 All right. I think Ann can speak. OK, first of all, we want to welcome everybody. We're really glad that you're joining us. And we are recording today's forum. I am now speaking for Ann until we can get her ability to be unmuted. But you know the note about our Zoom etiquette. Keep your microphones on mute during the presentation by both today's speakers and during the question and answer period that follows. Please only unmute yourself if you are called upon during the question and answer. And because we are blessed to have two speakers, our question and answers will extend a little longer, probably till about 20 after 12. Thank you all for inviting us today at First Church through Zoom. And thank you for joining us. I hope you will learn something new about the trial of Julian Assajj, or Ray prefers the trials of Julian Assajj and their implication for press freedom. Today, we are extremely fortunate to have with us Nils Melzer, and he's going to have to help me with the pronunciation. He is a UN Special Reporter on Torture and Other Cruel in Human and Degrading Treatment or Punishment. And he's also the human rights chair of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. He is a professor of international law at the University of Glasgow. And Nils has become a powerful voice documenting the judicial and media malfeasance in the case of Julian Assajj. Welcome Special Rapporteur Melzer. And we're fortunate also to have Ray McGovern, a 27 year Russian analyst for the CIA and a presidential daily briefer for three presidents. 20 years ago, Ray created an organization of former intelligence officials and whistleblowers called VIPs, Veteran Intelligent Professionals for Sanity, that includes two former technical directors of the NSA. Ray, let me know. Oh, Ray has warned us that he looks a little disheveled in solidarity with his friend, his longtime pal, Julian Assajj, who was removed by the British police without due process from the Ecuadorian Embassy. Welcome, Ray. Now, as you know, both of you, each of you will have 20 minutes, and then we'll have 25 minutes to access some of the questions from the chat. Please, friends, put your questions into the chat with your name. And please keep your microphone on mute now and during the Q&A so that there are no interruptions. I am happy to introduce Nels Melzer, the US Special Rapporteur on torture. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you very much for having me. This is obviously a very important event, a very timely event with the recent developments in this case. I would say it has been a timely event for 10 years. And so I'm very happy to be able to address this with you today. But let me start by saying that two years ago, I refused to get engaged in this case. I was contacted by Julian Assanta's lawyers. He was still at the Ecuadorian Embassy at the time. And they asked for the protection of my mandate as the UN Special Rapporteur on torture that I would intervene on his behalf to prevent his expulsion from the embassy and to protect him against inhumane treatment in the embassy. I didn't even really take note of that. I mean, I remember that I got this request. And I have to say I received 10 to 15 requests today and can maybe deal with one. So it's normal for me to go through the selection process very quickly. But I have this visceral reaction of, oh, Julian Assanta, this is this rapist and traitor and hacker and spy. And I'm not going to get manipulated by this man. So I have other things to do. And so I kind of brushed it aside. And I say this deliberately because I think many people think like that. And if you do think like that, if you think Julian Assanta is a rapist and a hacker and a spy and a traitor, you've been deceived. But you don't have to feel bad about it because it's normal to be deceived because there has been a relentless campaign in the mainstream media mainly and by governments to portray him exactly as that, precisely with the purpose of generating this kind of rejection in us. So we wouldn't want to actually listen to the man because what he had to say is very threatening not to any one of us, but to the security establishment and not only of the US, but of basically essentially the whole state in the world. And so let me say this. Let me say this as a formal legal advisor to the National Committee for my function as the United Nations rapporteur. So if you have not been deceived, that is also normal because that's the point of deception. As soon as you understand that you are being deceived by a narrative, clearly there no longer is a deception. So let me maybe go into this a little bit. His lawyers had to get back to me about three months later in March 2019. He was just before he was expelled from the embassy and they sent me some additional pieces of evidence. And so when I started to look into these pieces of evidence, I started realizing that that narrative that I had in my mind was not supported by the evidence. And so I went through this point by point and I felt like I don't know anymore what's true and I don't know which source to trust. So I had to go and actually visit the man and I took two very experienced medical doctors with me, a forensic expert who's been the president of the World Forensic Society for many years, a psychiatrist who specialized in examining torture victims for 30 years. And so I wanted to have an objective medical assessment along with my own experience of visiting prisoners in many countries for many years. And so we went to visit him in Belmarsh prison on the 9th of May, 2019. And I didn't expect to find anything dramatic to be honest. It was the UK, you know, you know, the kingdom I respected a fair treatment, good prison conditions. And I was surprised at what I found. So both doctors and I agreed after visiting Julian Assange for four years and examining him separately from each other that he showed all the symptoms that are typical for a victim of psychological torture. Now, psychological torture is not torture light. Psychological torture is a form of torture that does not leave physical traces, initially at least, and aims directly at the stabilizing a person through isolation, through threat scenarios, so like death threats, for example, constant arbitrariness changing rules and people being purposely pushed to their physical and emotional and psychological limits through non-physical stressors. And this is really what we could observe with him. And so at that point, I asked myself, now I really have to go and look into this case more deeply. How come this man who's been resilient physically and mentally all his life is at the breaking point after these years in the embassy? And I started investigating this thing. Now I will go into two points more specifically because they have been very prominent in destroying the reputation of Julian Assange. And the first thing I started out with really was the rape allegations in Sweden. Why was that so important? It is because, well, first of all, obviously rape is a grave crime and so we need to take it seriously and look at those allegations. The second thing is this was the turning point. This happened in, these allegations were made in August, 2010, just about three weeks after the big Afghanistan war diary was published, was leaked by WikiLeaks. So the biggest military leak in US history. And this was the turning point at which a success story where Assange became more and more famous and celebrated for informing the world about the dirty secrets of states. It turned and it became a story of persecution. From that point on, it's basically downhill for Julian Assange. And so I really wanted to go back to that story and look into this. And I was able to do that with perhaps better than others because part of my family is Swedish. So I actually speak the language and I was able to read a lot of original police documents and proceedings that are not accessible in English language. And what I found was quite shocking. I found that Julian Assange had been in Sweden for a conference and he had had sexual contact with two women and this is not contested on both sides it was consensual and so that that did happen. And in both cases, the women ended up having unprotected sex with Julian and apparently at the circumstances on how that happened are contested. But they did go to the police, both of them, these women who knew each other, they went to the police not because they wanted to report a crime, but because they were worried to have contracted HIV and they wanted him to take an HIV test. And he had just said, well, I've taken one, so it's fine. You don't have to worry about it. I don't have time. And they took it much more seriously. Obviously wanted to push him and went to the police to ask whether they could force him to take an HIV test. And now that is very clearly documented in text messages that are available that these women wrote to each other at the time and through friends by emails. That is the only reason they went to the police. And we can also see that the police immediately turned it around and said, well, this is really about rape. And the women didn't agree with that, but were informed that this was not up to them, that the state had an obligation to prosecute rape and that they were going to make a rape allegation out of this rape investigation. And from that point on, you can see text messages between those women where they're extremely stressed and say, well, we didn't want this. We didn't intend to do this. The police started it all. We didn't want to be part of this, but now we have no choice. And so there is really what we can see is that this doesn't fit with the story that was spread by the authorities of women going to the police and complaining about rape. It looks much more like the police taking a case that had nothing to do with rape initially, but with unprotected intercourse and potential HIV infection and turn it around and use it to their advantage, which was to portray Assange as a suspected rapist. Now, why would they do that? Sweden is a close ally of the US and Afghanistan, as is Britain, as are other countries. They all have been exposed by WikiLeaks. We should not make any mistake about this. Established governments don't like WikiLeaks because it threatens their way of operating where they can basically do their business in secret and very often, unfortunately behind the backs of the parliament and even the public of their own countries. And when we see the types of things that WikiLeaks published, it really embarrassed all these governments and not only embarrassed them, but it even brought evidence for war crimes and very serious cases of corruption and human rights violation. So we shouldn't be surprised that governments were interested in the capacity of a person like that. And also should know that Assange is not the enemy of the American people or Assange is not the, you know, he informed his organization fight secrecy and corruption throughout the world. He has exposed secret information about Russia, about Syria, about Saudi Arabia, about the US, about Kay, about his own country, Australia. So we can't really say he has been aiming at the US. It's just the US is a very powerful country. It's very present, it's terribly in the world. And therefore that's also a bigger share of publicity. I think for American, WikiLeaks and doing Assange have not just concentrated on the, but they have really also published other information as well. And what's very important, none of the information they published was false. Contrary to what has been claimed, and I only found that myself, I researched it. Julian Assange always insisted that the information that was published was being redacted, that it would not endanger anyone. He had long phone calls with the State Department discussing ways on how these diplomatic cables and other documents could be redacted to ensure that no one would be endangered. And actually the government refused to cooperate with WikiLeaks and he never stole or hacked information either, but he actually received it just as a journalist that the New York Times or the Washington Post would receive information from whistleblowers and other sources and then classified information and then publish it if there's a public interest. And so I think we really have to be very careful with this narrative that has been pushed about Julian Assange. The same applies to the DNC leaks. Yes, they were published by WikiLeaks, but they didn't hack those emails, they didn't steal those emails, they published them just as any other journalist in an election campaign, an ongoing election campaign, they received a scoop about one of the candidates who had a real estate corruption or misconduct. Clearly the journalist will publish this. So that's also what he did. Now, this has been turned around saying that somehow there was something particularly malicious about this and that he is a Russian asset or something like this. But I think we have to be extremely careful there that essentially what happened is that he has published truthful information that the public should know about at that case, the Democratic Party or whatever else he has published. All information was of public interest, misconduct of states, of political parties, of companies that polluted the environment in Africa and so on, he published all this information, all of it was of public interest and it was all true. And so what we can see now is that states were really going after him, portraying him as this rapist against the will of the affected women, but they did it so strongly that in the end, the women were forced to join this narrative and there is really evidence in their text messages and their correspondence that illustrates that. We can see that obviously they have an interest in portraying Assange as a spy and as a traitor because they want to divert attention from the things he has published. Now if we want to, I just asked you the question, check for yourself, if the government were in good faith and they find out that some of their soldiers or agents have committed war crimes, if they're in good faith and this is really about applying the law, they would prosecute their war criminals, wouldn't they? Because we're not identifying, we shouldn't be identifying with soldiers who commit crimes. And I've been in war areas, I've worked in war areas and I know that mistakes can happen and that not every mistake is a war crime, but some of the things that have been published by WikiLeaks are evidence for very grave and very clear war crimes and they need to be prosecuted. We shouldn't protect, these are criminals in uniform, they're not, they don't represent their country, they're portraying their country. It's not the whistleblowers that inform about this that are the traitors, it's the ones that commit the crimes that are the traitors. And so I think there we really, I'd really like to invite you to look with fresh eyes onto this case. And I could go on for hours because I've investigated this case for two years. I've made official interventions with all involved case states, the United States, the UK, Sweden and Ecuador and none of these states was prepared to answer my questions, which is my mandate as the UN rapporteur, I was mandated by them to do that, to transmit allegations to them and to ask for clarification. In this case, there was stonewalling. They didn't want to talk about it because clearly they didn't have any good answers to my questions. And so I think this should raise our concerns and should raise our interest and really start asking ourselves, what should we go on here? Who is really betraying whom here? And we perhaps have an interest in looking at the information for ourselves. And looking at various governments, how they dealt with it and whether that really expresses good faith. Is this really about our national security or is it more about the personal security of the perpetrators of crimes and corruption that they don't want to be prosecuted? I have this question for now. Just in my view, prosecuted someone like Afan, who had very courageously stepped out and confronted the most powerful state in the world by publishing true information about their misconduct. If he is prosecuted, but the perpetrators of the crime are not, then this is really about shooting the messenger and about silencing dissent and essentially criminalizing the truth. I think that anyone in America or elsewhere in the world really would want to live in a world where saying this kind of crime. I will stop here. I'm happy to answer any questions on any aspect of this case. Thank you very much. Hello again. Thank you. Nils, that was really great. Sorry, that was great. And now I would like to introduce for Ann Ray McGovern, who counts Julian Assaj as one of his most admired friends. Ray visited Julian several times in the Ecuadorian embassy in London after Julian was given political asylum there. Ray was a specialist on Russia for the CIA. He prepared and conducted the morning briefings of the president's daily brief for three presidents. His Twitter page described him as an activist, just this person. And this might just provide a great hint as to why he and Julian are such good friends. It is my honor to be welcoming Ray and it's my introduction that is based on notes from Ann. So have that at Ray and again, welcome. Thank you very much. It's a privilege to be on with Nils Melzer and I'll try to be brief. When I think of what's happened to my friend Julian, what comes to mind of the other words of Willie Lohman's wife and death of a salesman, some of you may remember that play. He's a human being and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person. Now, Julian is a very caring person. His devotion to justice puts other people's fate above his own. And I can tell you that from personal experience, but I thought it might be helpful to, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. Let's do some photos which show the human side of Julian. And Mark, are you ready to show the first photo please? If you could put that up, that would be very helpful. Okay. It was the best of times as well as the worst of times. Here are a number of my colleagues in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and in Sam Adams Associates for Integrity. We were invited by Julian to the Ecuadorian Embassy to have a nice meal, to meet one another and to celebrate, celebrate the conferring of the next Sam Adams Award for Integrity, which Julian had already won in 2010. Could we have the next side please? Now, many of you will not have seen this. This is Julian with Gabriel, or Gabriel, the son that he and Selimaurus conceived and gave birth to in the Ecuadorian Embassy. I can identify with that having had five such experiences. Let's see the next slide please. There is Stella with Gabriel on the right, as you look at it, and Max on the left. They have been without their father and they will be without their father for another period unless we make such a din that justice has to be done. Next picture please. Now I show this because this is Gabriel grown up now, grown up to be two or three. The reason I show it is because he's the spitting image of his father, it seems to me. We Irish would say, ah, he's the spit of his father. Well, he is. And just look at him, look at him now. I think what he's saying in a kind of metaphorical way is, look, you can't put down people fighting against injustice. See that wire over there? I'm gonna pick up where, just where my dad left off. Next photo please. Well, unhappier times. This is Julian being unceremoniously dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy with the connivance of the Ecuadorians and the British and the Americans, of course. You can see he looked pretty disheveled. I decided that there would be one way that I could identify with Julian. And so since April 11th of 2019, I've tried to be looking just as disheveled as he, and I think I may have exceeded the norm. Next photo please. Okay, this is Julian now. He's being transported. I think that's broken glass on the side of that truck. And that's what it looks like now. And so when Nils talks about his being subjected to torture, to psychological torture, which is just as real, if not realer, if that's a word, than physical torture, that's what Julian looks like now as he's being further persecuted. Now you could take that photo down and I'll continue. You know, I was delighted when Julian's mother took note of our conferring on Julian in 2010, right away, the Sam Adams Award for integrity. But his father has also come forward in recent years, John Shipton. And he was asked by an interviewer, and I don't wanna misquote him here. He was asked, you know, what is it? Where does he get this devotion to justice? And John Shipton, his father replied, I don't know the answer to that, but he's always been very, very firm on injustice, has always been, I mean, children. Most children, of course, despise injustice. And then we lose that sense of injustice as we grow older, but with Julian, he hasn't lost it. And would still suffer himself, says his father, before allowing another to suffer cruelty. I visited with Julian several times at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. I remember one time when I said, Julian, you know, there's a lot I admire about you, but nothing more than you're taking the pains to call in all your cards, all your chips from people you knew in Asia. Sending Sarah Harrison, your chief lieutenant, to save Ed Snowden from the equivalent of Belmarsh or those maximum security prisons in the United States. That was great. Now, Julian is not one to show a lot of emotion, but he did then, he got up off the couch and said, yes, yes, Ray, we had to make it possible that somebody could do this courageous act and not end up in jail like Chelsea Manning. He had to be freed. Now, most of you know that Julian was able, through all his contacts, somehow to get Ed Snowden hidden and then on a plane to Moscow, he was due to go to Cuba, but his citizenship was withdrawn on the way to Moscow and that's why he ended up in the Shedemyethev Airport in Moscow. Now, a little side note here. Some of you don't know about Ed Snowden because he's just become a new father. It reminds me of those pictures of Julian. Now, let me just say a word about what WikiLeaks was all about. We whistleblowers were really behind the eight ball and trying to get information out. Dan Ellsberg and his children wore out several Xerox machines getting this stuff together and for the Pentagon Papers. Earlier on, there were Mimeograph machines and then ThermaFax machines and then Xerox. So it was pretty, pretty onerous. What Julian did was figure out a way since the fourth estate, the mainstream press, was more abundant, was being more and more controlled by rich interests, I call them the Mickey Mat, the military industrial congressional intelligence media academia think tank complex. They were all being controlled and never has it been so controlled as today. Well, Julian found a way to go around that and use his incredible imagination and his technical skills to make it possible for someone like Chelsea Manning to give him information, not by Xeroxing it, not by Mimeographing it, but pushing a button and he'd verify it and publish it. Now that was a big deal and a big threat to the powers that be. You could imagine, well, don't have to imagine when those of you who look at collateral murder, that infamous video of our Apache helicopter pilots, army, killing a dozen Iraqi civilians and closing over it and then killing a good Samaritan who came along with his children and tried to help one of them. I mean, just look at that. Now, some of you don't know, but there was a Washington Post reporter embedded with that unit and Chelsea Manning has made it very clear in her texts to this fellow limo that David Finkel had access to the videotape. And at the trial, she said, well, I knew he had access to the videotape because he virtually quotes the conversation between these, the terrible conversation between these two pilots. I mean, he had to have it. And Chelsea said, you know, I couldn't believe how he justified it. He thought that what he heard and what they did was justified. So what's the point here? The point is that you can't, you can't depend on reporters for the mainstream press. This is just one little episode and David Finkel, you will not be surprised to learn, is a Pulitzer Prize winner, okay? So that's what Julian did for us. I wanna watch my time here, so I'm not going over. Let me tell you two tales. Well, in the Bronx, we would say, I'm gonna give you two for instances. At Harvard, they say, case studies, okay? In 1967, I was working on Soviet foreign policy toward China and Vietnam. My friend Sam Adams was working on Vietnam and found out that there were twice as many Vietnamese communists under arms in the South as the generals at our McVie, at our headquarters in Saigon would admit to. He proved it. Every other intelligence agency agreed, except the army of course, and yet he couldn't get that story told. Now he told me that there was a cable on August 20th. Let's see if I have it here. It's here somewhere, the cable said this. It was from Westmorelands Deputy General Abrams. So we can't possibly admit to Adams numbers because we have been consistently saying that there were only 299,000 troops, Vietnamese communist troops in the South. Adams says twice as many and there is no way that any caveats or any explanations could prevent the press from drawing a gloomy and not nice conclusion. That's a virtual quote from this cable. What do I mention that? Well, those were the days when the New York Times might have published that. If I persuaded Sam Adams to give me a copy, I'd go down to New York Times viewer in Washington and say, look, documentary, like Danielsberg's later, documentary, print it, that was 1967. Five months later, there was a Tet offensive where the Vietnamese communists, 600,000 of them raided, attacked and killed lots of people in every city, hamlet and town in South Vietnam. You remember that was called the Tet offensive. So what I'm saying is that, if WikiLeaks were around and available then, what would I have done? Well, I like to think that I might have mustered the courage to push that button and send that cable to Julian Assange to get it published. 1967, the war continued for five or six more years. How many people killed? Now, I don't know if that would have prevented it, but I didn't try. Now, Chelsea Manning tried and knew what happened to her, okay? So this is just one example. Another example would be 9-11. And I refer you to an article in the Los Angeles Times. It's called 9-11, what if? And the if is, what if WikiLeaks were around when the FBI investigators were prevented from doing their jobs by headquarters and when the people who are the red teams that were trying to see if they could penetrate airports and airplanes, if they were allowed to do their job and they weren't, would they have gone to WikiLeaks? The investigators on that red team said, unequivocally, yes, sir, of course we would have. We were frustrated. We knew exactly what was going to happen. That's big, okay? WikiLeaks had not yet hit its stride, of course, 2001, 2002, but now it has. Or that's where they're trying to prevent it. Now, what else can be said here? Well, what John Chippsian said is worth remembering. Julian's devotion to justice came first and foremost. I would just say that, well, let me put it this way. Dr. King in his famous letter from the Birmingham city jail, which I use in every course that I've taught. Dr. King said this, and this is not a very famous quote. He talked about disclosing truth and he compared it to a boil. Now, one time I started talking about boils and when you were an adolescent, did you have boils and Medea Benjamin who was there, said, Ray, too much sharing, too much sharing, okay? Those of you who know what boils are, I don't need any description, okay? This is what Dr. King said. Like a boil that can never be healed as long as it's covered up, but must be opened with all its pus flowing ugliness to the natural remedies of air and light. So to injustice must be disclosed with all the friction as exposure creates to the light of human conscience and to the air of national opinion before it can be healed. That's how Julian felt about injustice, that it had to be exposed. And if there was a price to pay, I just think of Julian here calling in all his cards, all his chits to save it. It's no knowing that that would make Julian enemy number 111 with the powers that be. He did it for it and it is eternally grateful, of course. So let me just finish with this. I know that this is a UU forum and I know we're very eclectic and expect in welcoming all views, including religious views. But I would like to call on Kurt Vonnegut, a famous humanist who was asked about Jesus of Nazareth. And Kirk says, well, you know, I don't know if he was the son of God or not, but if it weren't for the sermon on the Mount with its dicta of justice and truth and mercy and love, I think I just as well be a rattlesnake, okay? Now, what happens to people who go out on a limb exposing justice? Well, toward the end of that sermon on the Mount, which we call the Beatitudes, it's blessed be, blessed be. There's a last beatitude, okay? And since it's Sunday and since we're sort of in church, I'm gonna read it. You're blessed when your commitment to justice provokes persecution. You can be glad when that happens. I know that you're in good company. Please, do you know that you're in good company because my prophets and witnesses have always got into this kind of trouble? Well, Julian is in big trouble. My own personal view is that I think they hope he'll catch COVID-19 and die. So what are we gonna do? The last thing I'll say here is that, well, I like to quote or use the quote that talks about the Noah. The Noah saying. And that is, no more awards for predicting rain. Awards only for building arcs, arcs. So it's up to us to build some arcs, folks. The rain has been predicted and been falling for 10 years now. So I know that Anne has some suggestions toward the end of this, but we need to do more than just complain and predict. We need to get out there and show that a truth teller is worthy of the kind of support that we can give them. I thank you very much for your attention. Okay, I'm now going to ask you both to look at the chat and see if you can read and answer some of those questions. So you'll need to read as well because some people are not able to see the chat. Thank you, Mark. The first person I would like to call on is Deepa, Dr. Deepa Driver. We're trying to have the speakers actually read those chat questions. Fair enough. Can you see those? The first one it seems to me is from John Gilow. Yes, Mark, Anne has requested that the first person that we call on is Deepa Driver and I'm requesting that you would unmute her. I'm gonna, you know, it's not so easy to find it. I think it was with Mark. Oh, driver. Oh, here we go. She's unmuted. She's unmuted. I am unmuted. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you very much, Anne, for organising this to UWU for, it is a fantastic event and it's great to hear Nielsen, Ray speak and talk about what's really important in the case. I wanted to make a quick comment if I may about, I was the legal observer on behalf of the whole day in society of socialist lawyers at the trial of, at the hearings, extradition hearings of Julian Assange that took place in September and also I attended court for the verdict as well as for the bail hearing. And I wanted to reiterate that the psychological torture of Julian hasn't stopped. It continues to this day. And it was quite, and I speak in a personal capacity here rather than on behalf of the society, but I have to say that I was appalled at the way in which access was denied to legal and press observers at the court. People like reporters without borders, Amnesty International and our society were, things were made very difficult in terms of accessing the court, even when 66 seats were available in the public gallery, only four seats were made available for the public and observers put together. There were also serious issues with Julian's own rights and the treatment of those who attended court, including his family. And it was really quite upsetting to watch his 70 plus year old father walk up six different flights of stairs to come to a little balcony off from where he could see. And at all stages we treated quite, all of us were treated with very little humanity. Although the trial had some fantastic witnesses, I'm also appalled at the way in which the expert witness testimony is not appropriately, has not appropriately been reported upon or included within consideration of the judgment that really worries me. In particular, I'm concerned about the way in which medical expert testimony, which was used to say that although they ignored things like the fact that it was a political prosecution, that there were issues in relation to violations of Julian's due process rights in terms of attorney client privilege, his legally privileged conversations were spied upon and used in, I mean, it's rare that I see a case where the prosecution is continuing to conduct the case when they have been involved in potentially poisoning or abducting the defendant. So these things, I mean, I won't go on because this is not what it's about. It's about listening to Ray and Niels. But I just wanted to say that the case seems to me to follow the pattern of the strat for leaks where they said that they would move Julian from country to country, treat him like a bride in prison and make him eat cat food. And Julian, as of a day ago, although he was given, sent warm clothing in October, he's still not been given warm clothing. Heating at the prison has broken down several times at the temperature in, I'm in London and the temperatures below zero several nights. He is in a wing where there are COVID positive prisoners or have been over 50 at one point. And this kind of treatment of a visionary, highly intelligent human being, floor as he may be like the rest of us are, and is absolutely unconscionable. And we have to come together left or right to oppose this kind of behavior. And we have to do it for the protection of whistleblowers. We have to do it for the protection of the freedom of the press. We have to do it for the protection of Julian. But most importantly, we have to do it for protecting citizens' rights to know about the crimes that governments committed their name. Thanks. And thank you very much Niels and Ray for, and Ray particularly I enjoyed hearing your personal experience of your friendship with Julian, it was great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Deepa. If our speakers Ray and Niels would unmute yourselves, you are welcome to comment on what Deepa shared. Also I'm gonna point out that Anne has put her email in the chat. And so anyone who wants to follow up, I promise you she'll get you a lot of material at AnneWISCatGmail.com. AnneWISCatGmail.com. Okay friends, go ahead Rayman or Niels, whoever wishes to respond. Maybe I can say something about the recent decision in the UK judge refusing for the moment, at least Julian Sanchez's extradition to the United States. I think it's a very misleading decision and I'm glad Deepa brought it up because at the first sight, well clearly, well the result is that's what everybody was hoping for, who's on the right side of history, right? We all, I mean, the first thing I said about this case when I finally understood it was on the early April 2019, before he actually was expelled from the embassy, was that I called on Ecuador, not to expel him, and I called on the UK in case of expulsion, not to extradite him to the US, because precisely of the risk of inhumane treatment and an unfair trial at the so-called Espionage Court. And so I was very pleased to see in these tweets that came out of the courtroom that the extradition happened refused, based exactly on the assessment that his detention conditions would be oppressive, given his state of health, and that it would very likely lead to his suicide. But now, at second sight, I realized that up to that point, the judgment confirms the entire narrative of the US prosecution, that basically investigative journalism, if it publishes information the government doesn't want to be published, then that regardless of public interest, then that will say Espionage. And the judge even went further and said, and by the way, it is also punishable under the Official Secrets Act of the UK. So now we're having a precedent on both sides of the Atlantic, and make no mistake, the Official Secrets Act has been stood model for many other secrecy acts in the whole Commonwealth, from Hong Kong, Singapore, and so on. I mean, up to Australia has a very draconian legislation on secrecy. And so we're setting a worldwide, you can easily say the former British Empire, which basically spun the whole world is strongly influenced by this emerging precedent that anyone, anyone, anywhere in the world, publishing any information that the government doesn't want to be published can be prosecuted. And I call it prosecuted because it is for political reasons and silenced through criminal law as a spy by one of those involved countries. And that is extremely dangerous because we are in such a complex society today that we cannot oversee and control what our governments are doing with our tax money and the power that we give to them unless we have a free press that can report to us when the governing powerful people abuse of their power and commit crimes. If it becomes a crime to tell the truth about this, then we are really living in a tyranny because we have lost the ability to exercise our democratic rights to control our government. So I'm not, and please, you can check my personal history, I'm not known for alarmist headline. This is the first time in a 20 year career that I really step out and I'm really being loud about it because it's urgent, it's alarming and it's fundamentally dangerous. This judgment sets this precedent. Now had the judge extradited Julian, then clearly his legal team would have appealed. Now, because he's not being extradited, the US has to appeal, if the US doesn't appeal, this precedent stands, right? And if they appeal, guess what? Only the medical question will be discussed at appeal unless a lawyer has the time to cross appeal. So unless that happens, which already is quite challenging because they would have to discuss with him, he's isolated in the prison, they don't have a lot of time to do that. If they don't have time to cross appeal, the only thing that will be discussed in an eventual appeal is the detention conditions in the US, are they oppressive? And the US can just make assurances to say, yes, okay, we see, you have certain doubts there, we make diplomatic assurances, she will not be exposed to special administrative measures or not social confinement or something like this. And then the High Court really does not have any arguments again anymore, not to extradite them and they would overturn that decision. Or, and I'm closing here because I'm getting long, but I think it's an important point to make, even if the US doesn't appeal or it loses the appeal, in the end, the decision stands that he will not be extradited for now, but not because he's right, just because he's too weak. So if ever the government should determine that his health is now better, they could ask for another extradition. They could again put him in extradition detention. If Assange leaves the UK, because the UK is the only country that's bound by that decision, if he goes to France, the US can immediately ask for extradition in France, move him from country to country, right? The UK could even say, well, you don't have a regular status here, so we release you, but you have to leave the country. So the only country where he's protected, he will lose, he'll perhaps go back to Australia and then the US will ask Australia for extradition and then he will be detention there for three years. And so you can see that playbook that Stratford came up with 10 years ago is playing out already for a decade before our eyes, and this judgment is no reason at all for anyone to be relieved, I think to the contrary. Thank you. Yes, Ray. Just a very brief comment. I'm going to quote two of my favorite Russians and I hope no one will put me in Poutine's pocket for doing so. First one is Fyodor Dostoevsky who commented in relation to this kind of thing that you can tell the degree of civilization of a certain nation by entering its prisons. How ironic it is that prison conditions in our country are so, so worse, so bad that this was one of the things that the judge cited as together with Julian's health as arguing against bringing him to the United States. The other thing, the other quote is from Alexander Solzhenitsyn who wrote the Gulag Archipelago and I just have two sentences from him and I'll quote them. In keeping silent about evil and burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. We are not simply protecting the trivial old age of the culprits. We are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. I'm concerned about new generations. They need to know the truth about this before it's too late. Thanks. Thank you and we're gonna go on but I feel like I should follow our procedure here and tell you what next week's forum is. So this is a very brief announcement. Next week's forum is going to be Science, Law and Criminal Legal System Reform with Kate Judson, Executive Director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences and our host will be Molly Schiffler. We hope to see you then but I'm not ending this meeting. There's still 66 participants who are hanging on your comments and wisdom. So I'm interested when you looked at the chat either Ray or Niels, do you want to respond to something that is near and dear to you? Maybe I can, I have maybe two remarks. I want to compliment what I said before about this judgment. I think what's also important is to see that the determination that during the science cannot be extradited. As I said, on the one hand, it confirms the concerns many people, including myself had about the prison conditions and you know, more generally but specifically in national security trials, state of health is deplorable. And anyone who has met him knows that he's a very strong person. He's very resilient. So how do you get a man who's in good health, who's very energetic, who's very determined? How'd you get him to a point where you can't extradite him anymore because he is so fraffled? That's not because they've treated him well. Obviously the judge didn't say that but it's a logical consequence. It must, I mean, he's been in the embassy and then in a British prison and when he entered the embassy, he was healthy and strong and now he is so fragile you can't extradite him. So what did you do to him? I mean, it confirms the very point that I confirmed with my medical team that he has been deliberately destroyed step by step through psychological stressors, emotional stressors, constant arbitrariness, constant isolation, constant threats. So this, the defamation, the humiliation, it was the constant demonstration of power that no, yes, you are in a European country but you don't have a right to prepare your defense because you are an outlaw because you are basically free for the kill. And yes, Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, he was an extradition detention in the UK in a luxurious villa and Mrs. Thatcher brought him whiskey. But, you know, Julian Sanchez legally in exactly the same situation except he is not being held in the villa. And Pinochet's extradition was refused based on health grounds and he was immediately released. Now, Julian's is not. And the countries that wanted his extradition at the time at the Pinochet's, they actually protested against that determination but clearly the UK government there was very partial. So we can see that they're not dealing with this case fairly. Now, one last point I want to make is this judgment also confirms one more thing. It confirms that Julian was right all along that he couldn't leave the embassy freely as these governments falsely claimed because had he left freely, he would not have faced justice but injustice. He would have faced an extradition that now the judge determined was be unlawful. So he knew that. That's what he was afraid of. That's the only thing why he was in the embassy. He didn't want to go to the US and the judge confirmed you can't send him there. So he was right all along. There's no reason to say that he could have left the embassy freely at any time. He couldn't because he was under the threat of extradition. So again, I could go on, but Ray, you might have some things to say and I'm looking at some of the questions here. You know, I would just emphasize what you started out with Nilsa and that is that most Americans have been led to believe that we're dealing with a rapist here. That's a standard arrow in the quiver of corporate action. The way you smear someone, the way you discredit them, the way you marginalize them is by using sexual accusations. And in reality, no accusations were ever made by the Swedish government. They wanted to wash their hands of it because if he came back to Sweden, he would stand trial and it would turn out that he was not accused of anything real. So the fact that, well, let me put it this way. I worked with William Casey when he was head of the CIA, but I didn't know until later that at the first cabinet meeting under Ronald Reagan, he said this, quote, we'll know when our public offensive has been successful when everything the American people believe is a lie, period, end quote. Now a friend of mine was there. She recorded it. She reported it contemporaneously to a Washington Post reporter. So I'm thinking of Bill Casey now, whether he's looking up or down at us and he's saying, wow, wow, wow. If 85, 90% of American people believe that Julian Assange is beyond the pale because he's a rapist, man, we succeeded beyond my rosiest imagination. That is deplorable. That is the state of the media now. And if you have a sixth the state or a fifth the state in terms of WikiLeaks, then that can be exposed. And that's why they're doing it. They don't want to expose it. They don't want it to be exposed for obvious reasons. So thanks again, Niels. I'm going to jump in. Great. If I can pick you back on this on the Swedish story one more time. You know, what really happened between these women and Julian, no one knows. I mean, they know, but no one else will ever know. But I think what's very important is that we have to stick to the law and the Swedish government have closed that case because they said they did not have enough evidence to charge him. Now, what does that mean? If the police questioned you and they investigated for nine years and they don't have enough evidence to charge you, it means by law you are innocent. You are presumed innocent until the opposite is proven beyond reasonable doubt. They didn't have enough, even enough evidence to charge him, not to convict it, but even to charge him for nine years. And I know from all the investigative proceedings they never had enough evidence. Obviously they didn't. So that actually ends the discussion. By law, he is presumed innocent end of discussion. Now, for all nerds that want to get into the details and the nitty-gritty of this case, we can do that. And I can prove to you all for how abusive this investigation was. But just that point, there's an end of discussion on this rape allegations because the government itself admitted there was not enough evidence to even charge him. And so I think that that is really, really important. And I've seen a question on what could, I think it was specifically, what could the German government do? I, you know, I want to expand it. What can other governments do? I think we should know that, you know, this is not a U.S. government issue. This is a, how are our current states and governments around the world actually functioning because they're all functioning basically in the same way. It's just that the U.S. government happens to be the most powerful one. So everybody talks about it. But it's, you know, I think it's an illusion to think that the German government has a different logic. There's a reason that no government except yet the previous Ecuadorian government actually stood up for Julian Assange because they all rely on the same way of working. And our job really, you know, in building arcs, if you allow me to take that is to build government systems that are sustainable in the future, that don't function that way, that don't rely on, we have to refuse secrecy. There must be confidentiality of private data and so on, but not secrecy. No, as soon as there is no way to have a oversight of the legality of what governments are doing or big corporations for that matter, clearly things will go wrong because all of us, all of us, there's not good people and bad people. All people, if they're not being controlled or given uncontrolled power with time, power corrupts. I don't know who said it first, but I think it was quite obvious early on in human history that that's just the fact, the scientific fact, not a moral fact. We need accountability. And if we have accountability early in the process, you can prevent almost anything. If you have radar controls on the highway, people will not speak. If you know there are no radars, people will speak. It's as simple as that. Not because they're bad people, just because there are people that are not being controlled. And so I think we have to develop smart systems by which we can supervise our supervisors that we can control them without creating a big brother society. So we need to be smart about building the arc that we already proposed, right? So we need transparency, we need supervision, we need oversight, but we also have to make sure that there's no overreach into our privacy. And I think that's going on now in the US in the last week illustrates how important all of these points are. And I don't think anyone has simple solutions. But what we know, we can't go on like this. We can't live with secrecy and we certainly cannot allow the truth to be criminalized. Amen. Well, I have to thank you on behalf of Anne who worked really hard and our team, the UU Forum Gang and Sherry Wright and the friends, Mark Miller. Thank you for all of the work that you did to make this beautiful event occur. But especially we have to thank our speakers. And both of you took a lot of time today with your busy schedules. We thank you so very much and we thank you for coming today. And I wanna thank the 66 participants who spent extra time wanting to learn more about it. At the end of the forum, I'm asking myself, what can I do? And you may be too, because this is a group that loves to inspire action. Well, contact Anne Batista. I gave you her email before and she has put it into chat. But there's also a national effort at theassangedefense.org, A-S-S-A-N-G-E, capital D, fence.org, co-chaired by Alice Walker of the Color Purple, Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers, Whistleblower, and Noam Chansky, co-author of Manufacturing Consent. Again, we talked to you about what is happening with next week, but I do wanna remind friends that we have a YouTube channel and it's called www.youtube.com, first spelled out Unitarian Society of Milwaukee. It is our UU YouTube channel. It usually takes a little bit of time to get it up, so don't get upset if you can't find it on day one, but it's really worth doing. And others asked if we could share what we have been streaming and recording. So I wish all of you great health, great determination, and a lot of guts to keep on working for justice. And in the words of the UUs, may it be so. Thank you, friends. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I think we will end the meeting at this time.