 Here with us, Stefania Maurizzi from Ilfato Quotidano, she's an investigative journalist and Nils Menzer, who's the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and they are here tonight to dissect the Julian Assange and WikiLeaks case and so the stage is yours. Yes, thank you. Absolutely, we are very lucky to have the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Menzer tonight, so I will have many questions, but I expect questions for you and I hope you will have many questions for us as well. So let's start Nils about this case because I suppose you have hundreds of cases every year and why you focus on this with many cases of serious torture and all sorts of serious human rights violations. Well thanks Stefania for the question because I think that's what many people ask themselves, how are you focusing on a person who's locked up or was locked up at the time in an embassy with a cat on the skateboard, how can it be torture, right? And to be honest with you, that's what I thought in the beginning because you're right, I received 10 to 15 requests of individuals either by the victims themselves that have been tortured or exposed to a risk of torture or their lawyers and their family members or NGOs, so I get about 15 cases per day on my desk and I can do maybe one. So I really have to choose quite quickly and I remember I was writing a report for the United Nations in December 2018 so that would have been actually three years ago and I had this little message coming up on my screen saying Julian Assange's lawyers are asking for your protection and I immediately have this emotional reaction of oh no not this one, isn't this this hacker and rapist and you know a traitor and I'm not going to you know be manipulated by this guy and so I swapped it off my screen and I continued working on my report and it took me three months until I actually I got contacted again by his lawyers in March 2019 about a month before he was expelled from the embassy and they sent me some medical reports from an independent doctor a US doctor who was specialized in examining torture victims who had visited Guantanamo and so on and she had visited him in the embassy not as an Assange activist at all and she and she came to the conclusion in that medical opinion that the convention against torture was being violated that his living conditions were inhumane and I thought if if a person like this comes to that conclusion I'd probably better have a look at this case. Sorry first of all let's name her because she's very authoritative. Yeah it's Sandra Crosby is her name so she's one of the first doctors who independent doctors who visited Guantanamo and really someone who is very highly regarded and impartial so I looked at this but I also received some other evidence and you know Stefania you had a very important role in making that available through your freedom of information litigation where you received the release of some of the email correspondence between the Swedish prosecution service and the UK prosecution service because at the basis of the Assange case in the beginning was where these allegations of rape in Sweden and so on and those those these correspondence really cast some doubt on the legitimacy of this prosecution which I had never doubted before and so I started realizing that I had a lot of prejudice against Assange but I didn't really know what the evidence was and the more I looked into this case the more I saw that it doesn't hold up there's really no evidence for this narrative and I decided well I think there's something wrong here I can't rely on the governments I can't rely on what I found in the internet just like this and so I really have to go and look at this case myself and I decided to visit Julien Assange in London I asked for permission to visit him in the embassy and as soon as I asked for permission three days later they expelled him I might have sped it up also I fear although we know today that this expulsion had been planned for months before but all of a sudden everything went really really fast they expelled him and he was arrested by the British and put in a high security prison in Belmarsh in London where I visited him about three weeks four weeks later on the 9th of May 2019 with two specialized doctors I didn't expect to find torture to be quite honest with you I expected to find a man who's you know a bit stressed who is in bad health because he's you know been in a room in the embassy for six years and more and that he needed some medical treatments I would make some recommendations and I was sure we're in Britain now you know he's in British hands this is a rule of law country there's going to be due process they're not going to extrad into the US and and it's fine but then what I realized is how the authorities reacted to my comments and to my requests is that they they didn't want to engage in a discussion on this case they didn't want to listen to my assessment and both of the doctors that I took with me are very specialized people one is a psychiatrist the other is the former president of the world forensic society I mean there's very established forensic doctor they've been examining torture victims for 30 years and both of them independently from each other came to the conclusion that Jury Nassan showed all the symptoms that are typical for a victim of psychological torture and psychological torture is not some kind of a light form of torture it is really extremely grave destabilization of the identity through isolation constant threat constant stress constant also confusion through arbitrariness and the defamation humiliation all these elements together are deliberately employed to to destroy a person's you know stability and identity and we could actually measure neurological damage on Jury Nassan already and cognitive impairments that were due to that constant stress and harassment that he was exposed to in the embassy already and has been exposed to since then so we came to a clear assessment this person has been tortured and when I confronted the authorities with this they basically shut down they didn't want to engage with me in a discussion and the same happened with Sweden because Sweden had contributed to this and Ecuador and the US all of these countries basically refused to engage in a dialogue with me on this and now I have to point out I'm mandated by states I mean I'm I'm the UN special rapporteur on torture I'm not an NGO person I'm not an activist I'm not a journalist I'm not an ambilitling that I think that all of this is very important but when you talk to states as someone who's been appointed by states to do exactly that to transmit allegations of torture to them you would expect them to at least engage in a dialogue and they refused and when I see when I saw that I was sure now something's wrong here and I started really investigating this case I looked deeply into the Swedish case I looked into you know the US case where we saw that the US is accusing Assange of espionage and I really started digging into this case and the more I did the more dirt came out and not on the side of Assange but on the side of the governments and that's really a long answer to your first question why did I take on this case because I felt well if if we have a case of torture in a rule of law western democracy like Sweden and Britain and as the United Nations rapporteur I cannot if I have evidence for this and I went there with two specialized doctors to look at this I mean it's consolidated I you know by law they have an obligation now to investigate this and to you know to compensate him and prosecute those who are culpable and so on there is no discussion but if democracies can afford to simply ignore this well what does this mean for our society and that was the first thing and the second thought was and by the way what does this mean for press freedom you know what does this mean and and and I've never been a press freedom specialist but I thought well here we have a person who who is being persecuted for the fact that he has this disclosed not even stolen but he's received and this disclosed published true information that proved serious crimes on the part of government officials torture murder I mean horrible stuff I mean very serious crimes if if if this becomes a crime to bring the evidence for other crimes and we see that those criminals are not being prosecuted but the the witness basically who informs the public is being prosecuted and threatened with 175 years in prison what does this mean for people like you Stefania you know who are investigative journalists and if people like you no longer can work what does this mean for all the rest of us in society what does it mean do we have a right to know what the governments are doing with the power that we give to them in a democracy with the tax money we pay to them or does it become a crime if we ask your own questions I mean this is really that's why this is so important as science is as important as any other victim of torture you know that they're all the same but the case is a precedent case that is of enormous importance for the functionality of of democracy and the rule of law absolutely absolutely you have a book which is coming out in February and this your investigation on the case I was really impressed by the chapter on collateral murder your analysis of that brutal attack on civilians and you analyze it from your point of view as an expert on human rights law I would like to ask you to to do a quick analysis for our public to explain where the work crimes are involved what are your conclusions and so on right okay I'll quickly show the book just so people can see it it comes out in February and it's true that you know in the beginning I explain my own role obviously the role of of WikiLeaks but this collateral murder video was a very important publication actually the first big publication of WikiLeaks is this video where that was recorded by a attack helicopter in Iraq a US attack helicopter it's a standard you know tele lens camera and it shows how how those those helicopters are circling over Baghdad and and we see people walking in the streets and and then you can hear the radio communication and and the helicopters basically report that we have you know several people with AK-47s which is a form of an automatic rifle like Kalashnikov and and they they ask for permission to fire and then but on on the image we cannot see armed people really in the beginning to be to admit the truth we can see two people in a group of about 20 who might be carrying a weapon but then also we have to know that at the time in 2007 when this was recorded in Iraq in Baghdad the US occupying forces had authorized the Iraqi population to own Kalashnikov's and to carry them you know to keep them at home especially to protect themselves from the looting because when after the invasion of the British and the the US the rule of law broke down in in Iraq and and they needed people to be able to defend themselves they were actually allowed to carry that type of weapon and so and so they received permission to fire and then what we can see is that that a group of about 10 people is just being massacred they're in civilian clothing they're they're walking relaxed on the street so they're clearly not preparing any any attack or something we know that there is some some US soldiers from the radio communication we can tell that there's some US soldiers on the ground somewhere close to there but nobody is is preparing an attack you know and and so we see how these 10 people are being massacred and then obviously those we hear those nasty comments by soldiers like you know good shooting and you see these bloody bastards and these these types of remarks but the most troubling thing is that then we have the the helicopter makes a couple of circles and and they report what they see on the ground all that the dead bodies and then some of the wounded people who are crawling around and from the conversations we understand that the soldiers know that it's prohibited to attack wounded people and I want to you know I've been a law of armed conflict expert on the use of force for the international committee of the Red Cross I've been teaching this at university level for more than 10 years I've analyzed hundreds of of combat operations as an expert so I can easily see that these soldiers are aware that they cannot lawfully attack those wounded people and that also you in the law of war you cannot attack people who rescue the wounded as long as they're not fighting themselves and then we see a minibus coming with civilians trying to rescue this man and that this man we're talking about is a wounded journalist is a Reuters journalist who was wounded in that attack and the soldiers the US soldiers asked for permission to fire on these people and they receive permission and then they they basically you know massacre the wounded person and the rescuers and with a machine gun and and and there's even in the minibus the two the two children of the driver they're they're gravely wounded so I mean all of this this is a clear war crime when you deliberately attack a wounded person who's no longer participating in fighting or rescue personnel that's only trying to rescue someone that is without any question a war crime in the first scene I think we have to be fair that you know these helicopters are circling in about one and a half miles distance the video we see is recorded by a tele tele objective lens so the soldiers are not that close when they look out of the window they cannot see any details it's too far away so they have to rely exclusively on that picture and we also have to be fair that they can see this picture only once in real time and they have to decide immediately they cannot like us rewind it a hundred times and watch it again from the armchair so all of this being said though you know the first attack I think in the best case it's a very sloppy mistake and I don't you know I think it's already it crosses the line to a war crime but this would be for a court to decide but the second attack where the attack a clearly wounded person and from the conversations we we know that the soldiers know that you know they say okay he's wounded and and and and then they're saying oh now someone is coming to pick them up and picking up the weapons can be fire the law of of war is very clear this is absolutely prohibited and what happened there is is a clear war crime and the scandal is that everybody knows that the soldiers knew that I mean the Department of Defense in the US knew that the US government knew that the public knows it I mean it's obvious when you watch the film but it's and we have video evidence but nobody has ever been prosecuted for that that's the first scandal the second scandal is let me tell you why no one has prosecuted why there was no international criminal court investigation nothing well because the US is not party to the ICC treaty of course they have not you know they have made sure that no one can prosecute them for war crimes and also now legally any country in the world could and not even could but would have to prosecute these people as soon as they're on their territory because war crimes are so-called universal jurisdiction crimes which means if I commit a war crime anywhere in the world no matter what nationality I am no matter where I am the country where I am has to arrest me and to prosecute me or to extradite me to a country that will prosecute me that's what the Geneva Conventions say that's what the international criminal law says and not only the ICC treaty but actually even the Geneva Conventions that the that the US has have ratified so so but the reason is clear it's a political reason because no one dares to prosecute the US soldier if the US doesn't do it now to me the most troubling thing is that the US doesn't do it because it's in their interest to prosecute you know people who violate the law of war because we know that the you know the discipline in an army diminishes very quickly when you tolerate people committing war crimes and so it's very very important for I mean even for just the hygiene of the armed forces that they prosecute these things now not to say that you know for the humanitarian reasons and the human rights of these people who have the murder that their families that don't receive compensation and and then it also means that these types of operations proliferate you know if you don't stop it like this this becomes the normal modus operandi and that's exactly what many veterans of the iraq war have said that this is not collateral murder is not an exception this was the standard procedure this happened every day in that period and so that's really a major scandal but you know the second thing I want to say is the even you know bigger scandal is some people are being prosecuted and and that's the whistleblower that actually leaked this information and and the the journalist who published it um so so that is really turning the world of justice upside down when murderers are walking free and the witness you know who witnessed the murderer brings the with 175 years in prison that's enormous that's a bit that's more than any war criminal in the hake has ever received that's what we're looking at and and you know when you're asking well you know what what is assange actually being accused of when you look at the indictment it's all about receiving this type of information and publishing this type of information that's what I mean you tell me but that's what an investigative journalist does no absolutely absolutely this is what we do on a regular on a daily basis yeah and so and so now if i ask you an honest question stefania if i gave you today a usb stick with collateral murder video number two and and another 250 000 diplomatic cables would you publish them i mean 10 years ago you probably would have because at the time even the new york times the guardian at the spiegel and limon and everybody you know wanted to co-publish this together with assange but today they're not even you know they're not even really reporting on what's happening here and would you know if i ask you do you feel intimidated by what's happening to assange would you feel comfortable publishing these things today i i i do feel really intimidated i think i would approach this with serious serious concern of not being protected by anything at the end of the day because i have seen in the last 13 years which have been covering and investigating this case that julian assange and the wicked externalists that have tried everything they have tried to use the laws they have tried to you to ask for asylum they have tried to look for protection by the by the media community they have tried everything and with the exception of the un authorities the un special reporter on torture and the un a working group on arbitrary detention they have received no no protection whatsoever so i would be terrified honestly yes and i think that's i think this is the type of question we have to ask ourselves it's not about will assange be extradited or not yes it's important but it's already working you see the example has already been set for the last 10 years this man has not been free he's been underrun from a country that's accusing him for telling the truth about its crimes that's really what's happening here because nothing else that he's accused of has been proven and they they've tried hard they've invested millions in trying to create a narrative but everything else from you know rape to hacking to you know treason all these things there is no that there's no proof whatsoever so all of this is constructed to push him into a corner but and also to intimidate people like you and i think that's that's what we have to understand that's the effect of this yes it's an assange and his health and his person and that's important for the individual but my point of this being a general in our case of general importance is proven by your reaction and you i know are one of the more courageous investigative journalists and you've been fighting you know those those the the secrecy for very long through your foil litigation that has been so valuable in producing you know evidence and and we know that you know a lot of key evidence is still being kept secret by these states and so that's what we're risking to lose this access to the truth that is so essential for for democracy absolutely definitely and you know we we know that it's precisely what they want and that's why we we had to fight hard because it's it's about the society we want and if we allow to go out to if we allow them to go ahead with this persecution with this extradition they will it would be the end of the press freedom and the it would be end of of of investigative journalism and the right of the public to know it's not just about us it's not just about the investigative journalists it's about the public right to know i mean and i think it's important you know i know too many people this might sound alarmist you know oh this is exaggerated oh come on this is just our sound and he's going to prosecute and everything's going to be fine no you know when you look in history that's exactly how powerful states have behaved and dictators and you know before creating dictatorships you know you take someone and you you you destroy their reputation you accuse them of you know stupid things and and or even serious crimes you know but but they cannot be proven and you destroy their reputation and then when when when the whole public is convinced that you know this is a bad guy then you set an example to him on you know press freedom but nobody cares about him because i think it's just him and nobody likes him because of his reputation has been destroyed but the problem is the precedent case can be applied to anybody afterwards and that's exactly what they're trying to do and i think it's very very important that we are aware of this it's not whether you like or dislike ascent it's whether you like or dislike the rights that he has and that you have and that everybody else has which is the right of freedom of expression and that's not just the freedom of expression is not just the right to say anything you want and think anything you want but also to receive that information that's the public has a right under the freedom of expression to hear and to read and to see the evidence of government misconduct and that's what they're trying to suppress now if you say this is a conspiracy theory look it's very it's very obvious the torture the murder of civilians of journalists or collateral murder and other documents has been proven it's not something that the government has said it's not true no they have never they have never claimed that anything is not true that vicki leeks has has has proven so actually by law those officials have to be prosecuted and they should spend you know many years in prison some of them so but they will say but i received orders you know from up and it goes higher up and the chain of responsibility doesn't end in the attack helicopter it ends somewhere in a government building you know in a nice little office with or a big office rather with thick carpets and that's what they're afraid of because the commander is responsible for this so that's why they cut this and they cut this and they intimidate everybody and they criminalize it's basically they say reclassify the information and if you publish it you'll be punished and reclassified for reasons of national security but that's not true they're classifying it for their own impunity that's what they want to protect and it's natural you know if you if you accuse someone of murder in court and you allow him to classify all the evidence against him and to make it a crime to disclose it he will do it for sure so let's be realistic you know governments are not good or bad they're just normal human beings and if they make a mistake they want to cover it up like everybody else so that's the natural behavior that's why we really have to insist on transparency for the powerful you know we have to insist on oversight on the separation of power and that it is we have to insist that it be treated as a serious crime to circumvent these checks and balances because it threatens the very core of our society of our democracy and of our civil liberties and when you look at the legal proceedings that Assange has been exposed to I'm not going to bore you with a lot of legal technicalities but I've really investigated every single legal proceeding from the Swedish accusations or you know allegations of sexual misconduct where I was able to read original documents because I do speak Swedish and and you know luckily I had all those those documents that that you also better handle through the FOIA litigation and and I can I don't know what happened between Assange and these women but what I do know is that the government in Sweden never cared about that they clearly from the beginning wanted to create a rape narrative and maintain it and to avoid you know him getting a chance a fair day in court to actually deal with this the narrative that he abated these accusations that he was hiding in the embassy because of the sexual allegations is false he offered to come to Sweden he wanted to to testify in this case but he was afraid that the Swedish would send him to the US without a legal proceeding as they had done with other people before and he just wanted guarantees from them and the Swedish didn't want to give those guarantees which is really something that I can tell from international experience that's a warning if if the country doesn't want to give you those guarantees you better not go there so he was he was right not to go and and they really abused those legal institutions to keep him in limbo you know suspected of rape but unable to defend himself and so his reputation suffered because of that and and then he continued obviously with with you know the economic pressures on Ecuador once they had a new president Moreno the US puts Ecuador under pressure and we have written evidence of congress writing to the president of Ecuador saying look we would be happy to support you economically and to you know to help you bring up you know country that the country situation economic situation to financially you know to support you but there is one not several there's one problem and that's the situation of Assange and we need him to be handed over so we can start helping you so that we have a lecture of of October 2018 of US Congress to president Moreno and from then on it was clear and Moreno was working together with the British and the and the US to to expel him from the embassy so that was and that was done without any rule of law proceeding you know he had official asylum and it was just taken from him along with his nationality he had no right to access a court to have a lawyer defending him it was just from one hour to the other he was expelled and the UK behaved just the same way when you think the UK is the quintessential rule of law country which I can you know this was my conviction as a professor in the UK University and then you see that we have a judge who is insulting him publicly in a court hearing where Assange had said nothing except I plead not guilty and then we have another judge who's in charge for the first couple of months for the extradition procedure and her husband had been exposed by WikiLeaks I mean it's a there's a conflict of interest it's just you know even it's a perception of bias that you cannot afford in in a democracy and then we have you know him being put in a high security prison although he's not serving a sentence for two years he's been in Belmarsh he's not serving a sentence he's just being held there in extradition detention and normally people should be allowed to work and to be with their family and maybe they have an ankle brace that or they think Assange's case because he has you know salt asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy before maybe they put him in house arrest like they did with Pinochet but you will never there's no legal basis to put someone in a high security prison they do this with him because they want to silence him because they want to intimidate you journalists that's the reason and you know when you see this happening may I stop you and ask you something very very serious like the the CIA attempt to kidnap or poison him which is I mean which receives so little consideration if we I mean I was really upset about realizing how little it was considered in the legal process in the absolutely we've had we've had indicators before we've had that the security company that was working for the Ecuadorian embassy to guard the Ecuadorian embassy UC global was actually behind the back of the Ecuadorian government cooperating with the CIA and and you know streaming video feeds from from surveillance cameras from the embassy to to the CIA 24 7 but not only that we also had indicators before a former employees of that company's you know testifying in court that that you know there were assassination plans for for you know against asand by the CIA and this was then confirmed also by this yahoo you know disclosure in september this year where more than 13 agents or former agents of the CIA allegedly confirmed that that there were plans to kidnap or asand to you know disappear him in a black site or even to assassinate him was considered at least but then found to be too dangerous but the plan was to poison him now I mean I'll just take another case Navalny right that everybody knows you know and says that that allegedly the the Russian government tried to poison him well that's what we're talking about but in you know it's the same thing it's just that in our own case and rightly so you know everybody is is is protesting and you know of the western governments are very courageously you know imposing sanctions and so on but when the same thing is being planned by the CIA against asand nobody speaks out and that's that's what I think you know this kind of hypocrisy that we have in in western governments is just so disappointing it's scandalous because it it threatens the foundations of what our societies are and if someone is committed a crime yes arrest him try him you know bring the evidence or acquit him but that's that's the end of the story but they don't know what to accuse him of because he hasn't committed any crime so they invent these stupid stories you know he's not feeding his cat and he's playing football in the embassy and all these stupid headlines that you see I mean the bbc you know I mean they're reporting on these types of things but they're they're not you know considered enough about their own profession as journalists to report on what's actually happening here that this is about criminalizing investigative journalists this should be a really at the heart of of the mission of you know a bbc or a new york times to to to be very very outspoken about this and I'm convinced that if the mainstream media the main outlets in the anglo-saxon world let's say the new york times the washington post the guardian and the bbc if they together deliberately launched an you know an effort to condemn this persecution on their front pages and the main use our you know for one week straight this would be finished because the government has nothing in their hands in terms of proof all they can do is is orchestrate a secret trial in alexandria the espionage court where they tape the doors and lock the windows and nobody is allowed to witness what's going on and then they condemn him for something and sentence him to 175 years in prison and nobody even the defense council doesn't have access to the evidence i mean that's that's a show try that's not a rule of law proceeding and i think the societies in the west and around the world but they're talking about western democracies now they deserve you know governments and and judiciaries that that respect those those principles and respect the law and it's really very worrying that's why i put my whole professional weight and personal credibility into this case because i think this is about our rights it's about you know it's about the rights of our children to know what what their governments are doing with the money and the power that they give to the governments and if if if we allow it to become a crime to tell the truth we will be living in a territory that's not exaggerated absolutely i mean we we really it is about something we really care about we we realize that this this case crucial and we cannot lose it we absolutely don't want to lose it needs let me ask you one last question then we will ask for the public asking question to us this case is about Julian Assange of course and it is all about the wikileaks journalists because they had a three species he is for now he is in prison but they will be the next let's mention Sarah Harrison for example the former wikileaks journalist who flew to Hong Kong to help Edward Snowden or many many others Christy Raphson Joseph Farrell I had a freedom of information case in the UK and it is about these three wikileaks journalists former and current wikileaks journalists and Scott Legarde is doing whatever he can to deny me access to these documents using anti-terror laws again for denying me access to these documents they we have I have been litigating this case about the wikileaks journalist and Julian Assange for over six years so what do you think is going to happen in this case now what's next well I think the first one I want to finish this case set the precedent you know with this man that most of the public still somehow despises because they have been deceived and poisoned by this narrative that has been created about him but once this is done clearly they will they will continue this is not the end of it this is the beginning of a new era where journalists will be prosecuted for telling the truth about government misconduct because then the precedent has been set and you know it's very important as we speak and as we observe this case already countries are adapting their laws to this new future we see that in Australia we see that in the UK where the the official secrets act is being you know tightened basically we see we see that well the interpretation of the espionage act in the US Sweden has just passed a law on foreign espionage where it becomes a crime when Sweden used to be the safe haven of press freedom which is why Julian Assange was in Sweden in the first place in 2010 he wanted to establish wikileaks there because it was the safe haven for press freedom Sweden has passed a law just two months ago by which from January 2023 it will be a crime in Sweden to disclose classified information that does not even threaten national security that's only prejudicial to the relations of Sweden with a different country or international organization i mean that's ridiculous i mean that's the standard is so low it's basically you know the diplomatic cables something that's just embarrassing before the relations of Sweden with Austria for example uh you know i'm just taking by random example uh it's just embarrassing that's sufficient it becomes a crime so what we have to what we have to realize is this is no states are building a system not only in the US the UK the Anglo-Saxon world throughout but also also even now the allied countries are building a system where it becomes a crime to tell the truth it's really you know high time for us to to ring the alarm bell and to stop this to insist that we have a right to know absolutely what do you expect from the legal process in the UK what do you expect the next well unfortunately i i cannot expect justice i i i was hopeful i mean i'm pessimistically hopeful if i can allow to say that that the High Court would would refuse extradition but i i sensed that exactly what happened was going to happen i said it before publicly uh and and it happened exactly as i as i presumed it would i think that uh that the UK judiciary unfortunately is unable to uh ensure respect for the law here and that they will basically waive this extradition through and they will try perhaps to extend this proceeding another year or two uh because for the US it's no there's not urgent for for Assange to be extradited if he dies in prison in the UK all the better for the US so they don't have to deal with it what they want is to set the precedent that everybody knows including yourself Stefania that this is what's going to happen to you if you ever mess with our secrets our dirty secrets and so i don't know exactly what's going to play out and how it's going to play out but in the big picture these states have not persecuted Assange for 10 years for tens of millions of dollars to let him off the hook anytime soon so the only chance he has and that's but a very real chance if public opinion changes and if the main media organizations changed our view as i said before this is going to be over this it's just like waking up from a nightmare it's going to be over but if they don't we're in for a long nightmare thank you nils let's open the question from the public yeah there are more and more questions coming and coming up here and let me start by one that's more like the beginning of the whole story too what exactly did you expect who do you exactly expect to respond in first instance when torture in uk is concerned like before you send letters you would expect kind of maybe a police showing up or something like that what would you normally expect well i if i receive allegations of torture i i i transmit them i mean the first thing that happens i look whether they're credible you know if they're if if they're not credible obviously i will i will i will try to consolidate maybe i will my team will call the person or the organization that submitted the information and try to consolidate it to make sure that it is that it is credible it doesn't have to be proven but it has to be credible if that's the case i will transmit it to the government and if it's an urgent case you know if it's about preventing torture if it's a historical case that happened 15 years ago and we're just investigating it it's it's not very urgent then we can take time i mean you know reasonable timeframe but if it's very urgent someone is about to be executed or or or or transferred or extradited then within 24 hours i can write the letter transmitted to the foreign minister of and that's your question who will act for well my my interlocutor as the un reporter is always the foreign minister of the country of the un member state through the diplomatic mission in geneva and so they will then have to distribute it to the proper authorities in their country if it's an allegation about a police station that will have to you know transmitted to the police and so on but depending on the country and and the precise allegation it will be a different authorities it could be a migration center or something like this but it's for me it's very it's a diplomatic protocol i always have to go through the foreign ministry and they will then have to initiate those investigations inside the country okay thank you very much next question would be will essentially be able to appeal to the european court of justice or how long do you estimate julian will stay in prison until the highest applicable court would publish a decision and are there any moves that can still be made by from from a lawyer's point of perspective well i'm i'm clearly i'm not his lawyer but you know and and his legal team would have to speak to the strategy so i can't not i'm not representing him obviously but clearly yes at some point he will be able as soon as the last instance decision has been you know validated by the the last instance of court in the uk then this decision can be appealed to the european court of human rights not the european court of justice that's a eu court but the european court of of human rights would be that instance they can also already now appeal to that court for preliminary protection for example to release him from prison and to house arrest or something like this but that's a bit technical but yes at the end there is a opportunity to appeal to the european court of human rights and the question of how long it will last really depends on so many factors what's the strategy of the lawyers what's the strategy of the court you know how long does the court take to decide after a hearing do they take two weeks or do they take four months it's up to them and so it's i can't you know i can't but it could last anywhere from at least one year to you know another three years or something like this i just want to add one important info about this european court of human rights because according to the documents i was able to get from the my freedom of information litigation the uk authorities were discussing with the swedish authorities an attempt to extradite juliana sanj without allowing him to uh to apply to the european court of human rights and obtaining the protective measure so it was an attempt to extradite him before he could get protective measure do you think needs that they could play the same game for the extradition to the u.s it's conceivable yes the problem is that normally a judgment of of the uh or a appeal to the european court of human rights is not does not suspend the validity of the national decision so if the supreme court of the uk allows the extradition for example and a sanj appeals that then he can still be extradited unless the european court of human rights uh uh um orders preliminary measures you know that that that suspends that the validity of that of that ruling so but they still have to decide that and obviously between the decision of the supreme court and the issuing of that preliminary protective measure there will be a few days and so in this time uh you know they can try to to send him out so it's very important that that that his lawyers react in time and perhaps even you know provisionally ask for measures like this but again you know his legal team would be better placed to to answer those questions yeah okay um thank you very much uh i hope you might answer the the next question what is the government's justification for keeping a solange in belmarsh and what happens to other high or high risk persons or persons who have a flight risk that are on remand in the uk well the government doesn't just i mean they just say here's a flight risk okay well yes there is a precedent that he's basically his look you know he's asked for asylum in the equatorial embassy so now clearly you know in my view even the whole extradition proceeding is illegitimate and illegal you know for various reasons because it concerns espionage which is a political offence and because you know it's protected by press freedom what he's done and all of these things but even if for the sake of the argument if we if we accept that this is legitimate extradition proceeding then uh then if he's a flight risk then yes you can you can secure his presence but you have to use the least harmful means to do that so you cannot take measures that are more restrictive than necessary and so if you put him in house arrest a guarded house arrest where he cannot leave because there's a guard in front of the door that's sufficient and it's even cheaper than high security prison and that's what they done with with with august of pinotchet who was i remind you not accused of journalism he was accused of having you know being responsible for murder and torture and disappearance of thousands of people as the dictator of or ex-dictator of Chile and and the british but he was an ally of of the united kingdom so but he was in the legal legally excuse me except that he was accused of serious crimes and julian assange is not he was in the same extradition kind of situation and he was allowed to spend one and a half years in a in a luxurious villa where he was visited by you know ex prime minister thatcher but but julian assange is being put in a high security prison that's he's not a violent person he's put in the toughest high security prison where you know violent criminals are being held and so that's actually that's absolutely not justifiable he could be kept in anywhere else you know where he can be supervised and he has a human right to live his family life to live his profession there is he's not serving a sentence he's not convicted of anything and and and his health is in the dire state of we have examined him two years ago and and warned that he would you know enter a downward spiral very soon and it actually happened you know he was not even able to to uh to attend his to observe his own appeals hearing in the end of october he actually had a stroke during that hearing and it's absolutely grotesque that the judges in that hearing you know decided that his health was stable enough to be extradited to the u.s based on some flimsy assurances that don't guarantee anything you know that that don't protect him from anything the next question fits right perfectly to that because it is are you confident that the u.s government won't harm assange as they promised to the contrary i'm confident they will because because there's no way he's going to get a fair trial the public narrative against assange is so overwhelming and the prejudice is so overwhelming against him he's going to be tried in alexandria the infamous espionage court where i i indicated before it's a secret trial very often the defense does not even have access to the evidence against the suspect and there is no press allowed there is no trial observation allowed uh you know there is the the the jury uh takes information from the prosecution that the defense doesn't have access to um no one has ever been acquitted in that court it's a national security court no one has ever been acquitted um and and people are being threatened with enormous prison sentences there unless they accept some kind of a plea bargain in his case it would certainly mean that he would have to spend decades in in prison um so so uh and and for this type of of suspect it's always solitary confinement which means near complete isolation no contact to the outside world no contact to other inmates no talking even to the guards uh you know very often uh the u.s authorities then say oh we have to put him on suicide watch you know for his own benefit which means they wake him up every 15 minutes at night uh he cannot sit down you know or lie down during the day and it's it's really a form of torture and i say this as an expert and i'm not the only one saying this it's my predecessors it's you know amnesty international human rights watch everybody agrees these types of conditions are a violation of the convention against torture and all treatment yeah thank you for the answer um i have one last question and that's um probably the big one um what can society do or what needs to happen to stop the extradition from happening now and what would need to happen to undo the effects of the u.s government's approach in this case like the intimidation of journalists well i guess as stefania you will have something to say about this as well i mean from my perspective the u.s has to drop this case they have to or they have to be pressured by their own media and their own society to drop this case because you know the u.s society is really is they have the political influence on their political leadership and and it's in their own interest that they stopped this from happening because otherwise they will lose as i said before the right to to know what the government is doing the fact already lost that right actually they have to regain it and and i think so so civil society is very important uh but the media especially the mainstream media that they start picking this up is very very important um uh to public opinion has to turn around and not only in the u.s in the uk in australia in sweden you know anywhere anywhere people have to ask their governments why are you why are you accepting that a country that you're allied with you know is persecuting journalists that expose their war crimes we have to ask the people that are elected to parliament why they're accepting this why they're keeping silent you know because it will cost it will cost us very dearly i don't know what you think stefania yes absolutely i agree neils we absolutely have to win this case which means we absolutely have to put pressure take to the streets of massive press coverage and investigation it's a scandal that it took an italian journalist to litigate a freedom of information case in the uk in the us australian sweden because no one else did it it's a scandal that we took an italian journalist to try to discover the pressure from the crown prosecution service on the swedish authorities and the the attempt to bypass the european court of human rights can you believe that the guardian was not able to do this or can you believe that the new york times could not expose the cia attempts to kill him i mean it took yahoo i mean can you believe yahoo had more sources inside the cia than the washington post or the new york times they are inside this angel agency how can you believe that they were not able to expose before yahoo news so we absolutely have to call them out and to make to have them on board they don't want to be on board we have seen they don't cover the case properly they say they want to be factual when in fact they they have not looked for the facts and it took an italian journalist and a u n special rapporteur to investigate the case so which is unbelievable you know so we have to have them on board and we absolutely have to win this case having the case dropped the investigation dropped because because it is a scandal i mean in 20 years of journalism my experience of 20 years as a journalist 15 in investigative journalism i have never heard of a media organization put under investigation for 11 years i never heard this i i don't know i don't believe it it exists not even in i mean just in a seriously authoritarian dictatorship i never heard of a media organization under investigation for 11 years as wikileaks the wikileaks journalists have been so we absolutely have to win the case this case and we have not to rely on the legal process the legal process completely corrupt it's completely corrupt so we it's up to us it's up to us to take to the street and to have press coverage whatever press coverage we can we can the independent media the citizen journalists the whatever we can to mobilize people to have people taking to the street and realize these monstrous injustice in the preface to my book the Ken Loach the great film director Ken Loach calls it these monstrous injustice he's absolutely right and and if you allow me to just say one sentence here also to conclude my own statement here i just just to say don't think that this is just your sound case that this is this is the tip of the iceberg and i wrote the book about this not because this is the only case but this case that makes it most visible what's really going on it's actually a keyhole through which you can see into a parallel world that already exists where democracy and the rule of law is being systematically undermined so you know don't believe those public narratives in this case or in others you know ask questions ask for evidence and always ask you know who has what kind of interests here and are we still able to to know what the powerful are doing with the power and the money they have and that's really at the core of it so i hope i hope this this was useful and clearly i invite people you know read read stefania's book read my book read read about the case and make make up your own mind you know because it's about your rights and your life absolutely let me close this conversation with reminding people that we will keep this conversation in the whistleblow village in rc3 world at 10 p.m. we will wait for you we'll appreciate more question about this important crucial case thank you yeah thank you both very much for being here and it was a very interesting talk and maybe we see each other later in the rc3 village and yeah have a good day evening