 I got a message late yesterday afternoon asking if I could get here. I dashed down overnight. One fascinating thing is that the judges told the lawyers not to turn up. The judges said this is being held without cancel because they won't accept any submissions and the defense team would not be allowed to say anything and wasn't in the court or present by video link and his legal team was supposed not to be present in the court although Gareth Pierce decided to ignore the instruction and did arrive to show support and to consult on next steps and the bland statement from the judge who said that the assurances by the United States government constitute a solemn undertaking by one sovereign state to another and therefore have to be accepted as though states never abuse human rights and states never break their word whereas in fact of course by definition it is states who are the largest abusers of human rights. It was extremely frustrating to be in that court and to see it and the bland, the unmitigated acceptance that anything the United States government says must be true by the court and the failure by the court to address at all either in court today or in the written judgment the question of the many cases in the past where the United States government has given such assurances and broken them was very very hard to take it was difficult the judge himself was smug would I think be you know once you've actually issued an instruction before you start lawyers aren't wanted and nobody else is going to be allowed to speak I guess you get to be smug because nobody else is going to be allowed to say anything. Was the Lord Chief Justice there or was just Holroy? No just Holroy the Lord Chief Justice didn't show up yeah yeah no it was only Holroy we were able to meet with Julian's legal team afterwards and Julian's counsel was able to speak to him in the prison about the next steps and then we were able to take it forward. The situation now becomes entangled in fuss really because we have until the 23rd of December to lodge an appeal to the Supreme Court against this decision which would prevent Beretsa from going ahead and acting as instructed and remember Beretsa wasn't told to look at this again she was told to cancel her order and accept the diplomatic assurances and order the extradition of Julian Assange and the third of the Home Secretary but we have until the 23rd of December to launch an appeal to the Supreme Court against today's decision the Supreme Court will then decide whether or not to hear that appeal should that appeal be unsuccessful and we could be talking six months away here another six months of Julian in Belmont I have even possibly longer it then goes back to Beretsa and the magistrates court to order the extradition at that point we get to counter appeal again to the High Court to the same judges today on the other points on the point of freedom of speech on the no-political extradition point on the point of the CIA involvement the attempts to assassinate on the point of the witness who lie in Iceland so we have to conclude right up to the Supreme Court the hearing on the US government's points of appeal before we can initiate the hearing on our points of appeal so this could easily be another two to three years before this extradition is resolved all of which time Julian is dying effectively being destroyed in these conditions in Belmont so it's by no means the end of anything today in terms of legal process but unless a political decision is taken in London or Washington or both to end this persecution the process is going to succeed in destroying Julian however the process ends up in the end and that of course is the enormous worry but the just the sheer hypocrisy of the whole thing and the failure of the court to acknowledge in any way that this is a bad season of speech this is about war crimes this is about the murder of innocence just the way the court divorced itself from all of that was really was really seconding to see hello Julian Assange I'm Joe Laurier the editor-in-chief of consortium news and I'm Elizabeth Voss two days after the High Court of England and Wales allowed the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States came news that the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher had suffered a stroke on October 27 the first day of the US appeal hearing not only is his freedom at stake but his very life the High Court judges accepted old medical evidence about Assange that led the lower court to bar Assange's extradition in January it also accepted that the harsh US prison conditions would likely lead to Assange's suicide the High Court allowed the extradition on the narrowest of grounds that it believes the US assurances that Assange would not be put in the harshest isolation special administrative measures or SAMs and that he will receive adequate health care in prison the door appears however to be wide open for the second harshest isolation in pre-trial detention news of Assange's stroke coming after the decision raises a number of questions especially these when did the High Court know about the stroke and would it have made any difference to its ruling doctors for Assange issued this statement on Sunday I said this dangerous deterioration of Mr. Assange's health underscores urgent concerns raised by doctors for Assange over the past two years therefore once again doctors for Assange calls for Mr. Assange to be released from prison so he can access consistent high quality independent medical care something which is impossible for him to entail in Belmont prison we reiterate that Mr. Assange is in no condition to undergo an extradition trial further extraditing him to the harsh conditions of the inhumane US prison system should be out of the question he should therefore be immediately and permanently released from prison this latest medical emergency adds to the already dire state of Mr. Assange's health owing to his prolonged psychological torture this includes 11 years of arbitrary detention medical neglect solitary confinement obstruction of access to his lawyers and an Orwellian legal prosecution that has violated the rule of law and due process including key accusations in the US indictment against Mr. Assange are marred by outright lies and a paucity of facts he and his legal team have been surveilled by the CIA and Mr. Assange has been targeted by the agency in a plan to kidnap and assassinate him throughout Mr. Assange has been subjected to concerted character assassination through propaganda campaigns in mainstream media across the globe assurances that Mr. Assange will not be suggested subjected to harsh prison conditions by the very agency that has been charged and assassinate him a farcical for the high court to accept such a ludicrous proposition describing the assurances as solemn undertakings offered by one government to another calls into serious question the independence impartiality and integrity of the UK judiciary the health of Mr. Assange and the health of our democracy which depends on a free press and judicial integrity are both in serious jeopardy this shameful and deeply damaging case should be dropped now and Julian Assange granted his long overdue freedom joining us now to discuss these dramatic developments are CN legal analyst and Duran editor Alexander McCuris and doctors for Assange members Jill Stein, Bill Hogan and Lisa Johnson the show is produced by Kathy Bogan Alexander let's begin with you for the legal analysis this was going to be the intent of this program before we learned about dramatic health developments tell us briefly what your reaction was to Fridays moving by the high court your analysis well it was utter horror if you want to know what the analysis was I mean I mean this is an extraordinary decision the first the first point to say is that obviously this appeal was supposed to be in two parts there was supposed to be the argument about what the judge decided in relation to the medical evidence about you know Assange's health about the conditions he would be held in and all of the all of the rest now bear in mind a point we've made many times on these programs an appeal is supposed to look at the what the judge decided whether the judge got it right or whether the judge got it wrong the court decided that on this issue the judge got it right in the sense that she acted within her powers as a judge I was always incredulous that that ground those particular sets of grounds relating to what the lower court judge decided on these issues was granted permission at all if you go back when we had that decision back in August to allow permission to appeal on these issues that was when I started to become seriously alarmed about the whole direction in which this hearing this whole appeal was taking but anyway they decided that they were they weren't going to go behind the judge on these issues it was clear she'd acted within her position as her her rights as a judge they nonetheless still made some utterly gratuitous points saying that they found that her decision was surprising on some issues given that they were upholding it that was really I thought completely unnecessary and why would they say a thing like that and then we have this extraordinary discussion of the assurances now the first is the whole debate the whole discussion about the fact that the United States government provided these assurances not at the hearing not at the time when the judge made her judgment but months after in the context of an appeal it seems to me that they were spending an enormous amount of time first trying to argue that these these assurances are not evidence well they found somewhere an authority they could rely on to say that it's a first it's a high court authority so we'll see what the Supreme Court has to say about that but the other thing was they came up with this extraordinary I thought utterly ludicrous attempt to excuse the decision of the United States not to give those assurances earlier and at one point they almost seem to be blaming Assange himself for the fact that those assurances were given later later than they arguably should have been which is they said that you know Assange brought all sorts of issues he contested so many different points in the extradition request that it would be unreasonable to expect that the United States might you know have to anticipate this you know a scenario where he was potentially challenging the prison conditions that he might be sent to in the United States I mean that is firstly completely ludicrous to throw the whole weight of that back on Assange himself but it is also so obviously and entirely wrong anybody who'd been following the case of talk who was supposed to be familiar with the case would have known right from the outset that the question of the prison conditions which Assange would be sent to would be a central issue so of course the United States had all the warning it needed or the or the notice it needed to bring up this issue at the hearing so again you see this strained attempt to find rationalizations and excuses for the United States and again implied criticism of the judge suggested that it was the judge's job to do the United States's work for them to actually say well you know I think Mr. Assange would be in serious danger if he was sent to the United States but I noticed that the United States hasn't given any assurances about that so I'm actually going to delay making a decision one way or the other until the United States can offer me assurances again that seems to me to throw the weight for the delay the blame for the delay rather than blame for the fact that the assurances weren't given sooner on the judge herself so everybody's to blame the judge was to blame Assange and his legal team were to blame for the fact that there was this delay in the assurances the only party apparently which is not to blame is the United States which you know the mightiest power in the world which couldn't bring itself to give assurances wasn't ready to give these assurances to the lower court judge at the hearing when of course as we all know it could have been I mean it has Alice in Wonderland logic that I have to say defies understanding at least it defies my understanding and we'll see what Gareth Pierce and Assange's very powerful legal team have to say about this in the application they make to the Supreme Court which we now know they're going to make because well they've confirmed as much Alexander as you say if you watched any of that extradition hearing in September and the American lawyers were in the courtroom there were hours of testimony about prison conditions in the US the idea that she might use that as part of her judgment not to extradite him was certainly very clear let's let me before I ask you a little bit more specifically about the assurances it does an overall view of this and you said this to me in an email a couple of days ago that it appeared to you that they were clutching out a straw here that they really had nothing to go on they had a predetermined they're going to not allow this judgment of parades to go forward they're going to allow the extradition and they clutched out a straw talk about that straw which was the assurances right absolutely the straw is indeed the assurances again her stressor point the assurances were not before the lower court so there should have been a much more involved in debates if they're going to accept those assurances firstly as to why there were these reasons for delay and notice there's no real discussion of this apart from these as a bizarre attempts to blame other people and then a coherent explanation of why they were accepting the assurances and note two important things firstly they list the assurances they don't go through the assurances in detail they don't go through the cases in detail we're going to discuss Mendoza and these other cases in detail they don't actually undertake what one would have expected a thorough and detailed discussion of the assurances themselves and explain why they are going to accept them and why they think that the arguments that they should not be accepted are wrong they don't for example look at the details of the Mendoza case and of the other cases which had been brought to them now that again is very remarkable given that they've just accepted that if he's going to be sent to the United States his medical condition and the prison conditions there are such as might put him in danger you would have thought that there would in that kind of situation be a detailed discussion and analysis of the assurances to explain why they were being accepted and we come to the actual conditions in which the hearing itself was held so we have a hearing the hearing where the judgment is read out the High Court reads out its judgment the lawyers are actually told not to come and they are told that no submissions will be accepted what submissions there can only be one conceivable set of submissions that I can think of and that would have been an application to the High Court for permission to appeal the judgment to the Supreme Court to the UK Supreme Court because that's the usual practice first you apply to the court that's made the decision for permission to appeal to the higher appeal court then if that appeal that application is refused you go to the appeal court and you in this case the Supreme Court and you ask the Supreme Court for permission well the whole scenario looks as if it was intended to physically prevent an application like that being made on Friday why did they do that well first of all they know that they can't prevent an application for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court the only reason I can think of is that if they were going to refuse an application for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court they would have had to do that which they did not do in any adequate way in their own judgment and explain in detail why they were accepting the assurances they didn't want in other words to carry out that discussion of the previous cases cases like Mendoza which might have in fact in effect shown up right the weakness of the entire of the Alexander may interrupt you because there's one other reason why I think they didn't want the lawyers in the case but before I mentioned that I just wanted to go a little a little bit into the Mendoza case because they bring it up in their judgment they say in general and this is a quote from the judgment 27 page judgment general statements of opinion calling into question to good faith of the USA from those who establish no relevant expertise to give such an opinion are of no more value than a journalistic opinion called from an internet research the arrogance of that statement is beyond belief what it's saying is that to me the old boy network of the Anglo-Saxon powers are communicating with one another in these diplomatic notes and and the screw everyone else including Richard Medhursti journalist yes he's an internet journalist but he came up with classified documents that showed in the Mendoza case which was a Spanish prison of the US wanted and Spain said we've given to you only on the certain conditions that you don't try them under currency structure violations and that you don't imprison him for life and US refused they went back and forth at the tarmac when he was being sent to the US Mendoza Spanish government and the US represented from the embassy signed a contract he went to the US he was not returned to Spain after conviction he sued and they produced a document that removed his name so this was a clear a clear evidence of the US not fulfilling an assurance and even practicing deception by altering a document this is according to Medhurst's reporting what did the court say about that it said uh we that they both according to the Hamza case and David Mendoza uh can be said to show the USA may be expected to apply the strict letter of an assurance which it has given but neither provides any evidence of a failure to comply with an assurance absolutely unbelievable when in fact there is clear evidence that an assurance was broken at least in that one case now here's why I think another reason and this is going to bring the the event the stroke of Julian on that was reported on Saturday it happened October 27 we don't know when his fiance Stella Maris when his lawyers found out we don't know if they communicated it in a submission to the court after the hearing but before the judgment could they have wanted to come and reveal that at the court in a submission that day could that have been a reason uh why they did not want that the judges would not allow the lawyers there and the second part of this question and then we're going to move on is would it have made a difference to the high court if they knew that Julian had a stroke well thinking this through I think the would have it would have made a difference first of all it would have been brought up at the hearing on Friday it would have probably it would almost certainly would definitely I think have been brought up at the hearing on Friday in the context of an application for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court because bear in mind that the high court has accepted that in fact the medical evidence that the judge accepted she was entitled to accept and now of course we've had further evidence about the enormous medical risks that was involved in actually sending Julian Assange to the United States so I think that definitely it would have been brought up at the hearing because as I said they would have been brought up in the context of an application for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court and I don't think it could have changed the judgment itself but but it might have had bearing in fact I'm quite sure it would have had bearing on an application to an application for permission to the Supreme Court it would have pointed very strongly to a need to grant that application so and it might also by the way have opened up other routes perhaps to to to a further application for bail or all sorts of things so I certainly think it should have been brought up at that hearing certainly within the context as I said of an application for permission to the Supreme Court and an application which would have anyway as I said looked at Mendoza should have looked at Mendoza in that detail the fact that they weren't prepared to take submissions shows to me that fundamentally deep down they know that Mendoza and all those other cases I understand there are a lot of other cases don't point to what they say you you talk about this arrogant way of you know the Anglo-Saxon the Anglo-American establishments working cooperatively with each other and there is a tremendous whiff of arrogance about these these statements but partly the reason I suspect they come across so arrogantly is because they are a way of avoiding detailed discussion of the cases by hiding behind this general statement well you know the United States is this wonderful friend of ours we have this great relationship with them we we have every reason to believe that they're acting in complete good faith complete good faith they make that point just a few weeks after they've heard evidence that the United States was thinking of sending people to Britain to kidnap us and you know gauge in shooting in the streets of London possibly even to kill him but nonetheless good faith they know all about the fact that he was under surveillance you know by the United States that it had suborned the agency that was supposed to be providing security to the embassy but they suborned it in order to spy on Assange including on his legal team whilst he was in conference with them but still they say they act in complete good faith they accept the good faith of the United States but it's a good way it's a way not a good way it's a bad way but it's a way of hiding behind hiding away from any real serious discussion of the cases of the actual cases of what the United States has really done first I want to thank you doctors for their patience although all of us have been in waiting rooms and doctors officers for very long time so I do appreciate you're holding on Alexander I do think however that the card court even if they knew about the stroke they already accepted all the medical evidence but they would have just added that their only reason for overturning this decision was the assurances and I don't know I think personally it wouldn't have mattered but Elizabeth please take over and then we'll get to the doctors thank you sure thank you Alex I wanted to ask you can the fact of this under stroke be brought up by a defense when they do apply to appeal to the UK Supreme Court I mean is this something where it's an issue of adding new information is that a problem or will this be accepted well first of all it's not new evidence exactly because of course it's it's something that has actually risen so I mean if it's it's part of the backgrounds in an appeal and I think it is important I think it is something you can add because of course it it turns out that a Sanchez health is arguably even worse than people had known I mean he is known very serious risk of a very imminent stroke the court the High Court has accepted wrongly assurances about the way in which he's going to be kept looked after the High Court rejected points that were made to them by a Sanchez legal team that he was actually extradited to the United States even if you know all these steps are taken to you know which the United States to say which we can't even rely upon even in that kind of situation you know he would be at risk in health terms and now something's come up which lends massive force to that argument a point which the High Court when it accepted the assurances they they rejected so I think it is something that can be brought up in the Supreme Court and I think it will be brought up in the Supreme Court so I think it does lend force or at least in a rational sane world it would lay lay add force to the appeal but this is becoming such a very strange case and I'm using careful language now that even that I'm not sure one can rely on anymore but one must do what one can and I'm sure it will be brought up in the Supreme Court for all the reasons as I've said. How long can the appeals process last how long do you think it's likely to last and in relation to that fact and how long it could go I mean from what I understand it could be years in your opinion is it possible that the United States is essentially banking on Julian Assange's fragile state and his inability to survive the extradition process which would protect them from the First Amendment issues that would be you know brought up by his prosecution especially if he's convicted in the United States. I think I'm going to pass those last points about whether they're waiting for him to die to some of the people on our panel who are more familiar with the issues in the United States I mean they seem to be much more able to discuss that themselves. How long will this take? Craig Murray says that the legal team expects it that the appeal of the Supreme Court to last six months if it does last only six months I would be extremely pleased frankly I mean appeals to the Supreme Court to the British Supreme Court can take a very long time indeed. I would quickly add that there is no certainty that an appeal permission to appeal would be granted one mustn't assume that the Supreme Court will even entertain this appeal but assuming it is granted Craig Murray says six months that we have very fast appeal indeed on some very difficult issues but not difficult but I mean you know they'd have to go over all these arguments that were made in the High Court they'd have to familiarize themselves with the Mendoza case there that that would be unusually fast for a hearing of the Supreme Court. I would have thought a year is more more realistic but of course and this is where we come back to the fact that he's had a stroke it could be it could just possibly be that because he's had a stroke and his health is at risk the legal team says this is a case which requires particular urgency let's deal with it fast and that might weigh on the Supreme Court justices and we'll see what they would do but I don't want to be optimistic six months seems a very short time frame for me in a case like this. That's a very good segue into our doctors Jill Stein of course is a medical doctor and former US presidential candidate with the Green Party thanks for joining us Jill give us your reaction to all of this in particular the medical situation. Yeah thank you and thank you Joe and Elizabeth and Kathy and Consortium News for bringing us together. You know I'm sitting here listening to Alexander McCurris discuss this theater of the absurd in the legal dimension and I'm feeling like it's also a theater of the absurd in the health dimension and you know as doctors the reason we formed doctors for Assange was to assert the ethical professional responsibility of physicians to call out torture and to condemn it and what we have seen with Julian Assange having this stroke these neurological symptoms on top of really chronic conditions you know from from the first days of his incarceration at Belmarsh you know he had and it might have even preceded it you know he was reported to have you know a profound weight loss to have this kind of up and down mental status and difficulty talking at some time you know we were extremely alarmed to be hearing about his medical condition from the very start here and on top of the violations of due process the violation of his basic rights of you know innocent until proven guilty on on every count it's been just horrifying to witness the legal and health outrages that are taking place here and you know and that's why we formed doctors for Assange to call us out and condemn it and with the recent developments which appear to be a stroke although we don't have the details and I have to say looking at the couple of details that we see it's a complex picture some of the details that are described having to do with one drooping eyelid and an unresponsive pupil those also suggest that he's he may have what's called a third nerve palsy going on here you don't usually see that in stroke but you see that in other very serious neurologic conditions including a mass in the brain or an aneurysm uh there are a variety of conditions that uh underlying conditions that could cause what's going on here and we don't know what that is but you put them all together it's extremely serious and the fact that this is all happening in the context of a profound weight loss and a mental status that has been really under great duress you know this is consistent with things that develop under torture and the impact of torture on people's health all kinds of things begin to go wrong and um you know it's very hard to to ensure that we have a complete and accurate diagnosis and assessment that's going on in the basement of a high security prison you know i find it very hard to have uh confidence in his medical diagnosis let alone his treatment and you know i'll just say basically an answer to your question you know sort of what's the prognosis here um it doesn't look good whatever it is it doesn't look good in the same way that this doesn't look good for our democracy you know and and as doctors for assange we're looking at the health dimensions of broader society as well and the assault here on basic institutions of democracy the way that this case is an assault on judicial integrity and on freedom of the press and on human rights the right to medical care um this is an absolute outrage and i'll just close you know uh recognizing that in many ways this just keeps occurring to us um within doctors for assange and the conversations we've had as well that this is like watching um the execution of Jamal Gashogshi uh in in slow motion this is a slow motion execution this is slow motion torture it's uh it is horrific it should be condemned in the strongest terms possible and where there is torture there is a torturer and it's really important that we call out the torturers here as well and that would be you know in particular uh you know the u.s. department of justice and the president of the united states under whose watch and with whose permission not only permission but whose active uh approval is required for this uh to go forward and has been for quite some time so i think part of mobilizing or i should say part of recognizing this absolute uh moral and social and uh health outrage is to mobilize against it and whether that is by making phone calls writing letters you know attending protests uh it's just really incumbent on us including health care providers but everybody out there because this is our future this is our democracy which is under assault and it's absolutely intolerable should be condemned in the highest terms and the torturers uh should be held accountable here thank you you mentioned the right the human right to health care prisons notoriously have very bad uh health facilities what possible reason could this court or and i'm not sure which court it would be that would decide on the bail but whatever court it is what possible justification to give not to grant bail now to a man who's just had some neurological disorder stroke or whatever uh whatever else it was as you described to bring him home to have him or go to the hospital to have regular top notch health care rather than staying in a prison after an event like this how could they possibly justify on humanitarian grounds not granting this man bail well i'll just say i think that's part of why they want to keep this quiet maybe that's part of why they did not want you know to have an active hearing on on friday that they don't want this news you know the and the coverage in uh in mainstream media has been you know almost um non-existent you know the coverage of this health emergency it's just not out there it's part of the general you know censorship and suppression uh of information around this case it's you know but but what i take somewhat heart in is this growing mobilization you know uh when things began when uh doctors for assange first started talking about this a couple years ago we were really sort of a fringe element but right now the things that we're saying are being said by lots of groups out there the fact that amnesty international and the aclu and you know and reporters without borders and you know just uh human rights watch as well i mean all these groups have really come out swinging now with really powerful uh statements and um visibility you know so the truth is out there it's getting out there it's absolutely outrageous the fact that julien assange has had a stroke uh you know or these whatever it is that's causing these neurologic symptoms and we haven't seen the data so you know so it's hard for us to validate one diagnosis or another but presumably he's had a stroke uh and you know that just put such a human face on this torture and makes it so outrageous i mean it also brings um you know to mind just some of the um uh the the police murders you know and and the incredible um public protests that have taken place in response to those murders it's really horrific to have to watch this i mean it's horrific that it's going on and it's extremely um mobilizing and and catalyzing to have to watch this kind of human um suffering and agony going on here which is completely unwarranted um you know julien assange's crime has been to expose the violence and the war crimes and the corruption of others it's never been anything that that he has done you know he's a um a peaceful person who hasn't hurt anyone that has never been demonstrated this man is not a violent person extremely to the contrary and to just watch him being crushed is absolutely um outrageous and i think it really helps catalyze you know the the the the pushback and the moral outrage which is rising up right now but he's a threat he's not dangerous but he's a huge threat to the ruling people in britain and united states he's questioned their legitimacy because they sell the story that they are concerned about democracy around the world witnessed the summit the other day by biden and yet behind the cover given by mainstream media they are murdering and killing and invading and overthrowing governments to extend their power that's the real face and he has exposed that in their own words in their own documents that's why they need to get him i argue he's too big to they will do anything including twist this legal case to absurd proportion as you say a farce a theater of absurdity elizabeth um if i could just add one one thing quickly uh joe to what you said about sort of the pushback of empire against someone who's holding them to account and who questions their absolute you know authoritarian power um you know that power isn't going well for ordinary citizens either you know the fact that uh an additional whatever it was 28 billion dollars was just appropriated to the largest military budget ever you know while we you know we don't have adequate jobs 11 million people are are looking at a at a slow rolling tsunami of evictions you know there are you know just we're in the middle of a pandemic you know you and you know and the climate crisis is you know we just saw a record tornado run for 240 miles destroying everything in its path you know we we're just we're looking at utter you know uh chaos that is unfolding within the united states while we have the largest military budget in history you know with 800 bases around the world conducting some 85 active anti-terror operations right now having spent 21 trillion dollars on the military against terror so-called over the last two decades and where exactly has that gotten us except for you know failed states essentially and mass refugee migrations which are about to explode you know we're seeing incredible instability just with two million migrants uh essentially in that have entered europe uh and the us over the last several years it's two million but we're looking at a minimum of 200 million climate migrants uh within uh roughly the next uh two decades so this cannot go on this cannot go on and it's extremely oppressive not only to political prisoners like julien the sand but to everyday people as well including everyday americans who are also in the target hairs here so i think what's happening it's really important that we um you know that we shine a bright light on what's happening as well as on the torturers who are responsible for this because we all benefit from you know restoring our democracy and freeing uh political prisoners like julien assange and you forgot to mention a failure to provide a national health insurance program for its citizens and they expect us to believe they're going to give adequate health care to julien assange in prison uh elizabeth please yeah jill just following on on your you know discussion of the fact this is such a political case as well um in what you just said uh just i'd like to ask you to answer the question that i initially posed to alexander and that is that you know given the fact the u.s is obviously aware of how fragile state assange's health it is at this time um what do you think the likelihood is that he may not survive the extradition process if it is to go ahead and that the united states is is you know potentially looking forward to that outcome because it doesn't force them to look at the first amendment issues with the espionage act and other you know political repercussions of assange's prosecution and conviction in the united states yeah you know i'll just answer um very honestly that when he was first taken into custody and he became very um very sick or maybe it just became clear how sick he was and it was seen that he had had this profound weight loss and this uh you know mental status uh the state of consciousness you know his cognitive abilities were kind of up and down and then he seemed to stabilize and that was a bit of a relief and now he's you know uh he's he's much worse and he has these specific focal neurologic symptoms that um suggest and he's had some kind of study you know supposedly an MRI but we don't know what kind of MRI he had and whether it was an adequate study and who knows what it actually showed but he's worse you know he's demonstrably worse uh i was very frightened from the start whether he was going to survive and now that he's had this very dire turn of events um i am not well um you know i'm i'm i take heart that he's managed to survive this long but i am not confident about his ability to survive uh another six months he may and if he were released you know uh the odds are that he would recover and uh you know and and he would live to you know stand trial and hopefully defeat this case but yes he should be released he should be released immediately so that number one he can have adequate consistent and independent high quality medical care and number two so that the ongoing day-to-day uh torture and stress and misery that he's subjected to which is really the underlying driver of his health crisis and his you know dire state of health that underlying cause uh can be relieved and following on from that it's um it's important i think to just recognize for a moment that all of this and the deterioration of Asandra's health has happened in the united kingdom long before he's ever going to step foot into the united states and we were all focused very much on the conditions the inhumane conditions in united states but obviously this has happened in the uk and uh jill and uh bill i'd like to ask you as well um how can we how can we move forward when the the media right now as jill mentioned has not even really reported on this stroke or this um you know apparent stroke and how can how can we uh encourage the media to shame the united states and the united kingdom for these conditions that he's been suffering under for so long and you know what can be done essentially uh you know i'll just say briefly and then i'll i'll turn it over to bill that i think we have to keep doing what we've been doing because um you know uh there was just blanket shutdown on this case two years ago and incredible progress has been made and it's there's really now you know uh common knowledge about what's going on and and yes i mean the mainstream media doesn't really cover this but still people are finding out and the various uh human rights and press freedom agencies have all taken up the cause i think it's really important for us to continue to do everything in our power you know whether it's writing letters making phone calls going to demonstrations uh alerting our our our colleagues you know the more we can make hay out of this the better and you know we we have to do that as as part of a broader mobilization i mean there's so much that the media won't talk about the media won't talk about war you know the media won't talk about um uh healthcare uh you know doesn't say much about the um you know the the economic the crushing economic conditions that so many people are facing you know uh so that's nothing new you know that our media um present company accepted of course uh that our media has you know they they are not on our side you know they are they are careerists you know they are lap dogs to power basically um that's just uh what we have to deal with you know and we need to mobilize around that no matter what the issues are over yeah i just i had to that i mean it's extremely been it's it's been an extremely difficult problem agorionado most if you will um you know we've made appeals to human rights we've made appeals to um medical considerations and ethics we've made appeals to the media's own self-interest uh with you know the first amendment implications of this case and you know they've exposed themselves as not seeing the first amendment is in their own interest um so if the media is not even interested in the first amendment here um we'll continue to raise the medical in humanity of this um maybe there's a core kernel of humanness humanity um humankind uh welfare uh concern for that um in the media i'm starting to wonder uh this event is alarming this event is um extraordinarily concerning echo everything jill said you have four states three of whom uh are considered stable western style democracies who have been credibly accused of torture by the un special repertoire on torture under the convention against torture they're required to investigate the uh torture when they're credibly accused and by definition the finding by the special repertoire is credible evidence and none of these countries has initiated said investigation and then they've proceeded two of the states continue with the legal process against this victim of torture so the united states and united kingdom have put on trial their torture victim a torture victim by definition while they're being tortured is not fit to stand trial we've seen incredible arbitrariness the inability to participate in his own defense how can you participate in your own hearing when you're having a stroke um he he gets computers with keys locked down he gets his papers taken from him his privileged legal communication seized from him all the time uh the torturers has had an added physical component last winter we heard he was not given his warm clothes of course exposure to sustain and prolonged cold is a tried and true torture tactic of the worst authoritarian regimes now the united states is the united kingdom is doing it um and we don't know what's going on this winter i've been wondering does he have his warm clothes this winter um and so we said and and Dr. Nils Meltzer the special rapporteur said if the if the torture doesn't end and it hasn't ended he will decompensate and his health will go downhill and eventually he'll die and we're seeing that we're seeing that happen in real time as jill said and it's alarming uh it's disturbing um you know we said in our Lancet letter and i'll quote should Asans die in a UK prison as the UN special rapporteur has warned he will effectively have been tortured to death we we stand by that statement and the party's responsible or the united kingdom and the united states at this point although Ecuador and Sweden are accomplices to this uh this ongoing slow motion execution um this stroke is you know if it regardless of the cause and just write the caution you know it's being reported as an ischemic episode which has a real direct connection if it's correct to stress and depression so depression's a risk factor for arterial um plaque buildup and uh embolic and thrombotic events clots forming and traveling and blocking blood flow to the brain um and and uh chronic stress uh is interacts with the depression and and the the arterial disorders and it's all mediated one hypothesis is through inflammation the the stress response induces inflammation and so um you know this is all this is all direct result of what's being done to him in this legal persecution and then we just heard from Alexander today about more legal arbitrariness um and and dismissiveness uh not allowing the attorneys to to show up in court and file uh additional proceedings um and and every time there's a hearing there's this issue that is he going to show up in person is he going to show up on video link no he's not coming what's the reason there's dispute over that we never know the reason there's massive amounts of confusion um he can't participate in his own hearings it's it's incredible well sir did you want to comment on that uh well i'm in listening to everybody speak um and you know one thought that keeps coming into my mind is that those responsible for this stroke and those responsible for this medical destruction know what they're doing you know since 2019 we've been writing to the government's responsible and we've laid out in a letter to the Australian government and we've talked about it in interviews and so on the ways in which psychological stress the chronic activation of stress physiology as Bill's talking about causes medical and physical harm um so you know that the governments involved know that um and we've named cardiovascular events as a risk that is one of the potentially catastrophic things that could come from the prolonged psychological torture um so you know this is really i mean it's years of warnings that these states responsible have had and before us doctors who examine Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy made very similar warnings and Nils Melter has made the same warnings as we've talked about and he's Nils Melter has said that Julian Assange could suffer this happens to victims of prolonged psychological torture what he's called nervous shock and a collapse and here we saw a collapse on the first day of the high court hearing none of this is a surprise and it's all preventable and it's all foreseeable and we've been warning and warning and urging and urging for appropriate medical care it hasn't happened this is what we're talking about when we say medical neglect it's not just neglect it's a destruction of adequate medical care um so this is a deliberate medical destruction by psychological torture of a human being of a journalist um and you know as i was listening to Alexander talking and listening to everybody talking i was thinking you know i mean Nils Melter has been talking about judicial harassment as a really important part of the psychological torture which is part of this medical destruction which is part of the cause of this stroke which you know Jules talking about potentially is the tip of a medical iceberg um you know which we're sort of potentially on the brink of now which is really dangerous um and you know maybe casual observers wouldn't have quite known what he's talking about when he says judicial harassment you know because in the press it's called British justice and you know um legal proceeding but you know listening to Alexander talk and um you know just watching the reporting of the status hearing you know it's becoming increasingly obvious even to a casual observer what Nils Melter means by judicial harassment you know where you've got the UK judiciary standing with an entity that everybody knows now is relying on the fabrications of a convicted fraudster and sex offender going ahead with that we find out that that entity was plotting to kidnap and poison the defendant well it's okay we'll keep going we find out they're spied on his meeting to the lawyers no problem they come in and they make really fake assurances meaningless assurances about the prison conditions um and the court says oh it's all right it's you know like you say sort of Anglo network you know elites to elites that's that's good enough for us I mean that's you know it's illegal fast and that's what Nils Melter means when he says arbitrariness and judicial harassment and Julian Assange knows that those US assurances are worth nothing he knows where he's going if he's extradited you know no wonder he collapsed no wonder the stress was too much when you know this is what he's looking down the barrel of um and one thing we haven't discussed which I know via consortium news so my understanding is that um a part of the assurance was that he wouldn't be held in adx pretrial um and that was you know part of the US assurance well adx is a post trial facility it's not a pretrial facility so that means nothing so the door is still open for Julian Assange to be held in adc um in Alexandria which um you know it's virtually the same as Sam's which everybody talks about there's administrative segregation there which is 23 hours a day of solitary confinement in a cell that's about the size of a parking space there's there's no access to anything that he could use to prepare his defense there's 15 minute phone call a month um you know there's it would be extreme isolation extreme under stimulation extreme sensory deprivation um you know a real ramping up what he's experiencing now and what he's experiencing now has led to what we've seen where his health is going downhill so dramatically and now he's really dangerous um so that's the judicial harassment that Nils Meltz is talking about it it's you know like Alexander said Alice in Wonderland logic it's not a legal process um so you know I mean in in this I mean I guess putting that all together in this situation the UK courts UK justice system UK legal system isn't acting as an instrument of the law it's acting as an instrument of torture and it's acting as an instrument of revenge against Julian Assange for exposing the crimes of the powerful and it's acting as an instrument to crush Julian Assange and to crush the WikiLeaks model of journalism you know which is about holding the powerful to account and about protecting all of us from abuses of power and you know that is what the UK court is participating in destroying along with destroying Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and you know the the medical interventions this is really highlighting very clearly the medical interventions Julian Assange is receiving it it's not medical care it's uh you know it's it's keeping him alive just and medicated and captive while he's tortured by this judicial harassment and while this court process is strung along through a legal fast that just keeps him you know keeps him in these brutal conditions in prison ad nauseam and you know like we said when we sent the first letter you can't adequately medically care for a torture victim while you continue to torture them and that's what's happening here so it's a medical fast as much as it's a legal fast and you know it wouldn't be the first time the medical profession has been on the wrong side of torture so it's really time for the medical profession and the legal profession to really wake up and stand up and bring this to an end Julian Assange needs to be released on urgent medical grounds and everybody who's paying attention needs to really jump up and down and demand that and this uh he brought up alexander detention center which is not mentioned in the assurances if he's sent there we know from testimony during the yancy ellis his name was an expert witness for the defense that there are no permanent doctors yes at alexander detention center so how could they be the other a big part of the assurances you'll get adequate medical care and which is even more significant now and after this stroke yeah that's a very important point i forgot to say that no doctors no uh and the approach there to managing suicide risk is to restrain the person so that their arms are away from their body you know that's not that's not care that's not medical intervention i think there's very occasional visits by nurses and apparently the medical care is just to to medicate people so it's just to sort of occasionally checks the medication dosage um so essentially sedate people if they're a problem and restrain them so yeah you're absolutely right joe so um you know when the medical evidence has been accepted that he's in a very fragile medical uh and psychological state to send him somewhere without without doctors and that the door is open to that so he just underlines how meaningless those u.s assurances are uh bill um lissa just mentioned that medical establishment has been involved in torture in the past and of course the biggest examples would be uh the nazi doctors and and japanese doctors also performed experiments on people in china in particular uh that's a very very harsh statement uh to say however as jill pointed out this is a slow motion execution as kashogi uh case happened much more quickly and he was a journalist that the saudi government did not want what is the difference here aside from the extremes of the saudi techniques and the extremes of an establishment in nazi germany and military and militarist japan and purel japan uh what are real what is going on here when we see a so-called western democracy treating a reporter like this how is this any different than any tin pot dictator throwing some reporter that they don't like into into a dungeon well there's it's a great question together not much is the answer and i'm appropriately humbled um as i've been railing against the legal system and um the lawyers and judges involved in the case that the medical community you know there's us and doctors first hange but we're a very small minority and the medical establishment has been silent on this so we haven't heard anything against torture even from the world medical association which was established and prided itself on its huge on its anti torture initiatives after world war two and its anti torture stance we couldn't get any traction with the world medical association to speak out against this torture and and that's from one of the foremost medical associations in the world that uh act it used to act against torture uh the american medical association you know is uh corporately and governmentally controlled they rely on a government monopoly for billing codes proprietary billing codes with our dysfunctional medical system fee for service medical system so the am a is not going to challenge the u.s government at all our republicans have threatened in the past to to yank their billing code monopoly so the am a's been inside the world psychiatric associations it's been speaking out in fact one of the senior leaders of the wpa is a member of doctors first hange they've been tweeting out recently about the case so that's that's helpful world psychiatry association has forbid its members from participating in interrogations to avoid you know this this ethical problems with torture however on the whole the medical profession has been complicit in its silence and uh we're we're trying to change that we call on our colleagues to finally stand and speak out we have been for two years we hope more do before i go to listen alexander for final we're sorry to jill and alexander for final words listen do you want to add anything well just the same could be said of the psychology profession i mean there's a very small group in the american psychological association who put out a statement which was fantastic um but the major psychological bodies are equally silent and you know like the medical profession the psychology profession has been on the wrong side of torture as well um in guantanamo and in those black sites so i should add the psychology profession to that it's time for you know the psychological establishment to wake up and stand up along with the medical profession and legal profession it just adds to the color of totalitarianism that we're discussing here jill uh any final thoughts before i go back to alexander um yeah i mean i'll just you know i want to thank everybody i've learned a lot here just you know just um listening and thank you for convening us and and thank you to all of our disciplines uh i just want to underscore what a you know kind of moving target this whole thing is inside of a context which is very much a moving target and that is that you know we're seeing a crisis you know this is part of our crisis of democracy which is important to recognize and as part of that crisis of democracy you know we are also looking at a you know the collapse of the climate at crushing economic inequality at endless war and you know and an empire that has just gone off the rails um you know and and and a continuing pandemic you know sort of a new permanent pandemic so you know we're kind of looking at a convergence of existential crises right now which are being felt by people in our everyday lives and so it's important i think to recognize the powerful potential for um you know for change i mean polls show that people are hungry for change um you know whether you're talking systemic uh economic or political uh you know and there's a big generational transformation that's happening right now too you know and people really get that is the younger generation really understands polls show that young people really understand that we are not in a livable world and this is crashing especially on their watch also on our watch too and things are unraveling much faster than you know then uh then even the worst predictions certainly in terms of the climate so you know this is a moving target we are actors here and you know as lisa was saying you know it's and and bill too you know this is time for us to stand up and instead of you know we may have a certain kind of perspective on what's going on but it's important not to um you know take that as a message of despair but rather as a message of potential empowerment there is so much right now that's crunching on everyday people across the board that there's enormous potential for change and it's really a very powerful time for us to stand up and demand systemic solutions um you know and this crisis uh of julien assange's health is a microcosm of the crisis of the health of our democracy which is essential you know to fix in order to fix all the other things that are literally killing us right now so you know we don't have much alternative you know to then to um uh stand up and and to help organize and galvanize uh collective action here and i would encourage uh any you know healthcare providers out there whether medical or um or psychological uh any healthcare providers to you know join us at um uh doctors for assange we're now some 230 250 or so physicians from 35 countries and you know the times are changing in a very big way and uh it's important for those of us who have a um you know a sense of of uh an ethical and moral compass here to stand up and help um you know help nudge things in the direction that they need to go and and it's it's begging to happen you know jill it seems it seems to me that the people in the american and british establishments who are behind this legal proceeding against assange are very very comfortable with their power so comfortable that they're willing to obviously dispense with the last vestiges really of a democracy that's on life support for a long time anyway they uh and i'm talking of course about the julien assange case because it's such a clear violation of the american first amendment of everything that america says it stands for and it's interesting as this process goes on they hold summits for democracy blinkin keeps making repeated statements about how the us supports media not only media freedom but independent media which they are funding to a tune of over 200 million dollars in the congress uh the biden has just asked in the budget for 268 i think million dollars and they're going to also create a fund a legal fund to help independent media it seems to me they're very nervous about independent media because i've got pretty much control over these establishment media and it's these pesky little independent media such as uh dare i say consortium news that might be worrying them so this is a co-opting mesh measure in my view to give money uh and we have uh the nobel prize winner maria race one of the two a reporter for an independent media in the philippines actually saying on camera that assange is not a journalist and that the purpose of journalism is to support national security it is extraordinary to hear exactly the words the national security state wants to hear from their reporters that's what they want to hear and they've got still so much um protection the media is such an important part entertainment industry distracting people from this core issue we've been accused of scotterm news of being obsessed with this yes we're obsessed with the assange case because it's way more than the health of Julian Assange and his freedom this goes through the core and first his releases themselves and what they're doing to him to the core of the lie that they're acting in democratic ways okay i've gone off my soapbox now i want to go to alexander for the final words alexander question about the bail process now gabriel schipkin told me that they can appeal to the european court of human rights for bail uh but in light of this judgment on friday and the news of the stroke or the medical incident where do they go to bail first of all to the high court back to magistrates court where would that be it seems to me there are three there are three possible routes european court of human rights does have a mechanism for um deciding whether or not somebody should be kept in detention in particular uh situations which might be life-threatening it was i there was an attempt to use it last year unsuccessfully in in the case of nevalny in russia they might try to do something similar in uh you know with assange on this occasion i would say there are very very good grounds but of course you always have to you have to actually make an application european court of human rights procedures are extremely slow and would they be prepared to take that step against the british government nonetheless it's certainly an option the second option is to go back to the magistrates court now here i have to be straightforward there are procedural issues which i'm not 100 percent on top of my understanding is that the case goes back to the magistrates court now i think that i think that the appeal to the supreme court does not mean that the case is not back at the level of the magistrates court the high court has made its decision it's remitted the case back to the supreme court do the magistrates court i don't think that you're bringing a the fact that you're bringing a further appeal to the supreme court which is outside the court system it functions outside the court system means that ass has been the case up to this point the magistrates court was not vested with power now the high court doesn't have the right to grant bail the magistrates court does so you could make an application if i am right and it's back in the hands of the magistrates court you could make an application to the magistrates court for bail and you could bring before the district judge all the medical issues which we've been talking about um over the course of this program the third way is to go to the government the go to the british government ask the home secretary to let assange go because of them or or at least to put him in some better medical facility because of the deterioration in his health and the fact that he's now in a life threatening situation if the government refuses then you can apply to the high court for a judicial review of that decision that seems to me a third way a third possible way of looking at this given the urgency of the situation now so it seems to me there are three routes they each have their advantages and disadvantages it's possible that you could pursue more than one at the same time but no one should be under any doubt unfortunately about the obstacles because we've heard a great deal about the fact that the courts the authorities might be prepared to let julien assange die and that this is a form of torture and read all that sort of if that is true if that is correct is the courts the british courts are complicity in some form in all of this well that does make one worry that in fact they won't entertain these applications but one can only try one must never give up one must keep fighting and going back to some of the points that were made earlier the difference between kashoggi and assange it seems to me that one of the fundamental differences is that Saudi Arabia doesn't have a constitution like the United States does it doesn't have the First Amendment it doesn't have the Bill of Rights we don't have quite such a sophisticated system of legal protections in Britain as the United States does but we do have them we have our traditions here we were at the forefront of the battle against torture after you know before the first the second world war at least in some people were so if that means anything then we should actually make push the authorities make the authorities the courts we should bring it to them that what they're actually doing is in effect a betrayal a repudiation of all of those things the constitution the bill of rights in the united states the similar protections the european convention of human rights that we have in in in britain and in europe and that shows i think that there's a again always the legal dimension to this case and the political one and the two merge and politics to be very clear do have do matter um in especially in a case like this in a political case like this when you argue them before the courts so i would say that you know it's not the situation where you must give up you've got those protections in theory there you've got to fight for them and you've got to point out that of course if you lose these battles well what is in jeopardy is the kind of societies which we say we are and and and that and that is the danger we face if a person like julien assange dies in prison as a result of the sort of extraordinary intricate chess game that's been played with him and the conditions he's been in which uh the special rapporteur have said amount of torture so if he's denied bell in the united kingdom what does that tell you about those about the british judiciary system well it reinforces concerns which are mounting to a degree to a degree that i would once have thought unimaginable i mean i've already explained why i find this judgment i mean why when i read this judgment it filled me with horror and the fact that the judges the high court judges have gone so far does make me wonder whether there is any point where they're going to stop because i would have thought that judges would not want to see a person like this die on their hands after they've gone to all that all those lengths to actually accept evidence that he would be at risk if he was sent to the united states i would have thought that for their own self-respect and for the respect of the legal system they would want to prevent such a situation arising but i can't be so short today as i was before friday and that's a terrible thing to say well alexander um this process has been called charade and and would if it keeps up as one would the supreme court have to just for appearances say have to accept an application for appeal by the assange team i i think they will accept an application precisely for the reason if only for the reason that you say i mean if i could just go back i mean there was a lot of talk about the fact they didn't you know look at the situation in alexander and all of these things the reason they didn't do that the reason the high court didn't actually address itself to all of these issues or at least chose not to address itself to all of those reasons issues is because they didn't do what they are supposed to do before they accept assurances which is go through them take submissions on them one by one and find out what those assurances actually mean so that they can decide what those assurances are worth they didn't conduct that exercise now that in itself the fact that they didn't conduct that exercise to my mind is a very powerful reason why the supreme court should look at this because already you can see that there is a defect in the process at the level of the high court and it's one that the supreme court ought one should suppose to want to address and look into is it enough for the high court to say well we don't actually really need to consider assurances in detail because the united states is the united states and we know that it always acts in good faith can we rely on that or should we do our job a proper job as judges as a court given that we know that this person is ill given we know that the lower court judge decided that he would be at risk if he were to be sent to the united states should we actually do our job and actually look at those assurances closely and consider them properly and go with them through them point by point taking submissions on what they mean so I would have thought this is obviously a case of the supreme court to look at at many levels by the way not just that one and I think they will do they will look at it but you know after what has happened any confidence that I have about this process going forward has clearly been shaken that was alexander mccouris speaking from london thank you alexander for joining us listen johnson join us from sydney australia bill hogan from florida I believe dr jill stein thank you so much for joining us from boston massachusetts and elizabeth waltz is in feteville arkansas kathy wogan is our executive producer thank you kathy also in sydney and for cn live this is joe lawyer saying goodbye and remember our winter front drive end of year tax deductible donation we can continue to bring you programs like this goodbye if you are a consumer of independent news in 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