 If you are a consumer of independent news and the first place you should be going to is Consortium News and please do try to support them when you can. It doesn't have its articles behind a paywall. It's free for everyone. It's one of the best news sites out there and it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades. I hope that with the public's continuing support of Consortium News it will continue for a very long time to come. Thank you so much. Contrary to some serious money. When the history of this century is written, historians will go back through those WikiLeaks releases and will develop a history about the reality of these never-ending wars, this mass intelligence gathering, this corporate control of U.S. foreign policy, and put together amazingly honest histories about what we're living through now and what so many people don't really know as going on. I see the persecution of Julian Assange as defining the First Amendment for now and the future. If he is prosecuted, I hope he is not prosecuted, that case will be equivalent of the John Peter Zenger case. The Zenger case helped to create the First Amendment and I suspect that if Julian is prosecuted, no matter how it turns out, that will help to define free speech for the remainder of this century and beyond. It will be a breakthrough moment and it will show us we need stronger free speech protections of the media than we currently have because a case like Assange's case should not be even happening. He should not be having to hide in an embassy and being threatened and being blocked from communicating with people. I think what Quorsore Shem News is doing, what these vigils are doing, are so important because it sets the table for where we're going to have to go with this Assange case and people should know it's going to take a movement to protect Julian Assange. It's not going to happen without people power standing up for him because the power structure is opposed to him and that's why there's been such an effort at character assassination to make Julian Assange someone you're not allowed to like, to make him into a sex abuser, make him into a Trump fan. All this character assassination has been intentionally done to rent a movement from growing to support who I think is the most important journalist of the 21st century because he's broken through and democratized the media. Get out your notebook. Welcome to CN Live, season two, episode 14, the media trial of the century. I'm Joe Lauria. And I'm Elizabeth Boss. Julian Assange, a publisher, is on trial in London to determine whether he would be extradited to the United States where if convicted he'd spend the rest of his life behind bars. The charge against him, espionage. But Assange is not accused of spying to turn classified material over to a hostile state, but to the public, which the state may well consider the enemy. Assange's hearing began last February before the virus hit. Consortium News was in London to cover it. We saw a preview of what is likely to come beginning on Monday and running for three to four weeks. On trial is journalism. Can a publisher, using contemporary technology, publish state secrets and be protected as publishers and editors have been before? Or have we entered an Orwellian present, which we thought we would never see happen? Two western governments, touting themselves as protectors of democracy, are trying to put away a journalist for revealing their crimes and corruption while their privately owned media cover it up. To preview the coming trial, we are joined today by several guests. From Sydney, we're joined by two of Australia's most prominent journalists. Mary Kosakitas is known to all Australians as the former News presenter at the SPS network. And Andrew Fowler, a former foreign editor for the Australian, better known as a correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners and Foreign Correspondents programs. And was also the author of the recently updated book, The Most Dangerous Man in the World, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks Fight for Freedom. Mary and Andrew, thanks for joining us today on CN Live. Mary, let me start with you. The title of this episode is The Media Trial of the Century, but it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it's the trial of the young century, period. Mary, besides the fate of Julian Assange, what's at stake here beginning on Monday at Old Bailey in London? Well, democracy, press freedom. And I don't really think that's the penny has fallen for Australians and in particular, and Australian journalists. It's interesting that within a week of Julian being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy, there was a raid on our public broadcaster. There seems to be no thought about a correlation here. What's happening in this country is that we're seeing the rise of authoritarianism. We now have secret trials. One particular person, we know at least one person, was tried, jailed, and we're still not allowed to know his identity. We have one of the most prominent barristers in the country who was the Attorney General of the ACT, Bernard Caleri, who's now on trial when he acted as a lawyer in a case. It's phenomenal what's happening, but each thing seems to be seen in isolation. And the mainstream media don't seem to be that interested in it full stop unless it affects them. But what happens to Julian will be highly significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, we should be concerned about it from a human rights point of view because there is no doubt that his human rights have been abused. His legal rights have been breached. It's been extraordinarily unfair what's happened in the UK. And when he gets to the US, if he gets to the US, it will of course be a lot worse. Andrew, it really is a nightmare that's coming true, isn't it? Something that we could only have imagined or that we're in science fiction novels in the 1950s about what could happen in the West, in Western countries. Yeah, absolutely, Joe. I think that we're travelling through, as Mary says, this completely uncharted territory. It's as though all the worst nightmares you ever thought of as a journalist of having the state whose job it is, journalist to hold to account, being unaccountable. And not only unaccountable, but actually having a raft of measures, particularly in Australia, where it's very difficult to be a journalist reviewing information the state wants kept secret. Having passed 58 separate pieces of legislation, more legislation than any other country in the Western world covering surveillance and counterterrorism. And those are the things that, of course, investigative journalists spend their time trying to unpick, trying to unravel. And yet these are the things that actually stand in the way. So as you try to do your job as a journalist, what happens is that the legislation is blocking you all the way. And so stuff that you should be looking at and exposing. So it's a very, very dark time to be a journalist, as I say, particularly in Australia, unprotected by the First Amendment, unprotected by the European laws to protect British journalists and European journalists, unprotected in the way that they're protected in New Zealand, for example, or even Canada. This place is a nightmare to work as a journalist. And that's why to have Julian Assange as the talk bearer of accountability is such an important thing for journalists in Australia to understand. This is somebody who's actually really giving their life to stand up for the values that Australian journalists really don't know that they've missed. They somehow, because it's been so difficult to hold the government to account on these security and intelligence issues and matters of their policy of foreign policy, particularly involving the Iraq war. They seem to give up. They seem to kind of bulk at the hurdle. You get so far, but you don't get any further. And then eventually it all becomes too hard. And having been critical of journalists, as I have been, as a journalist myself, I can also understand why that happens, because the number of people it requires, the number of hours it requires to break down those fences means that nobody's really on your side as you're doing that work. Nobody in the organisation, or very few people in the organisation would be saying, yeah, yeah, spend some more days on that, spend some more weeks on that, spend some more time, some more money. Here's some more people to work on this big story, because there is no time. There is no money. Everything's being run down and run down and the hurdles have got higher. So it's really, really difficult to do that job here. But as I say, Assange stood up and broke the mold and led the way. And if what happens to him doesn't register and hasn't registered with Australian journalists, then I think that they will soon register what it means to be a journalist if Assange is extradited to the United States, because they will be next. They'll be the next people to be extradited, because if the Americans don't like what you're writing or think that it's actually, and they just think they don't have to prove it, believe that you're in breach of their national security laws or even that you've written something or produced something which is against their national interest, how low will the bar be before you can be silenced? You can be taken to the United States and you can be prosecuted. Maybe not even that. Maybe it's just enough to be fearful. It's just enough not to ask questions. And that's the biggest problem. Bigger than all the laws, I think, is self-censorship when journalists, because of all the pressures on you, end up saying, well, it's all too hard. It's all too difficult. So let's not do it. Let's do something a bit simpler. It's also a difficult environment for journalists. It was a difficult environment before that, because don't forget most journalists now are on short-term contracts. It's very difficult to identify with someone in Julian's position when what you're trying to do is pay your mortgage, make sure that there's food on the table, you've got a couple of kids, et cetera. And here's someone who's really, nothing is as important as this mission that he's on to hold the powerful to account, to empower people so that they can make the right decisions and take action. So he's operating in a different league. But with respect to press freedom, I think journalists are generally aren't activists. But I think we've got to the point where we really do have to support each other, support whistleblowers. Because look at what's happening to David McBride here, and Richard Boyle and others. We do have to unite and present. It's about going into battle, really. It shouldn't have to be that way. But it is, because we have to inform people about what's at stake. Because if they jail whistleblowers and they jail journalists, you can't keep thinking, well, it's not going to happen to me. What'll happen is people will stop coming out and telling the truth. People will stop doing stories, exposing the truth and holding the powerful to account. And I don't think that's the sort of world we want to live in. I'd like to go into some of the issues that we can expect to see in the next three to four weeks during this substantive hearing. But I was struck when Andrew was talking about journalism in Australia, and he switched seamlessly to if America says this. So if you look at a war memorial anywhere in Australia, you'll see First World War, Gallipoli, British Wars, and then it shifts after the war to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. So Australia's fighting our America's wars. And in many cases, I think they are acquiescing to this war against journalism, American war against journalism in the person of Julian Assange. But the Australian people in Poland show that they would support him. So I just wanted to throw out there, this is really the role of the media now to present the story for the benefit of the public, not of the state. Isn't that really the crux of it? Well, clearly there's a link between the prosecution of Julian Assange and the United States-Australian alliance. And it wouldn't be an outrageous guess to say that the reason he's being prosecuted and the reason the Australian government has not represented his interests, although they represent the interests of drug peddlers when they get picked up in Bali. They represent other people when they get into trouble, other journalists are getting into trouble in Asia. They don't represent the interests of Julian Assange when the British want to hand him over to the Americans because they're terrified of one thing. They are terrified that the United States will cut off the intelligent sharing arrangements with Australia. This happened time and time again through history. Whenever there's been a problem with a leak in Australia, the Australians are apoplectic. They're so terrified that the Americans will shut off the intelligent sharing, which they have done in the past. The Americans have actually done that when there was a leak involving a Russian agent that was unfound but was leaking information. The Americans actually turned down the intelligence and terrified them. Before the Iraq war, John Howard, the Prime Minister, made the point that part of the reason why Australia was joining the Iraq war was because of the intelligence relationship with the United States. When the federal police went into the ABC, as Mary mentioned earlier, and started rifling through the computers of the journalists there, one of the reasons why they went in was because of the concern about security. This is according to the AFP, the Australian Federal Police, the security of our intelligence partners. For intelligence partners, it's really singular. It's intelligence partner. It's not really a partnership, but it's the United States of America. That's the reason. We are a part of the United States intelligence gathering operation, and we're a junior partner and we do whatever they want, not all the time, but most of the time. In this case, with the science, the reason he's having so much trouble, in my opinion, is because of that problem of facing down the Americans, and particularly it's Donald Trump. Very difficult to read what he might do. Under Obama, you probably know that there was an investigation, grand jury investigation, and the Attorney General decided that if you prosecute a science, you have to prosecute the New York Times, Washington Post, every other journalist in America, so they didn't go any further with it. But now the rules have changed, and this lot in the White House are not concerned by the, what can I call it, the niceties, the protection of the First Amendment. They'll just strip a science of his journalism and say he's not a journalist, and york him off to America. The problem is that if he goes to America, his life is really in danger, and that's the problem. It's not that the trial wouldn't be fair, although where he'd be tried, I think they've got a 98% success rate in his Virginia, I think it is, in the courthouse there, because the people that live locally or in the jury tend to work for the military intelligence establishment. But the problem will be that he won't be treated fairly, he's going to a country where he's exposed the war crimes or evidence of war crimes of this country. And so he is really between a rock and a half place. I fear for him, I must say, I do fear for him, that he has so little support from his own country. It doesn't take much courage to say we want Assange to come back to this country. This is a sovereign country. Without that, without the sovereignty of Australia, what's the point? What's the point of having a passport, an Australian passport, if a country won't support you? Because they owe an allegiance to another country. The government owes an allegiance to the United States, because of the trading relationship over the intelligence sharing. I think that's the I think that's the thing that's this most. We do though, Andrew holds some cards here, don't we, as Bob Carr has pointed out. A lot of these facilities are on our soil, Pine Gap, North Head. So we're in a good negotiating position, but we're not prepared to negotiate. It doesn't seem to be any courage there at all. We are really behaving like a sub-imperial state, as Clinton Fernandez says. We were under the British previously, and now it's the United States. But as far as the media go, there's another factor here, and I think some of the politicians share this as well. We think that we have a lot in common with the Anglo-Sphere. Our values are similar, and I experienced this when I was working as a journalist at SBS. There are the evil states, the axis of evil, in fact, they'd be referred to as the axis of evil. So nothing they did was any good, and everything they did was evil. And then there are the good guys, us, the Americans, the British. And yet we know that we are perfectly capable of doing very bad things in this country. We lock people up on Manus Island and throw away the key. The US locks people up in Guantanamo Bay and wants the world to forget about them. And they're about to do the same thing to Julian Assange, because when he gets there, he'll be held under special administrative measures, which means that very few people will have access to him, and those that do will not be allowed to share any information about him with anyone, not about his condition, nothing at all. And that really worries me. I'm very concerned about that. But the extraordinary thing is that with days after the cutoff of the deadline for submitting evidence, the US produces a completely new indictment. And the judge says that she is powerless not to accept it. The Americans say their investigation is ongoing. So what does this mean? Does this mean that the basis on which they would grant an extradition, that the charges that the Americans say that they are prosecuting, that they could change when he gets there? They're admitting it because they're saying the investigation is ongoing. Julian and WikiLeaks have always been concerned about that, that when he gets to the United States, they could change the charges that would attract the death penalty, for example. There is no guarantee at all. Well, the Yasmine Ajakt under which he's indicted does narrowly permit a death penalty if it's only if it's in time of war. That argument could be made since revelations are made during war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would be an extraordinary step to take and ultimately the most disturbing one. But that Yasmine Ajakt indictment, Andrew, is so flimsy. Simply, they've got him on possession and dissemination of classified information. That's it. That's the only part of the act section that he's violated. Anybody who emails a WikiLeaks document is violated it as well because we possess it once we read it and we could disseminate it. So because it's so flimsy, they're clutching at straws. I was in the courtroom in Woolwich Crown Court in February for the first week and we saw the prosecution trying to build this case about Assange endangering informants. First of all, there's no statute mentioned in the indictment about endangering informants. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a law against that. It's the largest endangering covert government agents but not informants. Not only that, but we know from Mark Davis, another Australian journalist that Assange actually worked to redact those names, the New York Times, and the Guardian didn't seem to care about that. And also, American General and Robert Gates, the time defense secretary, said that no inform was actually harmed. I mean, this is completely baseless. It's baseless in the law and baseless in the evidence. So what do you expect Andrew for them to put forward as a case and how easily could this be for the defense to rebut? I just wanted to talk about the point that Mary raised about the extra indictment, which goes to your question. This extra indictment, which came in too late to be included, it now seems to form the sort of the basis by which it's the fallback position of the United States, which means to me, from what I've read of the indictment and the old indictment, is that they seem to have a flimsier and flimsier case. They're lowering the bar to be able to just get him across the line so they can get him across to the United States. I mean, close to a traffic violation, you couldn't get much lower than the charges that they now got in this new indictment. And to me, it looks like the case is really weak. So I would be reading it the fact that actually they're going to have to put up a really strong case on this very weak evidence. Otherwise, a science will walk free. Now, the other side of that, of course, is that if the fix is in, as it has been in the past, as we've known with other trials in the United Kingdom, particularly involving a guy called Duncan Campbell, who revealed the existence of GCHQ back in the 70s, his trial was so rigged that the jury had to be reformed. They had to start the trial again because the prosecution had vetted, the government had vetted the jurors and they were stacked with people that had signed the Official Secrets Act. And in fact, some of them are members of the SAS. So those are the sort of things that you're looking at. Plus the judge, we know about the magistrate who oversees the science case and her connections with the intelligence community. So it seems to me that the case is extremely weak. And the only way you get him across the line to America would be if there's some sort of deal down to just say, okay, we're going to put him there. We're going to move him across. What stands in the way, of course, is the Supreme Court and thereby hangs another tail. And that might be the last chance that he has to remain. And if the Supreme Court makes a decision the way to make the last one, when Boris Johnson will stop from proroguing Parliament, that would obviously work in a scientist's favor because that was dealing with the rule of law and dealing with it without encumbrance, without pressure, without dealing with clinical pressure. They actually dealt with that, I think, in a fair and just way. But as for the charges against him, Joe, he's charged with being a journalist. That's what he's actually charged with. He's charged with what journalists do. And I just think that if he's charged with that and found guilty, then we're all guilty. That's why I think you're right that they're going to move to this conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, which the superseding indictment dealt with, although there are no new charges. They just added details. And they're trying to say that he helped Chelsea Manning to break into a government computer. But in fact, she had legal access to all those documents. The indictment says that clearly that she does. And that in that first week of Assange's lawyer's order that he was actually trying to help Chelsea Manning down on music videos and video games, because American soldiers are not allowed to have them in active duty. So he was just kidding. So they have nothing. And when you say the fix is in, I mean, what else conclusion could you come to? It doesn't seem like it matters what the prosecution is going to say if this is a predetermined outcome. Mary? No, well, I think this is a very important point, because if you look at the strategy of the lawyers representing the United States, from day one, they tried to separate him out from the journalists observing the hearing. They turned to the media and addressed them that this is not about you. This is about someone who's helped break into our system. And he's done the wrong thing. This is not how journalists behave. The interesting thing was, though, that the magistrate had to establish, because she has to establish whether there's dual criminality, she asked him a question about whether we put that one charge aside, which, by the way, attracts the penalty of five years. The 170 years is for journalism, is for receiving and publishing. And they had to admit that, well, yes, that is still a crime. So that just wiped out their entire strategy. And I think what's happened, it seems to me they had to go away and regroup and say, okay, we've got to beef up the other charge. So they're dragging out these two convicted felons. I assume they're going to be presented as witnesses and testify somehow that they had dealings with WikiLeaks and Julian in particular. So it's going to be very, very interesting. To say the least. Yes? No, I was just going to say one other thing, Joe. The difficulty is, the extraordinary thing is, here they are applying a domestic law and the extraterritorial nature of this prosecution is extraordinary. So they're saying that someone who's not an American citizen committed no crime on American soil, committed no crime full stop. They can apply a domestic law to this person, but that the protections don't apply to him. The First Amendment doesn't apply to him because he's not American. How convenient. That is an amendment, 1961 amendment to the Espinage Act that allows anyone anywhere in the world to be charged under it, whether they're American or not, or where they are. That was changed. Original Espinage Act could not say that. That's an interesting backstory to that. But Andrew, we're running out of time. So let's talk about the UEC global issue. A lot of science support has been waiting with baited breadth for his lawyers to put forward a motion to dismiss this entire charade because he was spied on during a discussion, privileged discussions with his attorneys. And that material was turned over to the prosecuting government, the United States. Well, can you tell us about that and do you expect this to become an issue in the coming weeks? I do expect to become an issue for sure. I think that the issue raised is very significant that Assange was filmed and recorded talking to his lawyers. This information, this recorded information we know, went to the United States and it made its way through to people in the State Department and that there was a person in the State Department who talked to an official, spoke to a journalist and said, why did you tell Julian Assange what was going to happen? Why did you say the Metropolitan Police were going to come in? And the question was, how did he know? And he also said, by the way, the State Department's under investigation for this leak. The question is, how did the State Department know that she, as she was, had actually said or told Julian these things? And the answer is, because the information had come full circle. She's spoken to Assange in the Ecuador Embassy. The information had been relayed via UC Global, the Spanish company, back to the United States and I attracted as far as the State Department. And there it had then gone to the person who leaked the information about the raid on Assange to the journalist who told Julian. So this information surely has to be sufficient for the court to say that Assange was being spied on or talking to his lawyers. That is sufficient from what I understand of the European Lawyers Association representing a million different people, lawyers and barristers in the EU who say that that's sufficient for the case to be thrown out because it's illegal to spy and to use that information on a person who's being prosecuted. That's my understanding of the law as it stands. And I would suggest that that would be a major card that will be played out in the court case. Mary, anything to add on that? Just that really it's a basis for the whole trial to be thrown out or how can you possibly have a fair trial? Inequality of arms, breaching lawyer privilege, it's just it's impossible. The difficulty will be is if the extradition case is resolved in the UK before the Spanish cases reached a conclusion. Because the magistrate has already said she's I believe in February that she's not prepared to wait for that. She's not and she won't rule on that kind of emotion until that case is over despite the testimony of UC global employees who explained this happened and and the existence of the tapes themselves which we could access possession of I believe at least that would be a major moment in this trial. So what we're looking at is an espionage act indictment that really doesn't hold much weight because the US government itself knows that that would mean it would open up prosecution for major media like the New York Times which also published WikiLeaks material the same things Julian is being and died before the New York Times did they possessed it and they published it. So that's an avenue they can't really go down so they seem to be going to this computer intrusion which is as flimsy or even more I think more and so than the espionage act because at least they have a amount of violation of possession and dissemination. We're looking at a circus and I think you have to come to conclusion as Andrew said that the fix is in and if he will win it would only be on appeal by a judge that would be following the law. You know one of the one of the major problems we actually have is that what we're talking about today is we're talking about the prosecution of the case against him. The prosecution by understanding does not have to prove the case against the Sange only that he has a case to answer in the United States. So it's even lower so the year of First Amendment protections and the rest of it that would be sorted out in the United States. They just have to show that he was a primal facing case against him and once that's done he can be extradited. That's the great danger he faces. Let me ask you both to end what kind of coverage do you expect in the Australian media of the following three weeks or four weeks in London? You're both shaking your head at the same time. It would be interesting to know which journalists are going to be able to make it into the courtroom and into the adjacent room. We don't know how many and whether they'll include Australian journalists. I hope they will. We don't know. I don't know how many journalists like myself and Andrew and yourself have been approved to observe on a video link. We don't know if the video link is going to work. In February and the administrative hearings it's been a shambles. It's been impossible to hear. So Monday will be a surprise and the bigger unknown of course is will they be re-arresting him on Monday because that hasn't happened yet as far as I know. That would be because of this proceeding indictment. He'd have a few seconds of freedom there. Maybe he should make a dart for the door but I was really asking I was really asking what the interest is in the Australian media. Whether or not they're going to be able to do it technically because that is a big issue. Well I think it should be live coverage. This is the biggest story, the biggest diplomatic journalistic story in the last five years I'd say, even longer. It's got everything in it. It's absolutely an extraordinary story in itself. No matter what you think of what Willie Leakes has done or doing a science is like, this is a story that every news media in the world should be all over. It's a fascinating story and it's a really important story and very often you don't get fascinating stories being important. Important stories aren't fascinating sometimes. This has got all the qualities you require of it and it should be absolute coverage every day for four weeks, particularly on the ABC, particularly an organisation that's been attacked by the intelligence establishment here. They should be at the forefront of this, championing. I agree. I'm not sure that I'm going to be right about this call. I imagine the coverage will be reasonable. I'm not sure how much coverage it'll get after maybe two or three days. It'll fall away probably. But it's a substantial story and should have substantial coverage. You'll probably find it'll get a lot of coverage in Europe, a lot of coverage in France, a lot of coverage in Germany, and maybe a fair bit in Britain, Australia. Well, we'll wait and see. I hope it's going to get the kind of coverage it deserves. Well, we are not social coverage. Yes, Mary. That the ABC public broadcasters will go in strong and also the Guardian for that reason, because the story is worth it, but also because I think the Guardian has the making up to do. You know, they've done a lot of damage, manifold, publishing the password. They really have done an awful lot of damage. And I think this is a chance to say, well, we're going to put all that behind us, because really, he is one of us. We are him now. And we have to fight this. We have to cover it so that everyone knows exactly what is happening and what is at stake. And what we believe is at stake. I hope that this will happen. Well, there are 10 press seats inside the courtroom. Let's hope Luke Harding doesn't have one of them. He is the Guardian journalist, of course, responsible for so many of these terrible stories about Assange. Well, I want to thank you, Andrew Fowler, for joining us today. I'm Mary Kostakidis. We are going to be looking very intensely at this case at Consorting News over the next three or four weeks. We're going to have a weekly show. We hope maybe you can come back again during the month to discuss the developments as they happen. Thanks again for joining us. Sure. Pleasure. Bye-bye. In London is Alexander McCuris, editor of The Duran. Also in London is Mohamed El-Nazi, a journalist who writes for Sputnik at The Canary and has his own website called interregnum.net. Alexander and Mohamed, welcome to CN Live. Delighted to be with you. Thank you for having me. There are a number of issues we can expect to come up in the next week. Alexander, let's just start with you broadly. What in your view are the major issues that are at stake beginning next week, both political and legal? Well, political, I think, is because this is ultimately a political trial. I should explain that for 12 years I was the duty solicitor of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand. So this is at the heart of the legal system. I was working at the heart of the legal system in London, and I have never seen such a blatantly political trial being conducted in Britain. And when I was working at the Royal Courts of Justice, I would never have imagined that such a thing was even possible. Nonetheless, it is happening. But the fact that this is a political trial tells us that this is ultimately a political matter. We must never overlook or forget that. And what is the politics of this? It is the fact that this journalist is publisher, Julian Assange, and his organization, WikiLeaks, exposed criminal acts by some of the most powerful governments in the world, specifically those of the United States and Britain. And that is why he's been extradited. That is why he stands trial. And if you look at the two indictments that have been published against him in the United States, one superseding the other, it is quite clear that we are now looking at an entirely political process, which has been given a kind of legal clothing, if you wish. Now, if you're looking at this case that's coming up next week, what is quite extraordinary, completely unprecedented for me, is that halfway through a legal process, which has been going on, as you rightly said, since February, we have seen a substitution of one indictment for another. I have never known anything like that to happen. I find that most extraordinary in any other situation of this kind, certainly in an extradition case, I would have expected the fact that there has been a new indictment, both to confirm to the court that this is a political process, and we should not be extraditing people for political reasons to the United States or to any other country. And that would normally have resulted in the entire case being dismissed. The fact that it has not been dismissed, that it has been proceeded with, shows both how deeply corrupted the legal process has become, and it also again emphasizes the fact that this is a political case with very high political stakes, both in respect of what it says about the conduct of certain Western governments and their concerns about the fact they don't want that conduct published, and the extreme steps they're prepared to take in order to suppress the fact. And because it's such a political case, Alexander, the public opinion has a role in many cases, and I think in this one has been an extraordinary one, and that's why we've seen Assange supporters appealing to the public, but the court, the British and US governments have the media, the corporate media, the establishment media on their side, and that is what's blunting in my view of the public coming out in favor of Assange in this, and seeing in black and white terms what is at stake here, which is putting a journalist and a publisher in jail for publishing truthful information because it was classified, whereas editors and journalists before, at least in the US, were not put in jail for that. So talk a little bit, if you can, Alexander, about the role of public opinion here and how the media influences that. One of the most depressing aspects of this whole case is that certainly in Britain it has not managed so far to gain traction amongst the wider public. Despite the fact that the stakes, as I said, politically could not be higher, and despite the fact that in Britain there is a tradition, one perhaps shouldn't overstate how strong that tradition is, but there is a tradition of freedom of speech. It is part of the human rights provisions. It is embedded in the Human Rights Act, but nonetheless the public, the British public, which has a history of fighting for freedom of speech and fighting for freedom of oppressed and understanding that these are essential in a functioning democracy, have not been mobilized. And why have they not been mobilized? Because of the extraordinary success of the governments, the United States government and the British government in winning over the media to their side. Now, how have they managed this? Well, certainly there have been profound changes in media structure, extraordinary centralization of media control in the last 30 years. The media environment I once grew up with and can remember in Britain was far more diverse than it has since become. But I think also and beyond that structural change, this extraordinary centralization of control, you also see within the media itself, journalists who are increasingly feel themselves, not just, you know, controlled, but are willing themselves to support power structures, governmental structures, because for them, the foreign policies of the United States and Britain, which Julian Assange has exposed, are some things that they personally support and are invested in. So there is a psychological change, an ideological change within the media. They become very close to power here. They are not just in effect forced or obliged to support this process. They willingly support it. And I find that extremely worrying and very depressing and very difficult to understand. And perhaps those who work in media can explain it better than I can because I don't understand it. When I worked in the courts, when I worked in the Royal Courts of Justice, what I remember then is that the media in those days was extremely jealous of its privileges and its freedoms and it staggers me that it is not so any longer. Well, we're going to turn to a member of the press in a moment. But, Alexander, I would say that it's interesting that there's, on the one hand, the conglomeration of ownership of corporate media that began 20, 30 years ago and which has created a mentality in corporate journalists. And I was one for 30 years. So I know, and I was around them, of sucking up to power, of living vicariously through the power of others, rather than understanding the power the press has to hold those people to account, the relationship with the public was severed at some point. But on the other hand, there's this diversity of media, as you say, because of the internet. And without that, we wouldn't have WikiLeaks as well, being the premier example of an alternative media that has done the ultimate, which is to get their hands on classified data of the most secret of kind that revealed the worst crimes and to publish them. And so we have, on the one hand, this corporate media, more and more a part and parcel of the state, even if it's privately owned, and they try to pretend that that means it's free. And on the other hand, we have this media like the one we're using right now, which was not possible even a few years ago. And now there's this huge tension between the establishment and its media and all alternative media, but particular WikiLeaks in this case. So Mohammed, let me ask you, how do you see it from your vantage point? You've been covering this case for some time now. You're very familiar with what the issues are. And you were in the courtroom, I believe, in February when we were there in the public gallery. So we met you there in the courtroom. Tell us from a working reporter's point of view, what is the challenges of covering this case? And how do you see the corporate media being some kind of an obstacle to that as well? So, yeah, I have to concur with lots of the points that I've just heard. But I think, you know, one of the key issues we have to remember is what's happened in many fields. It's also happened in journalism. So most people or quite a lot of people work in precarious positions. They don't have secure jobs. They don't have strong union protections. This is true of many of my friends who work in academia. Many people think that academia is a very safe profession. It may have been once upon a time, but now quite a lot of people who work in academia don't have full-time positions, don't have proper contracts, don't have job security. So what will be true in terms of covering WikiLeaks and Julian Assange will also be true in terms of covering other subject matter if it deviates too much from whatever the accepted norm of the day is. And you're unlikely to feel the weight of a powerful union to have your back if you feel that you're being pushed out or if you are, in fact, unfairly dismissed. How does that affect the way reporters cover the news? Well, if you don't want, if you're worried about losing your job and not being able to get another one and you have a concern about being able to pay the bills, and if you have children in school, especially if they're in free-paying schools, then they're paying their tuition fees. You want to keep the lights on. You want to have a decent standard of living. You have to have an income, and the incomes go to come from somewhere. So if you push too hard in directions that your employer or your editors don't want you to go, then you have to make a decision. Do I keep pushing till I'm sacked? Do I leave? Or do I tow the line? Well, you write for the Canary and Squintnick and your own website, so you certainly have more liberty to write about Assange from the point of view of freedom of the press and the real issue is that here. You don't have to adhere to a corporate structure. How have you used that freedom? And what is your interaction with members of the corporate media who are covering the Assange case? So I've attended until now every single extradition hearing, as far as I'm aware, I'm the only journalist to do so. The closest other person was Marty Silk from the Australian Press, but he's gone. He's back in Australia because... They shut down the bureau. That's another problem, Alexander, about the media and corporate conglomeration. They're shutting down foreign correspondence. They had to. They were going to go bust. In fact, they ended up being taken over by some philanthropic, wealthy individuals who wanted to see the the organization not go completely bust. In fact, they never used to have advertising, right? So that in the end, he was made redundant along with a substantial amount of the AAPT. So there we go. That plays directly into the point I was making. Give me the one or two main things that you're looking for in the coming weeks of this hearing. What do you think are going to be the main themes? I'll be looking at key issues of due process, violations, abuse of process, especially when it comes to witness testimony of people who say that they're aware of or participated in the unlawful spying of Julian Assange or even Julian Assange's lawyers or those associated with Julian Assange, especially via the security firm UC Global, the Iberian security firm UC Global, which was originally hired by the Ecuadorian embassy to protect and provide security to the embassy and therefore by extension Julian Assange. But Mr. Morales, the CEO of the organization, ended up making a deal essentially with the CIA via it would appear Shadal Adelson and elements associated with the billionaire casino magnet Shadal Adelson, who is the single largest contributor to the Trump campaign, to the point that they shifted from protecting the embassy to providing security to it, to actually spying on it in collaboration with the CIA and witness testimony from whistleblowers have alleged that they even discussed assassinating Assange. We're going to get into that as one of the issues that might come up in the court that his lawyers might put a motion into dismiss right away because it was spying on privileged conversation between the attorneys and the client Julian Assange. Elizabeth, can you take over? Sure, I have a question for both of you and that is in regards to the recent ruling in a federal US court regarding the surveillance, illegal surveillance that was revealed initially in 2013 by Edward Snowden. A lot of people who were supporter signed are very excited about that. I'd like to ask you both if you think that this has any impact on the Assange case now and just a comment on the timing as well. I'm afraid, well first of all, this is an important and extremely interesting case in itself and I think we should think of that and focus on that too, but whether it will actually affect the conduct of the trial, I think that's another question entirely because if I can just go back to some of the points which have been made very quickly, just as we need a court system, a legal system that operates with some degree of impartiality in order to have a free press, what we need is a free press in order to have a court system that operates with some degree of impartiality. This court system at the moment, I say this great sorrow by the way, has not been operating impartially. I am not convinced that this case which we've just decided on the Snowden affair is going to be brought up in these proceedings in London. I expect if the defence try to bring it up, the crown will resist and I suspect the judge will agree with the crown as she consistently has done. So I don't think it's going to change the direction of the case, the Assange case in London, but of course that doesn't mean this isn't a very important case in itself and it doesn't touch on many of the same issues that we have been looking at not just in the Assange case but in all of the things that Assange has been exposing and which WikiLeaks have been exposing and which have been exposed by people like Snowden and others like him over the last few years. So I'm afraid I'm not optimistic about it with respect to Assange but that doesn't mean that this isn't an important case and it's a powerful fact and actually a rather encouraging fact that the decision went the way that you did. Marma, would you like to comment? I have to agree with Alex. It's very significant. It's you know, it's what we always knew if only if you read the Bill of Rights that mass surveillance does violate people's right to be free from unwarranted surge and seizures and unwarranted confiscation of their papers. That being said, the primary focus of the indictment against Julian Assange is his role in helping to publish documents in 2010 and 2011 primarily which focused on what are known by us as the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs which exposed criminality, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other forms of sort of malfeasance. So the focus is on Assange's role in those activities rather than whether or not his role in helping to expose mass surveillance unwarranted mass surveillance that really isn't part of the indictment. You know, that does help to further validate Edward Snowden's actions and of course Edward Snowden was helped was saved in no small part due to the intervention of Julian Assange and members of WikiLeaks who helped to get him out of Hong Kong. Can you expand on that and give a rundown for viewers who are not familiar with that because it's not covered in the press very often? A former NSA contractor Edward Snowden helped to reveal the fact that there was vast levels of mass surveillance even beyond what we were discovering doing the Bush administration from leaks and reports including information that people like James Ryzen, the then New York Times journalist had discovered but ultimately sat on after his editorial team came to an agreement with the Bush administration and according to Snowden he thought things would change under Obama and when they didn't he reached out to people like Glenn Greenwald now of the intercept but this is before the intercept was created and he found his way traveling to Hong Kong so that he could have a bit of a free space to be able to communicate with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Portress and to reveal them the information that he had about the various mass surveillance techniques and technologies being implemented both in the United States but also in Britain and in the end he had to be smuggled out if you like once it became clear it became known who he was and of course that means you would have U.S. operations to be able to capture him or otherwise silence him as we know discussions were occurring to that effect and in the end he sought out the assistance of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks who were able to assist in him leaving the country although he would ultimately get trapped in Russia not because he chose to stay there some very important for people to understand but because the U.S. government pulled his passport the validity of his passport they cancelled it so he wasn't able to transit via Russia he became stuck there and eventually had to apply for the right to remain at least temporarily in Russia and then that was used against him even though it was done deliberately it was it was he was his passport was deliberately invalidated so he couldn't travel to a further country where WikiLeaks was helping him to find if you like refuge into a further country he was discussed whether it'd be in Latin America or elsewhere and there were some red herrings that were also put out there as well that were leaked if you like just so people weren't sure where it was going to be let me interrupt you a minute Muhammad to point out that Assange he booked like 12 different flights for Snowden out of Hong Kong so the authorities wouldn't know which one he was on that was one of the things that they did of course sending as you said Sarah Harrison over there to Hong Kong was instrumental but if you don't mind I want to move the focus back to coming court case in Alexander we saw a glimpse in the first week in February what the issues will be in this case although there's always surprises in court cases particularly in this one and one of them is that the espionage act is it's the only thing they have on him and my analysis is the very narrow violation of a section E of the espionage act which says that it is illegal to possess and to disseminate just possess and or to disseminate classified material period anybody who does that could be indicted if you have if you have shared on social media or an email a weekly document that's still classified you have committed a breach of the espionage act that's absurd this is that's all they've got them on journalists have been doing this for decades since the espionage act of 1917 and they've never been charged on this Nixon came very close he even impaneled a grand jury in Boston to get to New York Times reporters who published depending on papers but pulled back in the last minute so because this is such a weak case they have had to build I think a case built on public relations very much as you pointed out this is a political case and one of those things was a Sange endangered informants now my reading of the indictment and I have a legal background like you do Alexander but my reading of the indictment is there is no charge for endangering the lives of informants it's not part of the espionage act there is no statutes cited in the indictment about endangering the lives of informants so we heard a testimony from an Australian journalist who was with the Sange in the bunker in the Guardian when they were putting it out with the New York Times in which he said only a Sange cared about the informants and stayed up all night Friday to to redact them and that the times in the Guardian really didn't care so talk to me if you can if you remember that first week in February Alexander what legal argument the prosecution let's put it let's look from the prosecutor's point of view what could they really get him on here except for what I point out that small section of the espionage act they have absolutely nothing else it is entirely based on the espionage act I mean there's been this attempt to try and argue that Sange and Chelsea Manning carried out computer crimes but if you actually follow as I have done legal discussions in the United States you will see that even the most conservative lawyers in the United States people like Andrew McCarthy for example who runs a national review and of course Alan Dershowitz has said this thing doesn't stack up that that whole argument on the computer crimes it is completely unsustainable it's in co-aid it doesn't make any kind of sense so it is actually more gloss to base it all on the espionage act and of course this is an extraordinary extension of our understanding of this already very poorly drafted and ill-conceived act anyway and it's absolutely true what as Sange is being accused of if you claim that this is espionage if you if you bring it within the ambit of the espionage act it's very difficult to see what distinguishes it from what would distinguish what as Sange has done from what journalists regularly do but this is where of course the public relations aspect of it comes in because what the authorities are essentially saying is that you know this really doesn't apply to him because he's not actually really a journalist at all he's something else he's the he runs the intelligence agency of the people you know a twisting of a comment that as Sange made in a completely different context long ago is being used to try and make out that he's actually some kind of intelligence person but that's not an argument you can actually or should be able to use in a court of law and that's the problem I think that the prosecution the American prosecution and the crown in Britain have that when you actually analyze the indictments carefully they don't really very make very much sense on the question of the danger to the informers you're quite right doesn't seem to be covered by the indictment and from what I know of the evidence it isn't supported by the evidence either and that's an absolutely I would have thought essential point because in any extradition case you need to be able to show that actually there's some kind of real crime there's some sort of real fault there's neither I think an identifiable crime around that and neither is there actually any evidence of any actual fault and what you say about the fact that he was the only person who was concerned about it in fact seems to reverse the whole thing and shows that in fact far from being unconcerned about the safety of the informers he was the one who was the most concerned about it so again it's really not an argument that has any legal sense it's again part of the PR exercise to discredit him so you say that he's an intelligence person he's intelligence runs in some kind of private intelligence so agencies are real journalists even that that isn't a meaningful point and that he puts informers willfully at risk even though he doesn't and that isn't really part of the case against him anyway so it's it's smoke and mirrors yeah they spent a hell of a lot of time on the informants and uh Robert Gates at the time defense secretary said that it was his the release of the iraq and afghanistan files were an embarrassment and they were no danger to us interest really and it was a u.s general's name escaping me who said that no one no informant that they knew of was harmed so then they move on to the computer intrusion which they tried to slip in this new indictment which this was superseded in a dime which they weren't able to do and then there we did the indictment clearly lays out that chelsea manning had legal access to all these documents and then in that first week where we're sitting in the public gallery and i was i couldn't believe my ears when saunas lawyers were saying that what julian was trying to help chelsea actually download were music videos and video games which are illegal for serving military personnel to possess so he was doing a favor to get that's what julian was trying now they wouldn't say that in an open courtroom if they didn't have any evidence for that i really don't think so so that is such a red herring too so the informants the computer intrusion they never mentioned really the espionage act and what i have outlined is the only violation that i can see he actually committed which is one that as you say alexander new york times and every major media routinely break so they didn't get any so why did they mention the espionage what have they got going into these three weeks what are they going to present and does it matter because it's a political trial that's really what matters this is it this is it i'm not convinced that he does matter and all these points that you've been making about the new superseding indictment it's important to remember that the charges against him are the same this is just new recitals they're just recitals and why do you have to introduce all these recitals not because it strengthens your case in any legally meaningful way but because it discredits the defendant which shows how political this whole case is well you shouldn't be doing that anyway you shouldn't be putting in all these recitals all this narrative in in an indictment by the way it's not something that's done here in the united kingdom to some extent it's done more in the u.s but the whole british culture is to keep an indictment as simple and as factual and as short as possible but that's not what's happening because this is all public relations the problem the danger is going to be that the judge is going to say at the end of the day well i'm not here to look at whether he's innocent or guilty that's a matter for the american courts all i'm really here to consider is whether there's a case against him which could be tried in the united states and i'm not going to really look into these points about the espionage that act that we've been talking about that it can affect any journalist because the judge is going to say that's not my concern that's not the court's concern it should be that she's going to say probably that he's not and on that basis she's going to extradite him and she's going to say i'm not really convinced that he's not going to get a fair trial in the united states and she's going to take this minimalist approach which is in any properly functioning legal system a complete abdication of responsibility a washing of the hands as you hand a man over a journalist a publisher to his fate it's a very shocking thing and as i said once upon a time i wouldn't have believed it possible have you ever seen anything like this this one this is smoke and mirrors if you ask anybody on the street they'll say he's on trial for leaking the the nc emails just there's so much disinformation out there it really doesn't matter what the prosecution says this is a show trial essentially isn't it it is it is because again we come back to this if it's not a show trial why have all this extraneous material in the recitals what are the recitals therefore i mean if this was a genuine trial you would focus it on the particular charges that have been brought against him you wouldn't need any of this material in the superseding indictment but of course the fact is that they know that in fact these charges are difficult and dangerous in themselves so they have to and i get to say smear the man which is what this is all about ultimately and you're perfectly right you ask most people i mean many many people they think it's all to do with the dnc emails and the potesta emails when it's not and i get to say something else because of course my wife works in academia i live in britain i you know i listen to what people say or these sorts of liberal people and in my opinion the fact that most people believe that he was you know that this is about the dnc emails in some way and that he was working for the russians and that he's in some way responsible for donald trump even though that place no part in this case whatsoever that is doing him a huge amount of damage and again if we had a functioning media rather a functioning legacy media you know bbc doing its job itb doing its job the guardian doing its job all of that would be clearly nailed and discredited it's precisely because that doesn't exist that it's possible to carry out a political trial in this way news sites like the canary do a wonderful job i by the way read the canary every day unfortunately it has to be said we haven't yet reached that point where this new independent media has the traction on public opinion that the legacy media still has and ultimately that is the problem that's the problem in this case a political trial in which both the legal system and the legacy media are accomplices yeah and i'd like to just follow that up by observing that in the united states you know this hearing is going to begin right on the end of labor day weekend so most of the united states public is going to be at the beach at the lake not paying attention to the news when the flurry of media starts to cover this but in addition to the failure of the media to cover the assange case in any sort of legitimate fashion we've also seen the failure of ngo's nonprofit organizations for free speech and journalism and all sorts of other humanitarian interests to cover this issue to support assange in any meaningful way right now we've got a few petitions coming out from you know amnesty international reports of that borders and that's wonderful but can i ask both of you to comment on why you think it is that nonprofits and ngo's also have failed in this case which is a little bit different to the media failing assange you do see many organizations you know the nuj has for the last i don't know how much of the last year but for many months now come out quite strongly against the actions against assange especially once the indictment was published more and more organizations slowly started to come around once it became clear that julien assange's fear of facing charges in the united states when judges here said that seemed highly unlikely when they said that essentially you're just trying to escape justice in sweden and the main position was no i'll go to sweden if i can have an agreement that i won't be extradited from sweden to the united states and ultimately he was proven right that there were secret proceedings against him except now the same judges or the same judiciary doesn't seem to see that as a reason for him not to be extradited so i would say the failure of organizations is linked to the fact that he became sort of toxic kryptonites because of the successful smearing campaign i mean i agree with i agree with all of that but i mean i'm going to add something else which is that it seems to me that a great deal of NGOs and um are not behaving in a way that i would once have expected them to do i mean i remember amnesty i remember i mean i used to work very closely with amnesty once upon a time my wife is a member of amnesty and i know how amnesty can conduct a campaign on someone's behalf when it wants to in juliana sanji's case it hasn't done so it hasn't given it anything like the kind of force and energy that it certainly could put into it if it wanted to and that's true of all the other NGOs also they have come out with statements some of them in and of themselves you know read quite strong but there isn't the energy behind the battle that you would expect there to be and that again is very worrying and i'm not sure why this is not happening in the way that you did i mean bear in mind again britain is a country with a very rich history of civil society activity and we're going all the way back to the 18th century the people who organized for the abolition of the slave trade who are by the way overwhelmingly poor working class people you know wilberforce played a big role but that's the grassroots were of a completely different kind but that just hasn't been happening this time and again i can't help but think that at some level within organizations like amnesty and the and the others there has been some form of elite capture that they now come from a very narrow level you know range of social and economic backgrounds the people who run these uh these NGOs they many of them have existed for a very long time now they become rather comfortable being with what they are they you know they get large donations from establishment forces and they're not really willing to rock the boat in the way that they once could or what once did and which if they really wanted to they still could so the result is they go through the motions of supporting a sanj but they don't really as i said put any fire into it joe yes let me bring up some small matter very small microscopically small the virus this postponed this hearing it would have been long decided by now but it was put off a couple of times and now it's finally happening what i've seen in february they were march it was a huge march that we took part in that went all the way to parliament square there was an event at the front line club there were several things going on that's not happening now from what i can tell alexander or mohammed both of you in london there how would that the support for a son will be affected by that and of course his own health and what other changes do you expect to be brought in the courtroom or in any way in the process here will it affect it in any other way other than a delay it'll affect it because gatherings of 30 people or more can result in up to a 10 000 pound sterling fine under current covid restrictions and in fact we have seen sort of large demonstrations though those are mostly against against the covid restrictions so you have that you have the fact that despite the fact that i have covered every single hearing including the ones in february where we met i right now i'm only being given permission to view it online the hearings online which i know is more than most people but still being able to cover in person was quite a significant difference being able to be there and to speak to lawyers and to speak to members of wiki leaks and what have you and so i'll be doing my best to find a location near the old bailey where i can follow it via my laptop which has you know if i can get a good enough internet connection walking back and forth between the court so there's the fact that there's fewer seats as well so it's more difficult to monitor the to the trial you have social distancing rules implemented within the court which means fewer press are able to get in which means more preference for legacy and establishment press i do want to mention one thing when we were talking about the significance of evidence being presented it's true according to one report by declassified uk one investigation that judge venice beretser has approved around 95 percent or more of all extradition requests but it's also true according to that same research that 22 percent were reversed upon appeal and you cannot appeal on a point of law if you haven't raised it generally within your initial hearings so they need to present all of this material so that even if she rules against the sange there's possible other appeals we're talking about court of appeal supreme court potentially the european court of human rights and we're talking about a couple years worth of potential appeals so it is certainly possible that if enough sufficiently good arguments are put there and enough public support is able to be generated that that could help influence the sway of things at the court of appeal i was part of a legal team once where so like alex i used to work in law as well where we succeeded before court of appeal three judges all conservative judges here and we were ultimately able to convince them to allow members of the miami five or the cuban five depending how you know them who are cuban spies who infiltrated terrorist groups in the united states and ultimately found themselves being the only ones prosecuted i think netflix now has a film or documentary about it's now called the wasp network um and we were able to bring them here to the uk even though there's an explicit law that prohibits people being able to come to the country if they have a conviction for as with a sentence of is it five years or more 10 years or more and they were given life sentences and we were able to get them over under a political exception which was very hard to do to get them to recognize that there might be a political trial in the united states because normally judges here will not do that they will accept as default the fact that us trials are among the best that you can find anywhere in the world that is the that is the starting position and generally the ending position of judiciary here well can i just say quickly i mean first of all i think that the virus came at a very bad moment in the case because i can remember the you know i was involved in campaigns and things and i i got the sense in february march that we were starting to get some degree of traction some degree of interest in the case from the wider public i mean there would be the whole brexit battle that had raged the previous year which had you know exhausted political energies but then we got rex it for better or for worse out of the way there'd been a new election there was a new government people were looking and thinking about other things unions the chair unions were starting to take an interest there were certain sections of the medium the guardian was starting to take an interest people like you know oh it jones and people like this and then suddenly the virus it the people started worrying about that and the momentum somehow was lost and i think that was unfortunate very unfortunate and i think that it came at the worst possible time i'm going to add one other thing about the virus i mean it was appalling that a sand was never granted bail it was even worse that he was not granted bail when the virus came i think that again shows not just a the hostility to him on the part of the lower judiciary and of the british state but it shows the extraordinary lengths to which they're prepared to go in relation to this man i mean the idea that you know he was any kind of risk that he might have absconded or anything that was ludicrous it was always ludicrous and it became even worse when they started refusing his bail at that point now i just wanted to say something about appeal because of course if he goes to the high court as i understand it the sequence is the high court and then from the high court it goes directly to the supreme court i think that is the actual system now the best sort of judges to deal with the case in the high court are in my opinion this is going to surprise people old-fashioned conservative judges steeped in the law who take the law seriously i work with people like that it's these sort of priestly figures who are you know utterly absorbed in the law who are the kind of people who might look at this thing that has happened in the westminster magistrate school lift their arms up in horror and say we cannot possibly allow this to happen i mean this is a completely terrible case and obviously he can't be extradited to the united states because this violates everything that we believe in as judges and you do find judges like that and they do exist and i've worked with people like this so by all means i do have some hopes of the appeal process the one thing that makes me very concerned and worried there is that i had exactly the same hopes about the swedish appeal process the appeal a process of the extradition decision in the swedish case and i was absolutely horrified when i read the high court judgment in that case which went against assange and again you have to really understand the court system and judges and judgments to understand what a very strange decision that was and then of course there was the even stranger decision that came out of the supreme court now that makes me worried that you know the same thing might repeat itself when the case eventually goes to the high court and eventually goes to the supreme court if it fails at the high court so you know i'm not giving up i don't think we should give up at all i think that perhaps with the virus abating perhaps the momentum of interest will grow again just as it was seen to be doing before the virus came and certainly there are people in the higher judiciary who take their responsibilities as judges very seriously and that may kick in at this stage but you know being hopeful is one thing being optimistic or perhaps shall i say being over optimistic might be you know setting one's expectations too high we are still as mohammed said very much at the early stages of this battle the battle is not yet lost is not lost by any means but there is still a huge fight ahead and a huge mountain to climb but alexander since you're talking about appeals i'm assuming you think he has no chance with beretsa with venessa beretsa well i i i'm not going to say that i think that he's got absolutely no chance because sometimes you know judges can surprise you you can see and i've seen this happen again i mean you can see some situations where they seem incredibly hostile they reject every single application that's put before them you know that comes from the side that you think ought to win that you find yourself shaking your head with astonishment and worry and then suddenly at the moment when the case is going to be decided they come up with a judgment that is completely different from the one you expect and is the one that you agree with i've seen that happen i have to be frank and say i don't expect that in this case i mean it that's i mean if it does i will be beyond astonished i'd be threat delighted but i will be beyond astonished well don't be too frank alexander i just tell us what you think i uh i think it's a show trial and you're saying that the fields courts perhaps are potentially less politicized than than the level of beretsa oh well i think they are and i think that there are some judges within the high court i mean this is where i said conservative old-fashioned uh judges steeped in the law they would put some of them would push back against the political pressure could it also be that does happen could it also be alexander sorry that they're at the highest rung of their careers they can't get a higher appointment there's nobody else to suck up to that they have more liberty we're a young youngest judge like venetsa beretsa who seems very much out of her depth in my opinion in many cases that she's you know she has ambitions i would think and that she's going to be more liable to pressure from a higher ups let's put it that way in the system is that also an element that you would see in the appeals court no question about it there's no doubt about that at all there are people within the judiciary the higher judiciary and there is a huge gulf between the higher judiciary of the high court and of the court of appeal and of the supreme court and judges at the level of district judge that maritza has i mean there is a vast gulf in legal knowledge and legal uh and self-confidence yeah one has to say that i mean so the it's almost a completely different world i'm not without hope i mean i want to make that very good i mean i i think that there is on on the facts and the law an appeal should have a good prospect of success problem is i thought the same with the swedish extradition case and it turned out otherwise and i do wonder what will happen this time around i think the stakes are higher by the way in this time around because of course we are we're dealing with a claim from the united states which has such huge impact on the media and on freedom of expression and i think that might be something that some judges if i can say definitely some judges would be very concerned about bearing in mind that the judiciary in england is uh very committed to protecting the human rights act which is given them all kinds of weapons that they can use i mean they have they have a vested interest in protecting it this is an attack in a way on the concept of human rights freedom of expression privacy of the person right to fair trial all of those things and of course they're facing a government that the judiciary even the conservative parts of the judiciary are uncomfortable with for various reasons and which has been talking about doing away with the human rights act so there are those political dynamics in play as well at the level of the high court yet the level of the supreme court all of that applies even further because you're talking about people who are absolutely at the peak of their career they've got no way further up to go and they are some of the greatest and most intelligence jurists in the country so you know absolutely the battle is still there to be fought it can still be won but i can't say you know that it will be won and that i'm absolutely sure of victory because i you know i it didn't happen when that you know with this case came up before okay final words from Muhammad Elizabeth thank you Alexander yeah i have to agree with large of what a what i've heard um there is the benefit of having somebody who doesn't feel who's not obsessed about where their career is at and who has um a sort of a conservative paternalistic outlook as has been mentioned as i noted the the judges that we got especially the senior judge at the court of appeal when we were working on the miami five case which was about you know left wing cubans infiltrating right wing groups backed by the cia in the united states in the end they were very conservative judges and of course that means you have to know how to tailor your arguments to them right so certain arguments that they might have made to a different type of judge that came downplayed or were thrown out at the last minute but in the end we were able to get them on board and so that can happen i think Julian has a pretty damn good legal team they even know a lot of people seem to be unhappy with them people who don't know much about the law Alexander thank you very very much for joining us Muhammad i know you have to run and we all have to and we're going to be watching starting on Monday Monday morning in Old Bailey the continuation of the media trial of the century Julian Assange standing for extradition to the united states for the crime of publishing secret information that revealed crimes of the state thank you Elizabeth thank you our producer Kathy Wogan Muhammad Alexander and thank you to the viewers for watching this episode of cn live we will be having weekly shows during these four weeks so tune in again next week as we wrap up the week's events and we'll also have videos during the week as well to keep our readers and viewers up to date good night