't happen. The purpose of legal observation really is not just to observe what's going on, but to put judges and the judicial system on notice that somebody else is watching. And the aim is to create a situation where people feel looked at. And that helps people not just to say the right things, but also to do the right things in situations where they may be tempted to work in a different way. So, Deepra, everything you're gonna tell us now is based on your memory since you couldn't take any notes, is that right? Well, I did take extensive notes when despite not being permitted to it initially because it was obvious that these were conditions which were being imposed by people who didn't really understand what a legal observer was there to do. I have continued to take notes through the various hearings and I have now about five notebooks full of notes which document various concerns that I've had and various reflections that I've had through the process. So no, I'm not necessarily speaking entirely from memory. My report will consist of information that I have specifically taken down in court. Well, let's delve into those notebooks now. Sure. Tell us, first of all, you were there for the entire week at Willich Crown Court in Bellmarsh. That was the only part of the trial that I didn't attend. I was there for all the administrative hearings at Westminster Magistrate Court. I've been there for all the hearings at the Old Bailey and at the High Court and at the Court of Appeal and subsequently. Every session. Every session. So tell us, what did you see? That was a concern as you put it. I think to think about this case, you have to step back a little bit and the case has been in effect going on for over a decade now, while the proceedings in court, which is what I was there to observe, have been going on for a shorter period of time. And the proceedings in court, of course, reflect, which have been going on for three years, reflect the amount of time that Mr. Assange spent in prison. But it is important to understand the backstory before you come to those proceedings in court because there are some serious issues which affect the legal proceedings that start there. We're working in a context where the entire process has been set around extradition law, which is neither one where there is a balance of probabilities nor one where there is a beyond reasonable doubt kind of threshold. So there is a great similarity between what is being done through the extradition process and a single judge and what happens with the military commissions at Guantanamo, which are some of the things that Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks revealed. One of the challenges of this process as a result is that you have individuals and positions of Bauer who are making extremely important decisions about the rest of the world and press freedom and democracy. And their decisions can have huge ramifications, not just for Mr. Assange, but for everybody else. We're also coming to this in the context where the UN special rapporteur on torture has found that Mr. Assange has been tortured. So in terms of the use of the equal treatment bench book and the equality considerations and the extradition hearings, these are things that we need to think about. We also need to think about the fact that the UN working group on arbitrary detention has found more than once that Mr. Assange has been arbitrarily detained and it has asked the two states that were involved in the detention to address this and they haven't. So we have a situation where, unlike in many other cases where, yes, with political prisoners, we often see situations where a single state is militating against an individual. But in this case, it is a coalition of states who are extremely powerful, extremely well resourced, dealing against an individual who is known to be having various disabilities, having various concerns and where the public perception of Assange has been created and manufactured in a way that it is not done for so many others, except for example, the men at Guantanamo who were deemed to be the worst of the worst and therefore public sympathy for them, the public sympathy for the fact that these people were detained without charge or trial was something that was drained away until people began to realize the serious implications of having a state that chose to not even respect its own law. And that's essentially what Britain is doing right now in the way in which Mr. Assange's hearings are being carried out. You said a small number of individuals are making incredibly important decisions that affect the whole world. Who are these individuals? The judges and Pretty Patelna, who are they? Well, there are a range of people who've been involved through the process. And these essentially people who see themselves as cogs in the wheel, for example, security staff at the Old Bailey who behave in a very inhumane way towards people who are queuing outside or towards making people who have serious disabilities in a hard condition, climb up four floors and not allow them to sit down or have a drink of water in court and expect them to spend the whole day without even a drink of water upstairs or to go down again. And these kinds of basic kinds of concerns that we've had, for example, which were brought up at Nuremberg and elsewhere about people pretending that they were just doing their job and being willing to turn a blind eye to serious injustices is there is that category of people whom we need to be concerned about. And of course, within this category we have to recognize that there are a number of people who are genuinely trying to do the right thing despite the constraints that are being placed upon them by those further up within the hierarchy. Then you have those such as Judge Snow, for example, or Judge Taylor, who have made comments which are deeply problematic, at least in my opinion. For example, Judge Snow talked about Mr. Assange being a narcissist without even hearing anything more than the initial, you know, what is your name, date of birth kind of information. So these are questions of people in positions of power, judges, creating a climate where people cannot be judged fairly. And then you go into those presiding over the case, for example, Lady R. R. Brathnott, who has been revealed to have serious conflicts of interest, declassified your kid, it's some excellent work exposing. Lady R. Brathnott's husband has deep ties with the military industrial complex, how her son has investments in a company called Darktrace which militates against organizations like WikiLeaks. And Lady R. Brathnott herself has accepted hospitality from those who are not necessarily predisposed well to Mr. Assange. And what is more concerning than these potential conflicts of interest is the fact that the judge who may have these potential conflicts of interest has not actually recused herself. She's actually stepped aside from the case and allowed somebody else to preside over those particular hearings. But her original decisions cannot be overturned because she hasn't formally recused herself. And this creates a context where those who are in positions of power who are making decisions about this case, which of course has implications for democracy and press freedom, are making decisions while being seriously potentially conflicted and while not recognizing the implications of those conflicts. And in life, we all have various conflicts of interests and you were right to point out right at the start that it's difficult to be independent if you're somebody who's deeply concerned about what's happening. But you have to be able to document and explain what your conflicts are. And for people to be able to make an assessment as to the quality of your judgment and to be able to make a decision as to whether they're able to rely upon your findings and the evidence that you're using alongside it on the basis of this. We're talking with a deeper driver here in London. I think Paul's in the background. It's about to rain in case you doubt where we are. Now, in that hearing, we talked about Assange being called a narcissist. I think he even may have been in that hearing where he forgot his birthday. So it was a different one. Okay, because most narcissists would remember their birthdays. What are the worst abuses that you observed in terms of violations of due process? There are a series of things that one would be deeply concerned about in this case. Both in relation to the history of this case and the lack of the states taking the concerns about torture and about arbitrary detention seriously before it came to a hearing. Then there are concerns at the hearings themselves about the way in which documentation has been served. So for example, in the case of Mr. Abdel Rahim Al-Nashiri who was accused of very serious crimes at Guantanamo and therefore faces the death penalty. We had a situation where Mr. Al-Nashiri was given disclosure documentation. It was several hundred thousand pages and his lawyers asked that he be provided a laptop in order to be able to access that documentation as had been done for all the detainees. But the court ruled, the Military Commission judge ruled that they couldn't specify the format in which the disclosure was provided. The other side was allowed to provide the disclosure in those hard copy papers. And you can see the parallel with Mr. Assange who was given after several, I believe about 13 months of requests a laptop finally. And when the laptop was provided, the keys were glued down, which meant that here is there are serious concerns about access to the documentation before that, but also serious concerns that the judge has not in any way intervened in relation to the confiscation of published legal communications which was done on the first day of the old Bailey hearings where Mr. Assange was stripped searched. He was handcuffed. He was moved from cell to cell several times. And this creates a context within which you're concerned about people's ability to prepare for the hearings. Then you have concerns about Mr. Assange's ability to prepare for the hearings in relation to the second simple seating enlightenment as it is termed being provided at a very late stage, almost a third of the way through the process. And when this happens, what this means is that the other side gets more than one bite at the cherry while Mr. Assange who's running in ineffected regard defense because this is a situation where as a result of extradition law, the presumption is in favor of extradition. And when the presumption is in favor of extradition, Mr. Assange has to try and prove that he can hit one of the bars against extradition. And that's the only way he can avoid it. So when he receives information late, when he doesn't have access to his lawyers, he had very, very limited access to his lawyers in the initial stages of the hearings. He is unable to prepare for what is the equivalent of a death penalty, which is 175 years in a US supermax. When I say it's the equivalent of a death penalty, what I mean is that firstly, the death penalty is not yet off the table, of course, in the US, but also that in the US, you have a situation where the special administrative measures that apply effectively entomb the defendant. And so this is a situation where people's fair trial rights must be particularly respected because there is a life at stake. And I think this is one of the key issues that I've been concerned about through the hearings. I've also been concerned about the way in which evidence has been represented, particularly by the CPS, in relation to the way in which many of the assertions made on court are based on a characterization of Mr. Assange that is a popular characterization rather than based on the evidence that was available. For example, you know, the fact that Mr. James Lewis Coussi had in court while Mr. Assange was having a stroke at the other end or a mini-stroke rather, was talking about the fact that Mr. Assange is a malingerer. Now, had this been evidence-based, we would have looked at the test of malingering which had already been discussed at the previous stage and Mr. Lewis would not have brought it up. But there is a kind of playing to the gallery element of the prosecution that it's important to understand that when a case is being brought in this way, when there is pressure by large states, it is difficult to get a fair trial because most trials are not just in court. They're also held outside the court in the court of public opinion which affects whether politicians and others get involved in dealing with issues, especially when they come to things like extradition. It also relates to the broader concerns we might have about the way in which the United States is characterizing various actions which were not necessarily germane to the case, so to speak, and talking about things which are out with the grounds of which she's being extradited. So those are concerns for me. And of course, I have various concerns about serious lack of concern for mental health and disability. In the case of Mr. Assange, as we know both the prosecution and the defense medical experts of the independent index where it's nominated by the prosecution and the defense have agreed that Mr. Assange is depressed. So basic situations where the prosecution and defense agree, for example, that Mr. Assange should be allowed to sit next to his lawyers were not respected. Mr. Assange had to go being a someone who's suffering from osteoporosis, had to go down on his knees and speak through a small gap in the plexiglass over the heads of US agents in order to attract the attention of his lawyers. This is not normal. It is not normal in a standard case. Well, we would hope it is not normal. It's difficult to know whether it's... We would hope that it is not normal that the extraditing state has been revealed to have plotted to assassinate the defendant. It is not normal where the extraditing state's key prosecution witness has admitted to fabricating the evidence on the instigation of a bribe. It is not normal for the persons who have plotted, i.e. the CIA and the FBI who have plotted to assassinate Mr. Assange are the same people who are determining the terms of his pretrial incarceration in the United States. It is not normal that the kinds of evidence that have been presented in this way have been presented by those who are pretending to care about human rights. Is it normal for the CIA who can determine whether he's incarcerated in Sam's, who plotted to possibly poison and kidnap him, also spied on his privileged conversations with his attorneys at the Ecuador Embassy? Is that normal? Well, that's another very important point you make. Same agency, CIA. Exactly. Well, I think with the spying in the Ecuadorian Embassy, the argument that was being made at one stage was not that he was not spied upon, but that the organization doing the spying was in a separate chain of command to the organization carrying out the prosecution and therefore that there was a fictitious so-called Chinese war between the two organizations and therefore there was no likelihood of the information that was used. Well, that's what Gordon Cromberg said. He said absolutely that there was no connection between the Department of Justice and the CIA, and of course, we should believe him, right, Deepa? Well, we have to acknowledge that there is... Well, I wouldn't, in the capacity that I am in, make specific comments about individuals. I think we have to take with a pinch of salt when people representing the most powerful state in the world are making assertions about which organization will talk to another, especially when these organizations are known to have worked closely in the past in relation to the war on terror, for example. And so the reliance that can be placed on these kinds of things is something which is deeply problematic and one that definitely needs exploration. Why do you think the United States and the British prison authorities treated him so bad, have treated him, continue to treat him so badly at Belmarsh and in the courtroom, in the glass case? Why was all that done? A lot of people talk about Mr. Assange's extradition setting as a chilling precedent for press freedom and democracy. And I think this is a real understatement because it's not about setting a chilling precedent in the future, were he to be extradited. The chilling precedent has already been set. I'd like to know, Joe, how many of the mainstream journalists today would handle something like the Iraq war logs or the Afghan war diaries or the Guantanamo-Beditani assessment briefs with any degree of mental comfort, whether they work for the big news organizations or elsewhere, that they would not be prosecuted under the Espionage Act, whether their families would not suffer. So the chilling precedent has already been set. And that chilling precedent is that if you are a journalist engaging in national security journalism, who is in some instances, we saw in court, WikiLeaks, was not the first organization to publish this information. Organizations still have this information publicly available on the internet. And these organizations are even based in the United States. And yet those organizations have not been asked to take the information down. But what I'm asking you, Deeper, is why are they treating him on these petty things, like stripping him down 11 times before that one hearing, giving him a laptop without keys that work, preventing his lawyers from seeing him, putting him at times in solitary at Belmarsh, putting him in a glass cage where, as you said, he has to go on his knees to speak to his lawyers over the heads of the American officials in the courtroom who could hear everything. I mean, these are absolute indignities that added up to absolute mistreatment. Why do they treat all prisoners in the same way? Or is this specially for a soldier? Are they sending some kind of message to him and to the rest of us? I think a problem with the criminal justice system in the UK is that it's tremendously under-resourced. And because it is tremendously under-resourced, we're in a position where individuals, quite a few individuals are trying to work within that system and make it work in some way. But there are a number of individuals who misuse their power within the system to show who's in charge. And with Mr. Assange being a dissident and being somebody who's known to be a pacifist who has taken a stance against the establishment, there are very few who, unlike for most middle-class people who go through the system who have some advocacy of some sort, for Mr. Assange, the advocacy is slightly weakened by the fact that most of the establishment is against him. And this creates a situation where, even when due process rights are violated in plain sight, neither the press nor the wider public are informed or aware of it or want to be informed of it. For example, I'm amazed at the silence of the press in relation to many of the bits of information that have emerged through the hearings. And of course, as somebody who's working in the mainstream press, it is easy to recognize that there are deadline pressures. The story is not that important in their view. There are other things, for example, there was the COVID crisis or there's a Ukraine war or there's something else that's going on that they can talk about. But I think a lot of these people don't recognize that the silence speaks volumes in relation to this case. And coming back to your question, Joe, which I think you were trying to redirect me to, which is why are they doing this? I think it is about power. It is about showing Mr. Assange that no matter how skillful, how intelligent, how capable he is, he is still a criminal in the eyes of the state. It is also about showing Mr. Assange that he will be treated worse than somebody who has committed a violent, serious offense. This is a pacifist who is being held in ways in which we hold those who are serious violent offenders. This is about nation states deciding they are willing and they're wanting to show Mr. Assange that he needs to give up. They're wanting to send a message, not just to Mr. Assange, but to every other mainstream journalist out there, to every other independent journalist out there, to say, this is what will be done to you if you dare to speak up and they succeeded. Clearly they're trying to break his spirit as well. I mean, they've had him now for over three years in Belmarsh and he's being punished for crime. He's not been convicted of yet. He served his bell skipping sentence which is, I think, a misdemeanor, isn't it? It's not a serious crime, but he's being held and punished already because they got their hands on him. Isn't that right? They've already begun the punishment and the trying to destroy him in body and in mind, aren't they? For Mr. Assange, right from his detention in Wandsworth prison, for example, where he was given a meal which had a hard piece in it which broke his tooth, which has been a continuing tooth condition that he's had during his years at the embassy where he wasn't allowed to get medical treatment. This is a pattern of medical neglect that has accompanied psychological torture. So a lot of people, I remember Neil Smeltzer saying very eloquently that all torture is psychological torture. It's about breaking the spirit and Neil's has found that Mr. Assange is somebody who is surviving torture and you cannot fix that problem until the torture stops, but the torture continues through the lawfare that is employed against Mr. Assange. And all of this torture is again named at depleting his will, pushing him towards self-harm, pushing him towards suicide and creating a context where Neil Smeltzer said that you don't know what the long-term effects of torture are on the physical body. We've seen one example of that with the trans-Ischemic attack, but these continue now. Let's go back to the issue of conflict of interest. I believe that Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett has been revealed by Declassified UK that he was close buddies. What's your? Alan Duncan. Alan Duncan, the Foreign Ministry official who was kind of running the show when it came to having Assange arrest operation. Pelican, he writes about it as memoir that they, I believe they had neckties with pelicans on him and they had a big celebration when he was arrested. And I remember Theresa May, the prime minister at the time, making this announcement that he'd been arrested in Parliament and it was cheers, it seemed from both sides of the aisle. What about that conflict of interest of the judge? And then I want to ask you about Ms. Pretty Patel. The establishment always moves in establishment circles and these people come across each other in various contexts. Many of them, if you look at the judges in Britain's courts today, most of them come from a particular kind of background. They come from a particular kind of racial, sexual, stereotyped kind of standard. They come from the same Oxbridge or other colleges. And it is highly unlikely that many of these people don't already know each other and talk to each other. But it is deeply worrying that when these concerns are raised, that nothing is done to firstly address them openly and secondly to explain what measures have been taken to address the conflicts of interest and to create a situation where the outcome can still be relied upon can be seen to be fair. So we're speaking on Monday, the 23rd of May and over the course of the next eight days or nine days, Pretty Patel will make her decision about whether to sign the extradition order. There's a lot of pressure on her to not sign it from the High Commissioner of Human Rights for the Council of Europe, from a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, from a slew of press freedom and human rights organizations, Amnesty International included. Letters are being sent to her, journalists, assigning petitions. So she knows that there is from very serious and respected organizations, as well as from the general public, an enormous interest in her not signing this case. Now on the other side of the ledger, she very well knows already what is expected of her. However, you can't rule out, we'll never know, at least not now, whether there is any communication from the Department of Justice in the US to her or even from inside the British government, from the Prime Minister down to her and other members of the cabinet. There's an article in Grey Zone that came out by Kit Klarenberg who says that she was looped into this quasi-intelligence operation to try to smear environment activists as Chinese agents. The article points out that there's no evidence that they approached her unassigned. But clearly she's in that, she's in the establishment, even if she doesn't come from it. Someone described her as Margaret Thatcher's dreams of the immigrant coming to a high position of government on the conservative side, obviously. What do you make of Pretty Patel's neutrality or integrity to make a decision based on the merits of this case? Do you think she has any? Mr. Nassange's case started as a case which was related to the issue of asylum. Asylum from persecution by the United States. And we know what Pretty Patel's position on asylum seekers and refugees is. She wants them deported to Rwanda. And she wants to create. She's a proponent of the hostile environment here. We're also aware that there is pressure from right-wing conservative groups in relation to freedom of speech and them recognizing that many of the liberal kind of views that are proposed, the civil liberties, those kinds of things which are part of the conservative ethos are some that are undermined with the extradition of Assange. So I guess there are conflicting interests at play. I think for many people, it is difficult to believe that Mrs. Patel will do anything other than rule to extradite because of the way in which the British and American governments work so closely together in our part of the same kind of five-eyes community which creates a situation which is absolutely untenable for whistleblowers and national security journalists and which creates a situation where ordinary individuals are spied upon and this is not considered to be outside the realms of the local possibility and they want to create laws and conditions which replicate the US Patriot Act and also the Espionage Act in Britain. So in this context, the situation for Mr. Assange with pretty vital decision does seem bleak but I think it is important that ordinary people make themselves much more visible than they've been able to do during COVID, both in terms of attending court and being present at demonstrations outside but also in terms of local elections, national elections, making it clear why they think this case is important because if you are an activist interested in the environment, if you are an activist interested in corruption, if you're an activist interested in freedom of the press, if you're an activist interested in whistleblowing, if you have a brother or sister in a care home, if you have a family member who is being looked after by somebody else, you want whistleblowers to be able to speak the truth and to be able to disclose what's really going on behind closed doors because most of us do not have the access or the understanding to be able to really process what's going on. So it is really important that honest whistleblowers are brought into the public domain and they allow us to uphold the public interest and in order to do so, organizations like WikiLeaks are really important and therefore it is also really important that these organizations are supported by the public at times when they are in under deep pressure as they will no doubt be and the time now when the case is not subjudice, this is the time for MPs, for parliamentarians, for others to put pressure on Ms. Patel to look at this case in a different way because the plan is not necessarily to extradite Mr. Assange to the US. The plan is to put Mr. Assange in such a situation of psychological and physical torture that he collapses and for the process to be dragged out as long as possible with various bites at the cherry to go back and forth. And just as don't extradite Assange is a real cry, also don't keep him in a prison in Belmarsh, don't create a situation where he just collapses or commits suicide, it needs to be an absolutely important cry at this time. Now all politicians are ambitious obviously, they wouldn't get to power otherwise, but do we see in pretty Patel that a particular ambition here, because if you look at one of her predecessors, Teresa May, who was also ambitious, but she was able to deny the extradition of Gary McKinnon a case similar in terms of his health. He was a hacker and there was a lot of anger amongst conservative party members in her own party that she did that but she seemed to have enough integrity to do that. She not only survived that, she became Prime Minister herself. So can pretty Patel look at that and think or does she have it in her to say, well, you know, May made it to the highest office in the land and she denied an extradition. So I can do the same. I'm gonna really look at the facts of this case and make a real decision, not just one that is expected of me, that will be good for my career. Depends on, you know, the connections to organizations such as the Henry Jackson Society and others and what pressure is being put behind the scenes that we don't know about. These are not necessarily pressures put on by states but by very well-resourced actors within the wider establishment community. And I'm reluctant to call this one, Joe. I don't feel much hope, but I don't know. Well, Henry Jackson was a American Senator. Senator Scoop Jackson, he's the grandfather of the Neo-Conservative Movement, began in the Democratic Party and the Neo-Cons have gone back home to the Democratic Party after, because of the Trump election. And Scoop Jackson was known as the Senator for Boeing. He represented Washington State, where Boeing's headquarters were. I think they moved to Chicago since then and he was able to get all the military contracts. For them, Senator Mike Ravel, who was a friend of consortium news, he was on our board. I wrote a book with him, I'm very close to Mike and his big enemy in the Senate at the time was Henry Jackson, they despised one another, on Jackson's staff was Wolfowitz. So it exists here in Britain, which is bizarre and it is the Neo-Cons, Neo-Cons, think tank. And she's involved in that. So again, it doesn't look good as you say, but I'm just putting out the idea that she has an example in Theresa May that she could do the right thing and still not damage her career. I don't know if she's gonna look at it that way. I don't have a great deal of, I have to say, I've never really heard pretty much. I've read about her a lot, but I watched a couple of videos of her recently and I was thoroughly unimpressed with not only the way she speaks, but the content of what she was saying, so superficial and very strong on surveillance in that one interview on one of the morning shows here. She rose to prominence at one point because of her support for the death penalty. So she's a very, she's somebody who has a very regressive approach to human rights and it is very difficult to see her given that the arguments at this stage, I believe, are specialty in the death penalty in the United States. It's very difficult to see somebody like Preeti Patel being concerned about those. I think the US has already given a previous assurance that May, from the very start of the process against the subject that death penalty would not be used. In fact, the Espionage Act is clear. Death penalty could only be used in time of war. One could argue that it was Iraq war and the Afghan war, but I believe, and it could be wrong that Britain was already told by the US before this started that they would not give him the actual death penalty but they will be giving him a death sentence in terms of living it out. I guess it depends on how you read those latest assurances and the point made within them that it does not exclude any future actions and therefore the future actions could be anything and therefore, you know, I'm not suggesting that the death penalty is on the table. I'm just saying it's not off the table in the way many people expect. You don't expect a journalist to be hanged and lynched for committing the act of journalism, but that said, you don't expect a journalist to be spending three years in Belmarsh prison in London at a time when political offenses are excluded from the treaty on extradition and when he is charged under the Espionage Act. Most people, if you think of those 18 charges that have been brought against him, most people know about the charges under the Espionage Act and then there was this one charge in relation to conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and when you look at that charge, if you hear the evidence in court, you'll recognize that this is not the stereotypical image of Mr. Assange as a hacker. This is about helping Chelsea Manning who had already disclosed the information who had already had access to Supernet and everything else that she needed to reveal the whistleblown information, to be able to download music and videos. So the way in which various things have been weaponized against Mr. Assange, I'm reluctant to feel comfortable that the death penalty in all its many guises will not be still on the table in order to force him to take a plea bargain, for example. Well, that computer charge now is completely blown up when the main key witness of the U.S. to try to frame Assange as a hacker or directing hacks, recanted, he said he lied, as you previously were talking about, Siggy Thordutz and the Icelandic petty criminal. So that part of the case has to go off. And that will be part of the cross appeal. Let's talk about that for a bit. Now, that's one of the, I think one of the nine points that the WikiLeaks lawyers will bring up and they're hoping that the high court where it would go to, we're talking about a pretty patele sign in the extradition order. The next step would be to cross appeal, which means to, when Vanessa Berets in the lower court said that Assange could not be extradited to the United States, she didn't, she accepted every point of the U.S.'s argument, except that Article 91, I think which says that it would be oppressive to send him to the U.S. because it was mental health and the condition of U.S. prisons. But everything else, she agreed with that. She agreed that it would not be a violation of the First Amendment. She even knew about the plot to assassinate or poison him. That had already come out at the lower court level in the testimony from the Spanish case with UC Global. Of course, Yahoo fleshed that story out and corroborated it, but that was already in the first hearing and she didn't seem to be bothered by that. She even made a remark that the United States was understanding how they were upset about what he'd done. I mean, it was almost like she was excusing that. So there are all these other issues that could be brought up in the cross appeal. Talk a little bit about what you know about that and what chance would the High Court have of accepting one or more of these points of appeal? So if you look back at, for example, the Spanish case, what George Boretsa said was that the Spanish ruling had not yet come through and therefore she could not opine on that and therefore it would have to come in at a later stage. So presumably because she has not already ruled on that and assuming that the Spanish case gets completed within the timeframe in which the grounds for appeal are agreed, that's, there is a likelihood that that will come in. There's also Sigurduringi Thordeson's testimony or recanting of his testimony. And I understand there have been further attempts by the United States to interview him in Iceland since. So I was part of a conversation somewhere else where I heard that this was in train. I think there are a number of things that need to be reviewed both by the High Court and by the Supreme Court in terms of points of law even at the previous stage where the Supreme Court has not really opined. It has said it doesn't see there are points of law to be discussed, but the fact that powerful countries can lose a case and then put in new assurances in order to win the case is something that we need to have a position on. I reckon that that kind of issue won't really come up at the High Court, but at least hopefully many of the press freedom related concerns and the concerns about due process rights, including the spying on the lawyers is something that we can all coalesce around. I'm concerned that both the magistrates court and the High Court have been acting in a context where this information is already known. So my deep concern is that the grounds for appeal will be severely restricted in order to manipulate the discourse around one or two arcane points. And then that will result in both sides appealing against various decisions and the process being dragged out and Mr. Assange's health failing him. You know, something Stella Assange said at the cinema on Thursday evening that I wasn't aware of. She said that part of the cross appeal, in addition to that, WikiLeaks lawyers can appeal Patel's decision. So let's say she signs the extradition order. They can appeal that on the grounds that Patel presumably will explain why she agreed to extradite. So that's quite interesting too, but who has the final say then? I mean, it's quite a football here political football about how an extradition case goes. It's at the High Court, the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case. So the High Court got it back and they sent it back to the magistrates court which pro forma just sent it on to pretty Patel. And she's now on the verge of deciding where to sign it or not. But it seems like even if she does, not only is the cross appeal on those points in the lower court liable for WikiLeaks to appeal, but also her decision itself. I think you have to look at this case. And if you look back at the past, you will see that when, for example, Julian's case went right through to the Supreme Court in relation to the European arrest warrant being issued without judicial consent by only a single prosecutor. On Julian's case, the Supreme Court was split in that two of the judges, including Lady Brenda Hale, decided that the extradition order should not be upheld. But the Swedish case, in 2010, okay, 12. The Swedish, 12, yeah. 2012, sir. And, but subsequently, the law was changed to address that particular loophole which allowed for future European arrest warrants to require judicial authority before they were executed. But Mr Assange was not given the benefit of that because it was treated as something which would have been a retrospective action. So even if, through various processes, we find a lot of this, I guess, when I asked the lawyers a year ago about what the next steps were, many of these steps were not entirely clear in terms of time frames because these things have never been done before in this way. So to find out that, oh yes, you may have this process or you may have something else, but even if you have those processes, they will not benefit Mr Assange and it's something that we've become quite accustomed to. And I think we have to recognize that the standard, sorry, let me take a step back. One of the characteristics of psychological torture is arbitrariness. And in Mr Assange's case, the arbitrary deployment of judicial process and the fact that things are being made up as they go along, despite seeming to come with a veneer of procedural soundness, despite seeming to come from these brilliant buildings with years and years of history, you have to realize that many of these things are being made up as they go along in effect with people making decisions behind the scenes, even if it seems like they are calling upon various procedural steps in order to achieve certain ends. It looks from the outside like a hot potato, you know? Just throw it from one court to the next. So if the high court decides against Assange's appeal, particularly on Patel's decision, that has to be the end of the matter. They're not gonna send it back to the lower court to go back to Patel again, they've already been signed. So if they reject the WikiLeaks appeal, particularly on Patel's decision, but also on the other points, that's the end of the road, isn't it? Then we're talking about the European Court of Human Rights. No, I believe it can still go to the Supreme Court. There you go, see. Because if there are points of law still to be argued, then it could go to the Supreme Court. And then potentially thereafter, it would go to the European Court of Human Rights. But I think the right people to speak about this would be Garrett's team. Yeah. But you admit it's a bit dense, this process, isn't it? I think it's a process that is hard to follow, especially on the outside. I think extradition law in itself is a very complex area that most people who observe normal criminal and civil trials don't really understand. But then there is another layer of complexity in that this kind of national security case, in which multiple states are involved, not just an issue of somebody engaging in espionage, et cetera, et cetera. And where there is a journalist involved are relatively unusual. So somebody once told me, he said, why aren't more people talking about this case? You've got sexual assault, you've got violence, you've got murder plots, you've got some of the most powerful people in the world, you've got espionage, war crimes, you've got murders, you've got rape. There is so much to talk about in this case. And especially when it's gone on over 10 years, it becomes really hard to synthesize and digest what's really at stake. And that doesn't just apply to ordinary people. It also applies to people in the positions of power who are making decisions, often based, like it or not, on their own prejudices and values. We've been accused of sort of news of overdoing our coverage of Asanjian. I just don't agree. I think this is such, as you just point out, such an extraordinarily important case, historic, world-historic case. It's not like hyperbole to say that, that's why we've had you here to speak with us today, Deeper Drive, and we thank you for your time. Maybe we have a few other questions. Just one more question. Sure. In terms of it being too much, in some respects, it's not enough. Back in 2011, Julian Assange Googled his name and the word rape, and he got three million hits. The fact that the Crown Prosecution Service were instructing Sweden not to come to London to interview him and not to drop the case, that got out to very few people. What do you think about this media imbalance in terms of the information that is getting out? I think the media imbalance is particularly visible when you have the likes of Noam Tromsky and others making very, very serious statements at the old Bailey hearings, and very few of those being covered in any meaningful way. Those affidavits, if you are somebody who's interested in the case, I would urge you to read those affidavits and look at those testimonies in court and look at Craig Murray's wonderful, detailed reporting of what the different witnesses said and his parsing of what those things meant, because that's really important to understand what's really at stake here. I think it's a combination of things. I think it's a combination of commercial pressures, lack of interest, stuff like the DSMA Committee likely to have put all kinds of restrictions in the background in cases such as these in terms of the kinds of topics that can be discussed and not. And so we don't know, because the D-Notice system is supposedly advisory, people assume that organizations stand up to it, but we know from organizations such as Even The Guardian and others that they regularly consult before releasing information. So there is an establishment block, but there is also, as you rightly said, the issues that Julian offered to go to Sweden to be interviewed despite knowing quite in the immediate past that Elzari and Agiza, who were two Egyptian nationals, both asylum seekers in Sweden, had been rendited overnight to Egypt and tortured. And despite that, you know, he offered to go to Sweden to be interviewed and the fact that he offered to be interviewed here by video link or in person. These things never made it out to the public domain because people quite rightly are concerned about accusations of sexual assault, and it's easy to separate people like Julian, who are dissidents, from their base, especially their base on the left, by making accusations such as these. And when these accusations fly around in the way they are weaponized by organizations like The Guardian, then you have a situation where the trial by media is already complete. And people are not, even when the information is now in the public domain and is relatively easy to find, whether through yourselves or through others, people have a certain indifference to the case because they think they have other important things to think about. But I'd urge them to think about how those other important things, whether they are about Guantanamo, you know, people who are working to close Guantanamo, whether they are thinking about racism, whether they are thinking about corruption in, you know, or toxic waste dumping, for example, Wikileaks has done a number of races about toxic waste dumping off the Ivory Coast. They've done information about the spring in Tunisia. This kind of information would not get out without the courage of somebody like Julian. And I've seen, I've observed the hearings of other whistleblowers, and I have been shocked at how easy it is. Firstly, to smear someone of great character, but still to smear them and to take away any semblance of reality in what they're saying by pretending they are either making it up or that they are exaggerating the state. But also the lack of, not the lack, the excessive persistence and courage that we've seen in Julian, which is very different from most people who would not be able to withstand 10 years of persecution by the United States, three of which were in a maximum security prison in some six months of which were, what was it, six months? So they're about in various forms of isolation. So, yeah, I mean... We should just point out that Julian Assange offered to go to Sweden on the condition that Sweden would not forward him on to the United States. They would not... On what extent? Under the temporary surrender treaty, which was a treaty that Sweden had set up with the United States, where they could loan him, before even continuing with their own process, they could loan him to the United States. And Sweden refused, which is very telling. I think it's very... I think what's really telling is that in order to not have to disclose exculpatory evidence, Sweden never went beyond the preliminary investigation stage of the case. They never brought any charges in all these years. Now, in the last few months of the so-called Swedish Chase, Julian was in prison in Belmarsh, where they could have had whatever access to him they needed in order to be able to make their case. And that is something that they've chosen not to do. And if you look at Professor Niels Meltzer's book, I think it explains what the forces at play there were. And I'd urge those of you who have the time to either read Niels Meltzer's book or to look at Jonathan Cook's excellent summary of Professor Meltzer's book, where he explains what the key issues are that Professor Meltzer covers in great detail in the book. Well, thank you, Deeper. Do you have any final thoughts? I do, Joe. There's one thing I wanted to say, which is probably something which is for a future discussion, which is that there are parallels between the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and the way in which Guantanamo was set up and the treatment of Mr. Assange. And it's quite ironic given that Mr. Assange was among those who revealed what really went on at Guantanamo. But also that if you're thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement, then it is incumbent upon the Home Secretary, Beauty Patel, if she does care about Black Lives to take a stance against the hundreds of thousands of Black Lives that have been destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan, to take a stance against those who, of course, the detention of 789 Muslim men without charge or trial at Guantanamo, it's not enough just to take the knee. Black Lives Matter has to mean something, mean something in reality. And Julian Assange is amongst those who allowed that to be a reality. He gave dignity to those who died, people like Namir and Saeed, who were seen gunned down in the collateral murder with the other little children, who were severely injured, people like Hanan Saleh Mathrud, who was shot down, eight-year-old child, gunned down in the streets of Iraq. These are the people whose lives, Julian, gave some value and some meaning to, you know, these are the people whose lives we would never have heard about. And it is important if we care about Black Lives that we recognize the contribution of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in allowing these Black Lives Matter. Thank you. Well, thank you, Deepa, very much for joining us today for Consortium News and CN Live. This is Joel Loria in London. Goodbye.