 Welcome to CN Live's coverage of the High Court decision in London today to allow Julian Assange to appeal his case, the High Court's case to the UK Supreme Court. I'm Joe Lauria, Editor-in-Chief of Consortium News. Thanks for joining us. The High Court met and in about one minute statement said in essence that Assange could appeal the decision that the High Court made in December to overturn the lower court's decision. That was the district court Vanessa Barreza. Barreza had decided in January of 2021 that Assange could not be extradited because of his mental condition, his tendency, strong tendency to suicide and the conditions of US prisons. Those two combined to allow her to say that Assange would it would be oppressive to send Assange to the United States. The United States then appealed that decision and in December last month the High Court overturned Barreza's decision and said the US could extradite him, that Britain rather could extradite him to the US. Assange's team then applied to the High Court for permission to appeal that decision of the High Court to the UK Supreme Court and today we had that decision by the High Court. They said that they would not allow the appeal, however, on one point of law they would leave it up to the Supreme Court to decide, therefore they in essence did allow Assange to appeal. It's important to understand that even if the High Court had completely shut down the possibility of an Assange appeal to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court rules are that even if the High Court denies this request for appeal the Assange could have in writing asked the Supreme Court directly to hear his case. In fact, that's what he's going to do. He has 14 days to appeal to the Supreme Court. The issue today was about the Assange, sorry the assurances that the United States gave to Britain after Barat's decision. This is key. This is key to this entire story right now. The United States gave assurances to the High Court that they would not put Julian Assange in the most strict regime of incarceration in the United States, so-called special administrative measures and that he would be provided with adequate health care and both mental and psychological. Based on that, that he would get the health care and that he wouldn't be put in this particular regime of incarceration, the High Court decided that they would overturn Barat's decision, which had been not to extradite Assange and allowing Assange now to be extradited. In fact, the High Court did not contest the substance of Barat's decision at all in terms of Assange's mental health and the condition of American prisons. I don't think any court in the world with a straight face could argue that American prisons are not extremely harsh and they couldn't really challenge the medical evidence of the defense that the defense put up that Barat accepted that Assange was in this depressive and suicidal state. So the court did not say that the prisons are good and that he's a malinger as the U.S. tried to portray him as during the extradition hearing. They accepted all that, but what they did do is accept these U.S. assurances that he wouldn't go into Sam's and that he'd get the proper health care. Now what the defense lawyers of Assange argued during the High Court hearing was that these assurances came after Barat's had made her decision and that therefore this was new evidence and that they should have, by law, have been put before Barat's during the extradition hearing so that the defense could argue against them, bring up evidence from past cases to show that in fact U.S. assurances have not been reliable at all. The defense never had that chance because they didn't know that these assurances were coming. Barat's didn't know they were coming. The Americans argued that there was legal precedent for giving assurances at any point during a legal process, that they could give them after the extradition hearing court, the lower court decided, and give it to the High Court. Now the High Court in December agreed with the Americans. What they said today was that they, we certify, I'm quoting from the court now, a single point of law in what circumstances can an appellate court receive assurances from a requesting state which were not before the court of first instance in extradition proceedings. So while the High Court sided with the United States in December and that they could give these assurances anytime they want, they gave an opening to Assange today to say that the Supreme Court should look at this issue of when the assurances should be given. And this is key because what the Supreme Court, if they accept Assange's appeal, I believe they will, if for no reason other than that the Britain wants to be able to show the world that they are giving him due process, they're going through all the motions. If the court takes Assange's appeal now, they will have to decide the question of when these assurances need to be given during the extradition hearing in the lower court, or can they be given after that decision was made and to the High Court, which is what the High Court decided. This is important because politically it would seem very difficult for the UK Supreme Court to say we don't believe the American Assurances. So the issue of the believability, the credibility, the reliability of American Assurances not going to be at issue at the Supreme Court. What's only at issue is when these assurances should have been filed during the extradition hearing in the lower court or afterward. And this could be a very important decision of the Supreme Court because they could set precedent on this issue. In the arguments that were made in the High Court, it appears that there's not really settled law necessarily on this issue. Both the defense and the US argued cases that showed that the assurances could be given at any point, even to the High Court, even after a decision. Now, the High Court at the moment is out of the way, and that's pretty good for a drilling Assange because this provides Assange a ray of hope, which seemed his case had become hopeless after the High Court, decided in December he should be extradited, rejecting Barat's decision. There is this hope now that the Supreme Court, which does not have to decide whether the assurances are credible or not, but only when they should be given, could provide an opening for a drilling Assange. You could also, as I say, provide a precedent about when these assurances have to be given in future extradition cases. Now, the High Court agreed with the US that these assurances could be given at any time. They said, for example, according to the reasons given in the judge, which is today handed down, this is in December, the court allowed the appeal on the grounds that a district judge having decided that the threshold to discharge under section 91 of the Extradition Act of 2003 between the US and the UK was met, that she ought to have notified the USA of her provisional view to afford the US the opportunity to offer the assurances to the court. So the High Court agreed with the US, which was arguing she should have told us. She should have told us that she was going to let them go on the medical and the prison issues. Now, if anyone was listening to those four weeks of hearings in September of 2020, as we here at Consortium News did on every day as we got court access to it, it was clear that those were the two major issues that at least the defense was bringing up, that Assange was too ill. There were numerous health experts, there were prison experts on US prisons. Why were they brought in if the judge would not be making a judgment based on those two issues? The idea that the US didn't know that she was going to rule according to section 91 of the US British Extradition Treaty, which says it would be oppressive to send someone suicidal to this kind of prison system, how could they have not have known that that could be part of it? Anyway, that was the US argument. We didn't know she was going to make a decision on that. And therefore, we never had a chance to put forward our assurances. Now, what it looked like to the defense is that they lost the case and they came up with this afterward, that they weren't very well prepared necessarily and that they became desperate to overturn their decisions when they came up with these assurances and they had a ruling high court accept them. They accepted this package of assurances. In our review, the high court said in December, a court hearing, an extradition case, whether at first instance or on appeal, has the power to receive and consider assurances whenever they are offered by a requesting state. That is the high court decision. But today, they have said the Supreme Court can weigh in on this question of when assurances have to be given. That, again, is significant because it opens up a potential ruling by the Supreme Court saying that those assurances, if they find the case law to argue this, if they do, that those assurances should have been given to parades or she could have taken them into account and the defense would have had a chance to argue against the reliability of those assurances. That didn't happen at the extradition hearing. So the Supreme Court does not have to make a decision on whether these are believable or not because states always accept assurances from other states and the Britain being the ally that it is of the United States. It's very hard to believe that the Supreme Court would make a decision to say, well, we don't really believe these assurances. The Assange people are right. Let them go. That probably wouldn't happen. But they could say that those assurances did not come in on time. They cannot be given afterward. They amount to new evidence that the high court should have rejected. And therefore, we are discharging Julian Assange. Words that we heard back in January of 2021 from Vanessa Beretson. She was discharging Julian Assange. Of course, a day later, she denied him bail and has kept him in Belmarsh prison all this time. He is still in there. This is the very dark side of this story that it will take months for the Supreme Court to decide whether to accept Assange's appeal and then to schedule that appeal. Therefore, we're looking at many months now of more time in a prison which has had a recent COVID-19 outbreak. We know that Assange had a stroke in December at the time of that hearing. Not sorry, it was in October the hearing. The ruling was in December. Sorry if I misled you. The hearing was in October, but the ruling by the court to allow Assange's, the high court extradition was in December. It was in October, at the end of October, on the very first day that Julian Assange had that mini-stroke. His health is deteriorating and he has to wait seven more months now. However, it's no question that Assange legal team will file this appeal application to the Supreme Court. I believe the Supreme Court will accept this, again, if only to show they're going through the motions. Then we could be looking at them making a decision on this unsettled issue of the law, which even the high court, even though they ruled that the U.S. had the right to put those assent, those assurances in after the judgment by the rates and to their own court, even though they made that decision, they have agreed today that this could be, this is a questionable legal issue, a point of law that needs to be, can be looked at if the Supreme Court so decides. This is what's happened today. It's up to the Supreme Court again. And even as I said before, even if the court had decided against it, Assange could have applied directly to the Supreme Court on these points of law, but getting the endorsement, in essence, from the high court today, that there is one point of law of important public interest, which this issue would be. It's an important public issue when assurances can be given that the Supreme Court now would will look at what the high court has specified and will not have to just look at the an application from Assange after having been rejected by the high court. So I think that that's an element that's positive for Assange, that the high court has signaled out this one issue. After the court hearing today or the decision rule read out by the high court in front of the World Courts of Justice, Stella Morris, Assange's fiance and one of his lawyers said, quote, what happened in court today is precisely what we wanted to happen. The high court certified that we had raised a point of law of general public importance and that the Supreme Court has good grounds to hear this appeal. Make no mistake, we won today in court. Those are the words of Stella Morris, Assange's fiance, speaking outside the World Courts of Justice earlier on Monday. This clears up some confusion. Some people apparently tweeted that he'd lost because the high court made a kind of double statement today. They kind of wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They said, well, we reject this thing. However, there is this one point that if the Supreme Court itself decides they want to hear it, they should have the chance to hear it. So that is without question a victory for Julian Assange today. He hasn't had very many of them, but it's only a victory of hope. Of hope that the Supreme Court on this narrow issue might decide that those assurances that were given to the high court after the decision of Vanessa Berets of the district judge, not to extradite Assange, would need to be thrown out because they came too late. That would maybe settle that issue as a precedent, but in Assange's case could mean that those assurances will be thrown out and then there's nothing for the high court to stand on because their decision to allow the extradition and send the case to Pretty Patel, the Home Secretary, was based not on rejecting any of the arguments separates are made about the health or the prison conditions, but solely on these assurances. The high court's decision to overturn the lower courts ruling not to extradite was based solely on these assurances. So if the Supreme Court throws these assurances out simply because they came too late, not because they're not credible, but because they came too late, they should have been given to Berets. So this would mean Assange would most likely then be discharged and that's the highest court in Great Britain. There's nowhere else the U.S. can go except to start another extradition proceeding, which is what James Lewis, the bulldog prosecutor for the United States said in the high court in October that we could start this process all over again. But let's not get ahead of ourselves right now. There's still a huge hurdle for Assange to overcome and that's in the Supreme Court, a decision needed to throw out the assurances, which would then vacate the high court's decision to overthrow Berets' decision and it would then become an issue of liberating Julian Assange if we could be that bold to speculate on. We won't be back on this channel. Speaking about this probably for several months until the Supreme Court decision is made. My understanding is the Supreme Court in Britain is the only court that is televised. So while we've enjoyed this very great privilege to have access to the video of every court day in the extradition hearing and throughout the high court proceedings so that we can bring you these reports both in print and here on CN Live. It looks like all of us, everyone who is interested anywhere in the world should be able to see this live as it takes place in the Supreme Court if the court of course accepts Assange's appeal and if it does do that and if it rules those assurances came too late. I know it sounds very technical and very narrow but this is the way this case and many, many cases of course go. Then Assange could be free. Speaking for CN Live, this is Joe Lawyer signing off. Have a good night.