 I'd like to start by thanking everybody who's joined us here today. I know there are restrictions in the room and some people who wanted to be here are actually watching us online. I'd like to welcome viewers at Consortium News, Action for Assange, the Anons Resist Group and also a number of viewers from the Workers' Party and other grassroots groups as well around the country and abroad who are re-streaming this event. I'd like to start also by thanking the people who helped start this series of events almost two years ago when we knew life in the real world and those were the people at the Committee to Defend Julian Assange. Two of the JADC members gave £20 each to help us start collecting the money to pay for this whole and it was because of their support and solidarity and their work on the ground from outside the Embassy to outside the courts, through to the streets of London, all over London, whether at Belmarsh, whether at other grassroots groups at Piccadilly Circus and elsewhere. Very grateful to all of them for the work they have done which has helped despite a pandemic keep what is the world's most important political prisoner in the public eye even though serious efforts are being made to prevent us from knowing what's really going on. The case of Julian Assange is particularly important to all of us but for those of you who have not been to a Free the Truth event before, this is a grassroots gathering supported by the Committee to Defend Julian Assange. It's organised by Professor Ian Monroe at Newcastle University and me. My name is Deepa Driver, I'm at the University of Reading. We are doing so in our private capacities as activists who are deeply concerned about both whistleblowing and press freedom. We're also concerned about human rights and I'm really delighted that so many people have begun to wake up to the breach, the serious breaches of human rights that we've seen in the case of Julian Assange. These breaches range from absolutely bizarre things such as the prosecuting country considering whether to murder the defendant in this case that is the US hatching plans, the CIA hatching plans to murder Julian. Serious breaches of what we call attorney-client privilege and also medical confidentiality sustained intentional and carried out over several years with the complicity of different states where Julian was surveilled in the Embassy, smeared, his case was kept in limbo intentionally as we know from Freedom of Information requests gathered by the wonderful Italian journalist Stefania Maurizzi. We know that Kerstam as CPS, closer to home, was involved in ensuring that justice was not served. They kept the case in limbo so that no exculpatory evidence, that is evidence which would clear Julian's name could be seen. They said don't you dare get cold feet when the other side wanted to drop the case and they continued to say that Julian did all kinds of awful things. This continued with his torture at the Embassy, at the Ecuadorian Embassy where he had sought asylum and as you know he served a prison sentence for seeking asylum, also rebranded as bail jumping and during that sentence, so to speak, in the Ecuadorian Embassy Julian was mislabelled as hurting his cat, smearing fishies on the wall, all these kinds of smears where he didn't have a voice to be able to say what was really going on and nobody was willing to listen. It was these grassroots activists who are in the room today who have organised and supported this event who saw through some of the smears and the lies that the intellectuals did not see through. So it is their courage and their solidarity that is really important in continuing to press this case. Right now in the courts we are going through a very bizarre process, a journalist who is not an American journalist, who is an Australian journalist who conducted journalism in the UK and Europe, whose WikiLeaks has 100% accuracy track record, is potentially going to be extradited to the United States to serve a 175-year prison sentence which is essentially entombing him within a concrete bunker so that he cannot be heard from again. And we are here to resist. We are here to say this will not do and we will not stand for this. On the panel today we have some wonderful people, each of whom is an expert in their own field and I will just introduce them from left to right. At the start we have Andrew Feinstein who is globally known for his work on the arms trade. He heads an organisation called Shadow World investigations and Andrew has done so much to reveal what is going on behind the scenes and done it so courageously in so many ways. Andrew also served in the ANC government within Nelson Mandela's cabinet so he knows what it is like to resist when the state is oppressing you and what it is like to stand with the side that is honest and true. Next we have someone who has played a very, very important role in bringing Julian's voice, in bringing the case for Julian rather, to Parliament and Chris Williamson whom many of you know from previous events and who is very well loved here was responsible for bringing the first motion in relation to Julian in Parliament. He has continued to campaign for Julian in various places, small events, large events, he has put his name to it and he has always made a place for the case for Julian to be heard. Next we have a relatively new voice to the scene. A wonderful Icelandic journalist by the name of Bjarthmar Alexanderson, Bjarthmar as you may all know Bjarthmar wrote that fantastic piece and did the extensive legwork that went behind it in relation to Siggy Inge Thorderson who is the Icelandic witness in Julian's case that the FBI have, I mean the easiest way to put it is bribed into misrepresenting what Julian did and I'm hoping that Bjarthmar will tell us a little bit more about his investigation and what happened. To my left I have someone whom I greatly respect, Dr. Derek Somerfield. Derek is a psychiatrist within Doctors for Assange. He has spoken out on a number of occasions about the psychological torture of Julian. Derek is also known for his role as the chief psychiatrist at what is now freedom from torture. So it used to be called the Medical Foundation for Torture Victims, right? Thank you very much for joining us to all the panel and we have an empty seat here and he will be joining us shortly. It's for Lauri Love and we will give him a round of applause when he arrives. Lauri needs little introduction. He is the hacktivist and information scientist who used his skills to speak up for those who are oppressed, those who are poor and was very instrumental within the Occupy campaign. I'd also like to introduce a couple of people who are in the audience whose work has been crucial to having these events. I'm sorry for the long introductions but one of them is sitting right at the front at Somerset Bean who's, if you see any of the images around London on the billboards online, on Twitter anywhere, it's almost always Bean's images. So he is the graphic artist, creative expert who's fueled the campaign with his images and with his wonderful infographics. Thank you for joining us and also Carlos is streaming the event for us. Thank you for joining us Carlos, I won't embarrass you. So as you can see Carlos is capturing images so please make yourself stairs upstairs if you don't want to be caught on the screen but just to warn you in advance. I'd now like to welcome Emmy Bucklin whom all of you know, everybody knows Emmy, to tell us a little bit about what the campaign to defend Julian Assange does. Thank you very much Deepa, it's an honour to welcome everyone here. We are back after a long period of absence when the country has been facing a pandemic. We're extremely grateful to the people who've turned up. As I said to Deepa, we have to start, we have to start meeting again in a safe manner. Julian Assange cannot wait. He needs us and he needs every single one of us. We are grassroots solidarity group. We are comprised by ordinary people who come together to do their bit in creating something extraordinary. A movement across country, across political spectrum in defence of a man who through his work with Wikileaks has enlightened the world. This man has been attacked from the very beginning due to his publication. He has inspired every single one of us and we continue the work of solidarity by coming together as members of the public and finding out what we can do. We have here very eminent politicians, academics, medical experts, professionals but we also have the public, us. And the more inspiration we get from this movement, the more we can tap into our own creativity and see how far it takes us in collaborating together to bring together a change in society where Wikileaks journalism is applauded throughout society, not just by the public. Wikileaks work has touched our hearts and we are highly motivated from that perspective. I would like to invite all of you to find what you can do as members of the public, turn around to the people next to you, find ways of collaborating because only by working in collaboration with each other we are able to multiply the effect and have impact. Today's event would not have been possible for the work and collaboration of a small number of people who have brought this about. You are all part of it and we are very grateful for your donations. There will be some buckets later which you can donate to towards the costs of the higher of the whole. So I am passing back the microphone to our lovely, deeper driver and we are really looking forward to hearing more and freeing some more of the truth about what has occurred. Thank you. I am now going to invite Bjarth Marr who has put out the latest scoop in relation to the Sange case and to tell us a little bit about the key witness in the FBI's prosecution against the Sange, why he is important, who he is and what Bjarth Marr found out about his testimony and about him. Thank you for that. My name is, I always say to these people, my name is Bjarth Marr It is a long Icelandic Viking name and I talk to my parents about that. This case is one of the strangest ones I have ever worked on, regarding a person involved in a case. And even for Icelandic standards and trust me, we have, we won't. It is the main witness in the FBI case against Julian Assange. His name is Seirður Þordasson and before he changed his name, as many criminals do in Iceland, his name was Seirður Þordasson and he is one of the most famous Karn artists in Iceland. Everybody know this guy and he is pronounced, actually his nickname is called Siki the Hacker. You might have seen this in international news but according to my research, he has no hacking ability whatsoever. He actually needed the assistance of the FBI to get a video downloaded from a mobile phone. We have that email. So he is a Karn artist that is on a high level only using this nickname to scare people and there are certain people he likes to scare and there are his victims which he sexually abused almost 15 of them, minus, which only nine went to court which he was convicted for. There were 15 boys under age and one of these individuals actually committed suicide after his case did not go to court. So, yeah, it is a really good witness, morality wise, to take this guy. So he has been stealing out of individuals and companies in Iceland for years. Even he stole 50,000 US dollars from WikiLeaks when he was actually a volunteer in a small role inside there and actually used his role to, I would say, no, I'm translating in my head here, he actually used his role to push his ego up even to get his victims to meet him. And the thing is here, he's been convicted of everything of this and now he's actually in Icelandic prison. He was four weeks ago, he was put in the maximum security prison in Iceland, the court or the police asked for a very certain detailed law that's not often used which is used for serial offenders. So, and the judge accepted and just today it was, it's now extra four weeks which the judge now decided to lengthen this prison sentence that he has. So, the police and the special prosecutor in Iceland are actually investigating him now for a fraud case that is almost one million pounds in Iceland. And this is, he's doing all, he's on the crime spree while he actually has a FBI, sorry, immunity agreement with the FBI, which he was given in back in 2019. So, this is the backstory basically of the main witness of the FBI. And I did a nine-hour extensive interview with him and over a few days. And what he actually admitted to me is that the case against or a lot of the indictment cases inside the indictment, sorry, are basically lie. There are several points in the indictment that are basically not truthful. For example, in the indictment it's asked that, it's said that Mr. Thoroson asked, was asked by Julian Sange to hack the Icelandic parliament and the mobile phone or the phone conversations. Well, this is a lie and we actually could prove that and we put that in print. And there are many other occasions in the indictment which cannot be proven and also is basically a lie. And why this is important? Well, legally it's kind of bad to put a lie in an indictment and go to court with it in any case. So, being the prosecutor in this case, I wouldn't want to be him. And this, what you see is just a small spick of everything that's been happening to Julian. It's plenty of it. And, but Mr. Thoroson plays a huge role in the case against him because he is the main witness of transforming Julian from a journalist to a hacker. And that's why his testimony is so important. Of all the people who are working as volunteers or members of staff, poor big leagues, not a single person to come forward with the same testimony as C. So, it makes you wonder that only the only individual actually the FBI could put in writing with his testimony that Julian Assange was a hacker and not a journalist. Well, it makes you wonder how strong the case is if you have to find a con artist and a pedophile to do so. So, it's, and everybody know this guy back in Iceland. Nobody knows them internationally until now, most of the time. But it's, it's, and he's still conning, no, not anymore at least in prison, but he was conning all the time when this case was going on. The most important thing also for me as an Iceland is how the US government and the FBI lied not only to their citizens, but to the citizens of Iceland. And they abused our laws in Iceland to, to go on with this investigation inside Iceland during the time. So, that's also a story that I've been writing on how they abuse their power in Iceland to basically do illegal things. But we, we stood back, our interior minister actually threw the FBI out of the country back in 2013. So, we in Iceland, we kind of, we don't like these basically assholes in this matter, if I can say that. But it's, it's a really important thing inside your diamond. It is a legal thing. Yes, it's, can't be really complicated for, for normal people to understand the legality of this testimony. But as I always say, it's basically a testimony of a liar, a pedophile, and a criminal. So, hopefully now through the appeal case, the UK courts will see that this case is built on lies and there was never a case in the beginning to make Julian anything than a journalist. If he's a hacker, then I'm a hacker because I have published documents. And so, to try to create some kind of a weird monster out of this guy, you know, it's, he's just doing his job, as I'm doing mine. And I think, you know, personally, I think they just saw lucers. That's the thing. They had secrets, they couldn't hide it, and they came, became public, and they were embarrassed. And this is most of the news that I write that I embarrass people that are actually trying to hide something and the truth comes out. So I hopefully will see something happen in the next two days. The trial starts tomorrow and for two days. And let's hope that in a few weeks, four to eight weeks, I think, we will have a verdict that shows that this case was complete bullshit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for a very important, I would say testimony, because I think it's important for us to hear this from the people who are doing the work to uncover what's really going on. So thank you very much. And thank you for coming all the way from Iceland to be, to be here for Julian. Beatmar talked about how, Beatmar talked about how the people who should be ashamed and embarrassed are within the US state, within their allies who covered up war crimes, rape, murder, torture in other parts of the world, who while taking the knee and pretending Black Lives Matter, destroyed entire countries and civilizations. But instead, the person who has been humiliated, who has been mistreated, who has lost a decade, more than a decade of his life, a very productive life where, you know, the person who brought together technology and journalism to create a new form of journalism, which is what Julian did. I think there is a bit of background noise outside. Excuse us a second. Thank you. And I'd now like to invite Dr. Derek Summerfield, who's an expert on torture, to tell us a little bit about what torture is, how Julian has been tortured. Is this, is it just the use of a very exaggerated term when we talk about Julian being tortured? What does it mean? And what effects will he be suffering at the moment? Or what effects can one expect him to be suffering at the moment? Thanks, Deeper. Just to set the scene for, if I may, which is that we're talking about a particular western citizen who has been a revealer of truths about the lies to us about the war on terror, about the war crimes, and spying on us. And this takes place in the context of the erosion every day of civil liberties in this country, something that has started from the Blair era. Gareth Pierce, the human rights lawyer in London says that the UK has a human rights emergency running just under the surface. And as such, I think as part of that, the British government, despite that, prevent enjoying doctors, nurses, lecturers, and teachers to spy on their students and patients, all of these things. And the kind of, and yet we have to have a political show trial, and indeed a political show pretrial for someone who has been more or less in soldier confinement for 10 years in different situations. And I'll come back to that. The situation he's been in, since he's been in Belmarsh, reminds me of critique of what are called close supervision units, which exist today at the heart of the British political system for the so-called hard line is mostly Muslim men, very much an isolated coercive psychiatry. And a few years ago, Sir David Ramsbottom, who's the Chief Inspector of Prisons, described it as, quote, total isolation in punishment conditions. And I think that's probably fair for what Assange has been through. Just as a two minutes of history, another player in all of this has been the current UN Special Rapporteur in torture, Neil Meltzer. I presume he's not here. But I've had a lot of involvement over the years with Palestinian human rights, and I've met a lot of UN Special Rapporteurs, and they're quite cautious about what they prepare to put their name to. And Meltzer's been quite different from the start. When he met Assange in prison two years ago, he said, this is someone akin to someone who's been psychologically tortured and talked about the destruction of the individual, quote, downward spiral, something deliberate and cumulative. Meltzer said that in 20 years, he'd never seen a group of democratic states so ganging up on a particular individual. And he requested that the UN retract authorization extradition and brought in the UN working group on arbitrary detention. As you know, the British government has abandoned him as has the Australian government, the country of his birth, obvious citizenship, and have responded to nothing we've done, or to multiple calls by well-heeled signatories around the world, and Noam Chomsky, and that sort of thing. So where are we with him? Total isolation and punishment conditions. I might note the soldier confinement is associated with a longer term higher death rate for various reasons. And what he's been going through, obviously, as we could all imagine, is persistent attacks on all of our social needs for privacy, dignity, social connection, personal identity issues, you know, the constant shaming, vilification, and he couldn't speak it back, hopelessness, helplessness, fear, anxiety, all the things we can imagine, which are indefinite and which must be no more swayed now than they were a few years ago on the eve of this hearing tomorrow. As well as sort of sensory deprivation, surveillance, decreased access to lawyers, scandal in itself, and spying on the lawyers. There's a sense in which this is a kind of, it's been a kind of long-drawn, outhanged drawing and quartering, as they had in the Middle Ages, where the execution of someone was, you know, which was preceded by various sort of grotesque punishments and mutilations, which drew it out into this long process. So that's sort of where we are. As Tariq Ali said the other day, everyone knows the stuff is true. I mean, no one's saying it's not true. And millions have died, millions. Non-Westerners have died. I was funny to think about that. What does Sands remind us of? It's that these millions of people have been mere feathers in the weight that they bear on the scales by which the U.S. and the U.K. and others measure their interests in the Middle East. If we lose this, I don't know. And so he stands as a sort of unique truth teller, really. I mean, there have been a number of truth tellers around. No one's chompsking at a different level as a truth teller, these sort of people. But we see what happens to truth tellers in the current age of so-called Western liberal democracy. Thank you, Derek. I'd like to now invite Chris Williamson to see a few words about... Yes, of course. Thanks very much indeed, Deeper. And first let me say it's great to be showing a platform with a proper journalist, because we've been definitely let down in this country by journalists. And so let me start, really, by paying tribute to you, Deeper, for your tireless work in Julian's behalf. And of course, the Julian Assange Defence Committee too, who've been relentless in fighting Julian's corner from the very start. People like Emmy Butler, who we've heard from already, Clara Campos, and of course Fidel Neves, who you form a consul at the Ecuadorian Embassy, they've demonstrated what solidarity really means. Look, I'm sure we'd all agree here that Julian Assange is an inspiration to the world and a role model for others to follow. But let's be clear, he's been betrayed by this country, betrayed by the politicians on both sides of the House of Commons chamber, betrayed by the journalists who work for the corporate media, and betrayed by a judicial system that serves the interests of war criminals and corporate crooks instead of the interests of justice. Julian's treatment by the British establishment is nothing short of an international outrage. It's brought shame on our country. And of course it's being done, let's remember, it's being done in our name because we're supposed to live in a democracy, aren't we? So it shames all of us too, but I object and I reject the system that's incarcerated a journalist for telling the truth, for exposing, for exposing sickening war crimes and corporate corruption. How dare Dominic Raab accuse China of gross and egregious human rights abuses when that's precisely what his government's doing to Julian Assange? The hypocrisy is absolutely breathtaking and I'm sick to death of listening to ministers castigating countries like Russia, China and Iran when they're either unwilling or incapable of getting their own house in order here in Britain. And what about the leader of the official opposition, Sir Keir Starmer? As a knight of the realm, he's a pillar of the establishment and when he was the director of public prosecutions, he did his level best to get Julian extradited to Sweden on trumped-up charges. And I've got to say I'm very sad that even Jeremy Corbyn said he didn't object to the attempted extradition to Sweden. And the right-wing Labour MP Stella Creasy positively reveled in the feeding frenzy. She even persuaded more than 70 parliamentarians to sign a letter to the Home Secretary in April 2019. 56 of these characters were Labour MPs and peers and nine others had recently resigned the Labour whip to join the ill-fated Chains UK, otherwise known as the funny tinge party. Creasy was insisting on Julian's extradition to Sweden and her parliamentary missive to Sajid Javid urged him to, and I quote, do everything you can to champion action that will ensure that Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden. But look, all of these politicians, all of these parliamentarians knew that the extradition to Sweden was just a pretext. They knew the idea was to get Julian extradited to Sweden so he could then be extradited to the US. Why was I the only MP pushing Julian's case? Where were the other MPs? Where were the MPs? Where were the MPs who claimed to champion free speech? Where were the MPs who bang on about a free press? And where were the socialist MPs who protest about corporate corruption and illegal wars? The unacceptable truth is they were all keeping their heads down. And I've got to say the silence was deafening. Now I'm obviously pleased that some MPs are at last speaking out. I just wish that senior figures like Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonald and Richard Bergen had used their positions when they were shadow ministers to plead Julian's case. The number of MPs who are speaking out is still woefully inadequate. So Julian has clearly been betrayed by Britain's political class. But what about his fellow journalists? With a few notable exceptions, their role has been utterly contemptible. One of those notable exceptions is John McEvoy. He's an investigative journalist who writes for publications such as Declassified UK and the Canary. He recently highlighted the deathly silence of journalists who'd previously mocked Julian but then said nothing about the shocking revelations and they really were shocking revelations that the CIA were plotting to kidnap and assassinate him. Apparently Mike Pompey wanted revenge after WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 files in 2017. This, as I'm sure you're aware, was the largest leak in CIA history and it revealed how UK agencies had held workshops with the CIA to find ways to hack into the household devices of every citizen in the United Kingdom. Why didn't the Fourth Estate call out this clear abuse of power and why hasn't there been wall-to-wall media coverage of the CIA's covert plans to murder an award-winning journalist on British soil? It's an absolute disgrace and an outrage. It's astonishing isn't it that it's hardly been mentioned by the corporate media and when John McEvoy was looking into the coverage of Julian Assange earlier this month he discovered that the BBC which has the world, one of the world's most red news outlets, had only mentioned it once and that was on the Somali language section of the BBC website. Of course a story did appear a couple of times in The Guardian after it first broke although to put that into perspective the week after Alexei Navalny was reportedly poisoned by the Russian government the Guardian published 16 separate stories on the issue including video reports and opinion pieces but stories that embarrass Western intelligence services are invariably played down or ignored altogether by the corporate media. Thankfully though, independent outlets like Declassified UK, the Canary and the Grey Zone still have some journalistic integrity. The independent media are the only ones who are still prepared to pick up the cudgels on our behalf and it was the Grey Zone that first provided the evidence of a CIA-linked proposal to kidnap and poison Julian in May 2020 and of course it was a similar tell that we've just heard when in June this year a key prosecution witness admitted that his entire testimony against Julian was false that that was an explosive revelation yet the corporate media has hardly given it any coverage at all. Anyone who doubted the corporate media's role as a mouthpiece for the establishment must have surely been disabused of those doubts by the way in which Julian's case has been reported. These corporate media hacks have brought their profession into total disrepute. They prove themselves to be nothing more than stenographers for the security services. Fearless journalists they ain't. And here's just a few examples of the ridiculing reportage to which John McEvoy was referring. Now it's almost four years since the Guardian's James Ball, a James Ball claimed and I'm quoting him now, the only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador's embassy is pride apparently. He also said that Julian was unlikely to face prosecution in the United States and two months later he said Julian was being treated like a grounded teen. He should hold his hands up and leave the embassy. Another corporate media hack was also dismissive about Julian's plight. In a piece by Marina Hyde she wrote in the Guardian in 2017 that the moral of the Assange story was wait long enough and bad stuff goes away. Hyde concluded her sneering story with a sarcastic comment that Captain WikiLeaks will get out of pretend jail eventually. And of course the insults and ridiculing have been relentless. When Julian sought political asylum in 2012, Suzanne Moore said this, I bet Assange is stuffing himself full of flattened guinea pigs. He really is the most massive turd. And let me quote what she said in an article for the new statesman after Julian was arrested in 2019. She referred to him as a demented looking gnome being pulled out of the Ecuadorian embassy by the secret police of the deep state or the Met as normal people call them. Incredibly this horrendous hack won the Orwell Prize for journalism the same year. I mean it's hard to believe isn't it? For what was described as her stubborn and brave commentary. But unlike Julian's work there's nothing remotely brave about this cynical character's scribblings. Never mind the Orwell Prize for journalism she's more like a functionary from the Ministry of Truth. I just wonder what George Orwell would make of her if he was alive today. Remember he said that speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act and Suzanne Moore is complicit in that universal deceit as is Nick Cohen who in 2012 described Julian supporters as the definition of paranoia. And he scoffed at the idea that the US could prosecute Julian and pejoratively called him the incontinent leaker. Cohen confidently proclaimed the First Amendment to the US Constitution is the finest defense of freedom of speech yet written. He also insisted that the American Civil Liberties Union thinks it would be unconstitutional for a judge to punish Assange and he boldly declared that Britain has a notoriously laxed extradition treaty with the United States. Every single one of Cohen's assertions was wrong. These corporate media hacks are an absolute disgrace and their employers are even worse. Not one of them published the observations by Nils Melzer on Julian's case as we've heard he's the UN Special Rapporteur and Torture. In June 2019 he wrote a piece for the medium blog site. He admitted that he was skeptical when Julian first appealed to his office for protection and let me quote a few passages from the article that he wrote. He said like most of the public I'd been subconsciously poisoned by the relentless smear campaign which had been disseminated over the years so it took a second knock on my door to get my reluctant attention but once I looked into the facts of this case what I found filled me with repulsion and disbelief. In the end it finally dawned on me that I'd been blinded by propaganda and that Assange had been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed. Once he'd been dehumanized through isolation ridicule and shame just like the witches we used to burn at the stake it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide. Of course these observations were absolutely apocite and it's the corporate media who've radiously peddled the smears to dehumanize Julian. So that's the political class and the corporate media. What about the judicial system? Well so far it's proven itself to be nothing short of a sick joke. Why on earth? Why on earth is Julian, why on earth is Julian even having to fight an extradition application at all let alone find himself incarcerated in a high-security prison for over two years? Article four of the extradition treaty between the UK and the USA is unambiguous. It clearly states that extradition shall not be granted if the offence for which extradition is requested is a political offence. What could be more political than exposing war crimes I ask you? I've heard it claimed that parliament removed the bar on political offences though because the extradition act didn't specifically refer to them when the legislation was passed in 2003 but that doesn't stand any scrutiny at all. When the extradition bill was being debated in the House of Commons in December 2002 the issue of political offences was actually raised by MPs and the government's response was absolutely unequivocal. Responding to the debate on the extradition bill on the 9th of December that year Bob Ainsworth explicitly stated that the bill will ensure that no one can be extradited where the request is politically motivated. So I ask you what the hell is going on? It's as plain as a pike staff as far as I'm concerned that the system that Julian's fighting is completely rotten to the core. As Edward Snowden is reputed to have said when exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime you're being ruled by criminals which pretty much which pretty much sums up Britain today. Look Julian's been betrayed by the politicians he's been abandoned by the corporate media and so far he's been unjustly treated by the judiciary. But we the people are Julian's last line of defence and failure is not an option. With the world standing on the brink of climate catastrophe and the orchestra raising tensions with China the need for fearless journalism has never been more important. So let's make one hell of a stink tomorrow to show the court that the British people say free Julian Assange now. Thank you for that very inspiring speech Chris and if there's a revolution Chris is always at the head. We are glad to stand with you. Our next speaker is someone who has endured a huge amount of stress difficulty hardship as a result of being somebody who's always championed the oppressed. He has used his incredible information technology skills, his intelligence and importantly his character to stand up for what is right and I'm really honoured to welcome to our panel Lauri Love. Hello everybody can you hear me? So firstly apologies for being somewhat delayed traffic and other things conspired to be later than I plan to be. I'm thankful to be invited and honoured to be sitting amongst such distinguished individuals and may I say comrades and to paraphrase Oscar Wilde aka Hacker. I am a Hacker I do not deny it I clave it with pride as I define a Hacker to be someone who sees technology not just as a product that is given to them in a way that it was designed by another to serve some other purpose but as an open possibility to be taken apart put back together new and interesting ways to change the world hopefully for good and it was in that spirit of the Hacker as one who can forge a path in the frontiers of the world that's ever changing because of technology that I joined the internet at a tender early age in the 90s and was inspired by the likes of Julian Assange by the likes of John Perry Barley who wrote the Declaration of Independence of cyberspace and she's too long because I'd love to read it before but we don't have time but then the basic thesis was that there is a new a new world a new digital world where everyone is brought together everyone has in potential an equal footing an equal ability to associate to exercise freedom of speech to enrich themselves through access of information and to dream and by dreaming bring about a different world and that this this this new space this new cyberspace must be free from the the anchors that have weighed down societies and the agenda the the limitations of region factionalism divisions of ethnicity language religion and mundane politics and greed and so these people these pioneers and some called cypher punks called cypher punks because they used them the the science of cryptology cryptography cyphers and beyond cyphers the ability to design systems so that there isn't a need to trust there isn't a need to depend on powers and authorities being benevolent and being in our best interest that we can take the power into our own hands to communicate one with another securely to to create our own infrastructure for the collection and dissemination of information and so Julian Assange inspired me through his his early work in cryptography but obviously through WikiLeaks when as we all know they broke through the mold the restrictions of the press that has unfortunately become suborned and secondary and subverted and corrupted by power and influence you know fallacy impacts for access or to have a comfortable life or because of the the group thing that comes out of them being a very specialized class shall we say that is exclusive of many different people and but we've you've heard of that much better people than me and I will salute my comrade Chris Williamson who I met at the rebel tent at the beautiful days festival and before he had been drummed out of the the Labour Party for standing up for the rights of the Palestinian people and so he knows firsthand what it's like for media to be complicit in a campaign of bad faith in a new endo in a taboo and this is what we see against Julian Assange my personal story in this connection began with the tragic event that we are trying to prevent here which is the avoidable loss of life of a courageous truth teller by the name of Aaron Swartz who was a young internet vendor king in the United States who helped design some of the protocols that we still use on the web today RSS but then went into activism not maybe out of predilection or because he wanted to be involved in politics but out of a sense of necessity because he wanted to again bring about this better world through the internet and he helped stand up against some bad legislation that the United States Congress was bringing into detail internet freedoms and to empower the copyright cartel and the security industries to undermine users rights and because he was so successful because he had been associated with creating technologies to enable whistleblowing to enable the conveying of information securely to outlets such as WikiLeaks technology we now call secure drop that is used all over the world and they had a pretext to arrest him for downloading scientific journal articles from a library computer system at MIT and he was hounded to death by an overzealous prosecutor and because he was in the the bad books of people in power that wanted to make an example of someone so that others would not be so courageous and because he had been an inspiration to others so as after Aaron Swartz is death that there was a campaign on the internet a hack to this campaign shall we say under the banner and branding of anonymous and trying to make shall we say a forced point through the exercise of political speech through means and methods considered outside of the acceptable ones but non-destructively but certainly getting a message out there on various government computer websites saying that something has to change and just to summarize it the reason why Aaron was able to be forced into the tragic decision he made to end his own life was because the United States federal justice system I have to put the air quotes around justice in my head and operates under a coercive plea bargaining system and where by 97% of federal criminal defendants do not even see their day in court do not stand before a jury of their peers to be judged by their peers after an adversarial system of evidence an argument and contention and findings of fact instead they take the plea bargain they take an offer they can't refuse to quote a film about gangsters because this is a story about gangsters and and the reason they take this offer they can't refuse is because the the leeway of the federal criminal sentencing guidelines and the freedom of prosecutors to pile on charges so that they can say you cooperate with us you sacrifice your rights with free trial you turn and you inform upon your comrades become part of our system of oppression and we will give you five years or ten years and if you don't you'll face 75 years it's Aaron faced for accessing science 99 years so I faced for allegedly speaking up about this and then over a hundred years as Julian Assange faces for giving world evidence of war crimes of torture and horrific things done in their name with their tax money ostensibly in the interest of safeguarding freedom and democracy and so it was delightfully ironic as we say in the habit of British understatement when I found myself subject to that same potentially subject to that same American injustice system when after they failed to bring charges against me in the United Kingdom because I didn't agree to subvert my own use of cryptography because I believe that people have a right not only a right but a responsibility to store data securely against robbers against abusive partners and against an abusive state and so having not helped our lovely national crime agency put me in prison here I had the free remarkably similarly dressed people in trainers and short back and sides turn up to my door and say that they were taking me back to America and as they didn't seem to appreciate this was the Metropolitan Police's extradition squad I didn't seem to appreciate that hadn't hadn't been to America and likely never will and but regardless of the fact that I haven't been to America and as such under the common sense understanding of how criminal justice should work could not have broken their laws which if they have validity anywhere that validity must surely end up their borders and not extend across the world but somehow I was regardless taken to the police station taken to Westminster Manchurates Court my parents had to cough up significant for them some of money less significant than the amount that had to be coughed up for our friend Julian but regardless I had to go to prison for a short time until the the bail was secured and I had the privilege of being asked to prepare for the five-year process as it ultimately took to to fight this extradition with some limited freedom just having to travel to a police station quite often to sign bits of paper and give up my passports but at least I was able to access my lawyers to to access the press to access the internet although they did try to ban me from the internet didn't quite work and and so and so I had to go through the process that Julian has gone through and is now we hope and confidently have faith is coming to the right conclusion and so I'll just speak briefly as to why that process is harrowing in ways that hopefully are not too redundant with what our other comrades have said so firstly we might have this naive expectation from watching so much propaganda we see on the television of law and order programs and other attempts to whitewash and romanticize how how justice is run by the state that when you go to a court there will be some effort at objectivity and there will be some attempt to have fairness there will be a judge whose job is to ensure that there is no foul play there is no systematic attempts to to distort the truth and that the process shall shall be fair that you know that the justice should be blind that all should be equal before the law unfortunately this is not the case at the best of times certainly not for people that don't have the privilege that I have of being you know white and sort of middle class Saudi male and but in in the case of extradition against the United States there is not even the pretense of a fair process because the the treaty was renegotiated in the the wake of the the war on terror the war on terror or the war on terror plan earth that was engaged upon by George W Bush and Tony Blair and the other lackeys in the coalition of the willing but had been the agenda of the the people behind those convenient representatives for some time and continues to be their agenda and and it was renegotiated such that there is no requirement for the United States to prove even the lowest definition of there being an answerable case which is the legal term of a prima facie case so on the face of it that there is evidence to believe that this person has committed a crime in this jurisdiction that should be answerable in this jurisdiction and therefore the court should have faith that they will receive a fair trial and on the other side of that process and because this this this requirement was taken away and it meant that I had to sit in that goldfish bowl at Westminster magistrate court as Julian has had to sit and observe a long sequence of lies and distortions and dissimulations be trotted out and be unable to stand up in frustration as I saw Julian do felt very much how I felt in that situation the need to say hold on hold on a minute it's not even not even false it doesn't even make sense what you're saying it's not even conceptually cogent etc instead you have to let the process unfold and you have to let the arguments be argued that are able to be argued and because the court will not entertain such obvious arguments already mentioned as they're the matter of jurisdiction the jurisdiction in the case of America attempting to try people in their corrupted unjust criminal courts for actions undertaken while not in their country is called exorbitant jurisdiction or extraterritorial jurisdiction it should be an easy reason to throw the case out the disparity in sentences to be extradited has to be what's called dual criminality it has to be an equally in offense in the requesting country is the requested country but they do not take into consideration that is not an equal crime if in this country for example for the the the offenses I was accused of one might receive a custodial sentence of 36 months whereas in the requesting country one might expect to spend the rest of their life in a concrete box this is not equivalent in any way but that argument could not be argued it could not be argued as was mentioned that this is clearly a political offense and there's a there's a good punk song from the 90s by skunk and ansi that says I won't use the swear word but yes it's freaking political everything's political and there is not an act of truth telling that isn't political especially when that truth telling is about the ways in which politics has perpetrated horrific abuses and the the so called measures that are supposed to hold them in check the cherished forfeit state has not just failed and to provide that necessary check and balance to power but has become complicit in its exercise again as we've heard so eloquently so in the absence of any of these quite reasonable arguments it had to come down to the question of an incredibly relevant and important question of whether someone might survive incarceration in that system survive even the process before they are sentenced under color of law which is which involves sitting in the jails going through protracted trials designed to to wear you down and to destroy you and in my case the place that I would be expected to go and the place where Julian would be expected to go if he were to be extradited is a horrific institution in New York called the Metropolitan Corrections and Detention Center where people who watch the news may know that someone recently did commit suicide the infamous Jeffrey Epstein was certainly killed in that institution despite in my extradition there being great pains taken to suggest that this is a safe place to put someone that if you are suicidal quite understandably because you've been taken away from your country and your family to a place you've never been to be torn down and tortured by strangers or trying to do the right thing that you might find yourself lacking any more and any hope and knowing that your life has been reduced from all its possible value all its possible capacity to being an example to others to scare them out of similar acts of courage that you might then want to take that way out and not sit through that for the rest of your life and so it was found in my case that despite the great efforts made by the prosecutors to suggest that it's all hunky-dory and it's a ring-a-ring of roses but you know like nursery rhymes and kumbaya in this detention system that actually you know it is horrific that when somebody is deemed to be suicidal quite understandably many are most will actually attempt to cover this up because the so-called treatment to make you safe is to put you on suicide watch and suicide watch is unfortunately just a euphemism for another kind of solitary confinement where you are taken away from society taken away from any group activities and you are kept you know another small cell not allowed outside and watched night and day until you find this so torturous that you will you will make out that you're feeling much better and go back into the general general company of the prison and it is at that point that people sadly affect their suicides and they do so in numbers that would make you sigh if you were to have had to look into it as I have had to and so so in my case I lost in the first instance at Westminster Magistrates Court as was to be expected because until until the case of Gary McKinnon another person who was accused of hacking not out of any criminal or malicious intent but to to seek after truth before his case which had to be stopped by a political intervention by Theresa May and perhaps the one good thing that she didn't her career but opinions made of her there had been an expectation that United States would win it was just a default presumption after Gary McKinnon's case they took away the discretion of the Home Secretary to consider the human rights implications and I have to spell this out and I'm sorry I won't be much longer but I have to spell this out because it's because of how Cathgesk it is so whereas before it is and remains both a judicial and a political decision to render up a citizen or a subject of one nation state of one sovereign territory to another judicial because it requires an assessment should require an assessment of facts and evidence and political because it's necessarily a transaction between states and so the final check was that the Home Secretary would be obliged to make that final to underwrite that that final decision to put their signature or their stamp on it and they would be required under human rights law in this country stemming from the European Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and stemming from case law that says that all decisions of the executive must act in accordance with human rights they had to consider whether that somebody's right to life and and dignity and other human rights would be infringed by this extradition and the government took away this requirement and so like we had to write a letter to the Home Secretary and we received a reply saying I'm you know very much aware of the circumstances and unfortunately I'm my hands are tied and I can cannot consider whether the likelihood of you dying as a result of me signing this paper is a reason not to do so so that's that just baffles me that this is somehow considered to be in line with our even our unrest and constitution and but we lost and it went to an appeal and and the only reason we really managed to get it to an appeal I should say is because I was supported and I owe great debt to not just many people such as yourselves I mean many of you said it's the same people I recognize and I'm thankful to see again and but also because an organization that that was set up by Julian and WikiLeaks in the wake of Edward Snowden's flight and his flight and and being rendered stateless in in Moscow after they tried to or they successfully took down a plane of a president of another sovereign country in Latin America to try and get him a fund was raised for him and an organization called the Courage Foundation was created to to stand up for whistleblowers and people involved in in truth telling and it was through their support that we we managed to organize a campaign similar to the campaign that I'm seeing in front of me whereby it was brought to impress upon the courts that it this is not just a matter that they can rule with unscrupulously and expect to get away with because people are watching and people care and and people stand up for what is right and and demand not not free violence but not passively either but forcibly through their voices and their their physical presence and their ability to speak as people here are speaking about what is right and to you know to make others listen to have them see and so after a another few more years of powering process before a judge a panel of judges on the Court of Appeals was the Justice Usly Kentankeris old gentleman who was so far in the prime of his years that he didn't care about upsetting the whatever special relationship politics might require deference to the United States and the newly elected Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales or Judge E. McJuggs face as I enduringly call him and and I was happy to see this week that he is also on the panel that will be hearing the case tomorrow and the first day and if they let me into that courtroom I will look him in the eyes and remind him subliminally and the decision that he and Mr Justice Usly came to which was an old quote that it would be unjust and oppressive unjust and oppressive being precise judicial jurisprudential quite precise legal language be unjust and oppressive in light of our obligations under human rights to send someone such as myself and someone as is now argued such as Julian who would face such dehumanizing and torturous conditions as to make it in in light of our character our disposition our history of mental health or mental uniqueness shall we say