 Julian Assange once remarked how surprised he was at how rare courage was, much rarer than intelligence. Yet without it we're not truly alive, we're just breathing in and out. If wars can be started with lies, he said, peace can be started with truth. And he identified the media as being complicit. They'd become propagators of lies. Working in the newsroom as I was during the so-called war on terror. It was almost impossible to question the war on terror. It was treasonous because the implication was you don't support our troops, you're supporting the terrorists. And in my view, we were creating terrorists. When I became aware that this young Australian had made it his mission to take on the whole political media juggernaut, I was in awe. But I also was very afraid for him. He was without a doubt brilliant and courageous, and he was going to apply that brilliance and courage in an attempt to make the world a better place for there to be peace, not just endless wars, where the deaths of civilians are inevitably collateral damage. So having set up a way for whistleblowers to upload material anonymously, he soon attracted, of course, the biggest case of leaked material ever, and set about establishing another first, a collaboration with media organisations around the world and the network of individuals, individual experts around the world to verify the authenticity of the documents and to assist in the redaction of names and to identify and write stories. So it was after the 2010 releases that Stuart proposed he be awarded the Sydney Peace Medal for his enormous service to human rights, to society, and in recognition of his courage. The risk to his safety was clear. He had taken on the most powerful government in the world. He had attracted the biggest leak ever, and his networked media machine was spewing out tens of thousands of reports around the world. The 2010 releases, we all know, reveal war crimes, large numbers of unreported civilian deaths, and how US foreign policy and diplomacy were used to prosecute endless, over-their wars, as American commentators called them. In this same year, a relentless vilification campaign commenced, and his extradition sought by sweeping, which refused to guarantee that they'd not onward extraditing to the United States. Julian knew that he was being investigated by a grand jury. He sought and was granted refuge by Ecuador and spent seven years in the London Embassy. When I visited him in the embassy in 2013, he told me that he fled to the embassy not once, but twice because the first time the ambassador was away. In contradiction of international law, he was dragged out of the embassy by the UK police, ostensibly for jumping bail, but the UK and the new regime in Ecuador were simply doing the bidding of the US. He's now spent over three years in Belmarsh prison, while the US extradition request and appeals proceed through the legal system. Much is made of the decision to prosecute by Trump in contrast to Obama, but the indictment is for the 2010 releases. The decision to proceed with an indictment occurred following the release of Vault 7 in 2016, and former CIA director Mike Pompeo was enraged over the exposure of the CIA's bag of tricks. The world now knows that the agency can impersonate a Russian hacker. Vault 7 followed the DNC emails in 2016, so there was bloodlust there on the part of Democrats and great support for his indictment. In my view, blaming Julian for Hillary's loss to Trump is a failure to understand the purpose of journalism in democracy, to withhold information is to interfere with the democratic process. The media's role isn't to be partisan, but that is precisely the position it takes, beating war drums from the outset as they are now doing the situation created by the United States using NATO. Julian himself said choosing between Hillary and Trump was like having to choose between cholera and conorrhea. When it became clear that Ecuador was to betray him and Russia was suggested as a country of asylum, he ruled it out knowing that he would forever be referred to as a Russian tool, that this was proof that Russia was behind this leak. We know that the use of the Espionage Act to prosecute a journalist and publish it for the first time is intended to set a precedent and to punish him as severely as possible without executing him, but killing him slowly. A process that began in 2011 with his vilification and arbitrary detention. While he continued to be showered with journalism, integrity and human rights awards, his successful ostracisation smoothed the way for his persecution and prosecution with great overreach to ensure precedent is set that will frighten anyone considering embarrassing the United States again. The callousness and stupidity of many of my colleagues I'm sad to say in their total disregard of the abuse of Julian's human rights and in their failure to understand the repercussions for all investigative journalists of this precedent has been truly mind-boggling. Not his union though the MEAA, not the international journalists union, parliamentarians around the world and a multitude of human rights organizations including amnesty somewhat belatedly. The repercussions for journalism of course impact on the health of our democracy and that's a topping in itself, but I'd like to talk a bit about the legal process and the United States assurances. In December last year the High Court reversed the district court's decision refusing the U.S. request to extradite Julian on the basis that to extradite him would be oppressive because of the risk of suicide and the likelihood he would not survive incarceration in the United States. Those of us that initially took comfort that the Chief Justice who had delivered the Laurie Love decision was sitting on this case were quickly disappointed when he interrupted the defense council during a hearing when the defense council was referring to Laurie Love whose extradition was refused to point out that this was oh this was a very different case he had eczema. Now as Nils Melzer pointed out you don't need the Chief Justice to have regard to a precedent but you do need him if you want to change the precedent he himself set. The High Court agreed with the prosecutor that the racer should have warned the United States of her potential decisions so they could take action by offering assurances. In effect the High Court reinforced the notion that the judge's role was to assist one side to assist the United States in these proceedings. Furthermore the High Court judges found that the assurances should be accepted because they were solemn undertakings by the US and were therefore reliable. So the High Court ruled the case should be sent back to the district court to reverse the decision and to order extradition. The defense then had to ask the same High Court judges to certify a number of points of law of general importance that they saw in order to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court. Now when that High Court decision was delivered the other week Julian I'm told was not present and was not we don't know whether he wasn't present because he was unwell or whether he was not permitted to be present. Access to journalists was scandalous for journalists outside London. We were not informed as to whether we would have access at all prior to the hearing on commencement of the hearing. We received a link but then we were left looking at a black screen with no audio. So the High Court judges certified only one of the grounds in that hearing regarding the timing of the assurances. The timing of the provision of the assurances. Now providing assurances that can't be tested can't be scrutinized raises issues of procedural fairness and natural justice. The long held approach by the courts has been to require all relevant matters to be raised in the magistrates court. Underpinning their departure in those principles in practice is the categorization of an assurance as an issue rather than as evidence. The decision in this case is important also because it sets a new precedent whereby an assurance can be freely introduced later. So it's an issue of importance in the predictability and progression of extradition cases going forward. The assurances that were given though were not assuring in any way for a number of reasons. They came with the proviso that the US could withdraw them. Should they find that he's done something new that offends them? Some conduct or which can include speech or unspecified behavior. This of course gave rise to further grounds to object to the assurances. The two grounds on which the defence sought leave to appeal that were dismissed were one based on Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights that the conditions that still may be imposed are illegal. And secondly the extreme prison conditions of the assurances bar could be imposed with no further explanation by the United States if authorities found them to be justified according to the assessment of any number of US departments or agencies which could trigger their imposition. So it's not the viability of the assurances that can be appealed here because they knocked back both those grounds. It's whether there should be any scrutiny of them whatsoever or not. So the High Court is very much limiting the scope of the appeal to the Supreme Court. Craig Murray points out that it's avoiding discussions in that court that would be damaging to the United States, enabling a refusal of extradition by the UK's highest court on a technicality that avoids condemning US prison conditions in the court. So the focus is on the timing of the offer of the assurances. Julian can now seek permission from the Supreme Court to appeal the High Court's decision in the US's favour. In reality in spite of how solemn the Chief Justice seems to regard the US assurances, the second reason they are meaningless is because we know very well the US has reneged on such assurances in the past that it is provided to the United Kingdom and to Spain. So where to from here? If Julian's appeal to the Supreme Court fails, the court will send the case back to the magistrates court to order extradition. Julian can then counter appeal the district court's decision that Beretsa was wrong not to include in her basis for rejecting extradition important issues such as the political motivation that it's a press freedom case, the illegal accessing of legally privileged material, new corroborating evidence that the CIA planned to kill him and the collapse of the so-called hacking charge after the key unreliable US witness outed himself as a liar that he lied to the FBI. If the Supreme Court rules for Julian, he should immediately be released, except the US has already flagged that they're simply going to issue another indictment or beef up the assurances. This is death by process. Julian faces another two years of this in the United Kingdom and a decade of legal process in the United States. Will he survive this? I don't think so. Will he? Does the UN rapporteur on torture Nils Nelson think he certainly doesn't think so? So the notion that this is all okay because the US has said he could serve out his sentence in Australia is obscene. In the best of circumstances that would be a protracted process and depend on how inclined the Australian Prime Minister at the time might be and possibly 15, 20 years time. Julian must never be sent to the United States. He would not get a fair trial jury in the eastern state of Virginia would be employees of US agencies or their families. The CIA plotted to kill him and spied on meetings with his lawyers and seized legally privileged material and the CIA would have to say in the conditions he beheld in prison. Anything he has said or done publicly or privately since February 2021 could be used by the United States to justify treatment that the UK courts had determined would pose a serious risk to his life. James Wooddale the New York Times Attorney in the Pentagon papers case listed the ways that the US breached laws and court rules in that case and he said that in this case the assurances are not worth the paper they're written on. Above all Julian can't be sent to the US because of his health, his health which has deteriorated greatly. A maximum security prison is no place for a publisher let alone one who has already spent seven years in arbitrary detention with no sunlight, exercise or proper medical care and in a state of increasing anxiety following years of vilification and surveillance. Julian has already paid for his courage with a decade of his life and with his health. Nils Melza said two doctors experienced in dealing with victims of torture were unequivocal. Julian was suffering from the effects of long-term torture both psychologically and physically. After three years in Belmarsh he is much worse. He's a shadow of his former self. I was shocked the last time I saw him in a thumbnail at the bottom of my screen during a hearing watching the high court appeal from a video room in Belmarsh. He looked extremely unwell. He sat down to look at a computer screen and he struggled to keep his eyes open then he couldn't keep his head up so he had to prop his head up in the palm of one hand and then he couldn't keep his eyes open. He was completely glazed over. His eyes were completely glazed so he obviously couldn't concentrate and he couldn't stay seated. He must have been aware that he was being watched in this state so he just got up and moved out of sight. We got no information after that as to what happened to him. He just disappeared. Now generally the host would be responsible and if we asked to see more of the defendant they would accommodate it or not but in this case we had absolutely no information. We found out much later that Julian suffered a transient ischemic attack in other words a mild stroke often a precursor to a major stroke. Now in this case he would need to have an MRI of the brain which would tell you how serious it was and how likely he is to have a major stroke but he won't have had one. Stella Morris told me recently that only a prison doctor has seen him for some time. Without a doubt Julian is not getting the medical care that he needs. It's disgraceful that our government has not asked the US to drop the charges or advocated on his behalf to ensure that he's released. He spent three years in prison with no conviction. This is a political case and requires a political solution and there are precedents. They intervened with David Hicks, Peter Grester and more Gilbert. The district court judge decided that political motivation could not be considered because though it's a treaty provision it was excluded from domestic legislation and that would have to be assumed with intentional. That UK politicians have argued the extradition treaty is lopsided and as we have seen time and time again the United States do not extradite their own. We're seeing that at the moment with the UK in the case of Saccolas which has been going on for some time. Now what can we do? I think it's very important that we don't feel impotent and that we don't feel despair. We need to be calling out the United States and the UK's hypocrisy and the shameless subservience of the UK and of our politicians here, of our government. Momentum is building up amongst human rights organizations and journalists organizations and parliamentarians around the world. There are people who put their safety and freedom and lives at risk in the service of justice like Julian, like David McBride who's also facing life in prison and like Bernard Caleri. In their dedication to justice, to truth and to human rights and to democracy all three men are as one. If they are destroyed it will have been enabled by our complacency. Einstein put it rather well. The world he said is a dangerous place not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don't do anything about it. You are all here watching tonight because you're engaged but our mission is to engage as many others as we can, annoy the hell out of our politicians to take action and campaign against those who don't.