 Welcome to Consortium News, Katie Vogan reporting from Sydney. We are three weeks off from what may be Julian Assange's last appeal to the UK against extradition to the US. On February 20th and 21st, he will appear before a two-judge panel to challenge the rejection of his high court appeal by Justice Jonathan Swift in June last year on all eight grounds. Assange also seeks leave to appeal the decision of the UK Home Secretary Preeti Patel in June 2022 to authorize his extradition on the basis of assurances offered by the United States that in her mind negated both reasons for barring his extradition in January 2021. Indeed, it has been a long time. District Judge Vanessa Barraza had refused to extradite Assange on the basis of expert medical testimony that a state of mental health would likely lead to suicide should he be extradited or realize his extradition was imminent and on the basis of testimony offered by expert witnesses on the appalling conditions in US prisons. A decision recently came down in the UK Supreme Court that rejected the Home Secretary's authority to decide if a country is safe for extradition or deportation based on assurances given by the requesting state. Such a decision must be arrived at by testing the evidence in a court of law based on a country's prior human rights history and current situation. Realizing the relevance of this decision to the case of Assange and Patel's acceptance of the caveat written assurances offered by the US a number of Australian parliamentarians have written to the current Home Secretary James Cleverley requesting an urgent, thorough and independent assessment of health risks for Assange if extradited. I have here Josh Wilson MP who is a member of the Australian government. He's one of the 70 people who sent this letter to the Home Secretary. Josh, welcome to Consortium News. Thank you. Good to be with you. Well, I'm wondering if your intention is a hope of triggering with this letter testing of these assurances in the Supreme Court. And gathering that your letter relates more to the part of Julian Assange's appeal that relates to the Home Secretary's decision. Can you speak a little bit more about this letter, what's behind it and probably some more detail on what came down in the Supreme Court recently. Thank you. Sure. And thank you. Thanks, Kathy, for having me on and for all the work you do to draw attention to this particular case and other matters of international human rights and justice more broadly. I guess I'll just start by saying that I'm one of the four co-conveners of what's called the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group within the Australian parliament. And my other co-conveners are Andrew Wilkie, the member for Clark, Bridget Archer, the member for Bass and David Shubridge who's a senator from New South Wales. So, you know, together we work with fellow parliamentarians who are members of the group to draw attention to and raise awareness about Julian's situation and to advocate strongly for his matter to be resolved and for him to go free. In this case, as you rightly said, part of Julian's circumstances, I mean, he has been imprisoned in Belmarsh in high security for a number of years. He hasn't been convicted of anything. He is being held pending the outcome of an extradition request from the United States that wants to extra-territorially apply the Espionage Act to Mr Assange for putting in the public domain a material that it regards as classified, that obviously was leaked by a US citizen, Chelsea Manning. And it was a decision, I think quite a sound decision, that judged the extradition to be inappropriate considering the likely impact on Julian's well-being, particularly his mental health. That was then overridden effectively because of assurances that were given by the United States, the country seeking the extradition of Mr Assange. They essentially said, look, there's nothing to worry about and we will ensure his well-being up to a point. And the court accepted that. Now, there has been the decision that you averted to in the Supreme Court in another matter that I think quite logically says that in something as a matter of serious as that, when one country is having to make a decision to take responsibility for another person's well-being, in this case, we're talking about a very serious risk of a person taking their own life, but they can't just rely on the assurances of the country seeking the extradition. I think there's a lot of good reasons for that, not least the very strong inherent conflict of interest. A country that wants to pursue someone is going to be inclined to say that the incarcerated and judicial circumstances that they're going to apply are not harmful. And really, that should be independently assessed. Now, this recent decision in another matter effectively reached that position and said that when such matters are being determined, the relevant part of the UK judicial process must make a judgment based on the evidence, based on its own independent assessment, not on the assurances of the country making the extradition request. So from our point of view, when we start from the position of saying Julian Assange should go free, enough's enough, a man has suffered significant injustice already, certainly has suffered great deprivation of liberty and other harm. He should no longer be incarcerated. This matter should come to an end. And in pursuing that, we take every single opportunity that we can to advocate for his freedom and to make arguments that would lead to that outcome. So in this case, we've written to the Home Secretary. I want to pay all due credit to my fellow co-conveners because I believe it was Senator Shubridge on some advice who initiated the letter, which we of course then co-wrote, co-signed as conveners of the group, to the Home Secretary saying part of your system has said that it's improper to rely on the assurances of a requesting country in an extradition matter. You've got to reach your own view. And really, the view that was initially reached obviously on the basis of expert medical advice was that an extradition would be gravely dangerous to Julian's health. So it would seem that if the decision that's been made by the Supreme Court, that legal principle is recognized and upheld and then applied in Julian's case, you would expect the situation to revert to where it previously was, which is essentially the court's judgment that it's not safe for him to go and therefore for the extradition process to come to an end. And of course, we would all welcome that particularly as you said in your introduction that the clock is ticking. I mean, we're getting very close. It's February, the month in which we expect that perhaps the final part of the process to occur. And there's a massive risk that Julian would then find himself extradited to the United States. And that would be a very significant injustice. Yes, that's correct. I'm just wondering about this notion of the UK taking responsibility. In his article, the Supreme Court, Rwanda and Assange, Craig Murray, former ambassador for the UK, he discusses this case. And he says that once the UK has extradited somebody or deported somebody, they kind of wash their hands off it and they don't have to really take responsibility at all. This is a real problem because if that's the case, who does? Which country does take responsibility for Julian Assange? Is that Australia? Shouldn't that be Australia? What more can our executive do and our parliament do, but it's particularly our executive? What more can they do to stop this from happening? Well, I'll partly answer that. But first of all, acknowledge and welcome Senator Shubridge who's joined us. David, Kathy's asking about where responsibility ends for a country that exceeds to an extradition request. I mean, one of the things that has to be recognised in Julian's case is there are many extradition matters that Australia will consider in relation to one of our citizens who might be in Australia and they are sought by another country and often quite legitimately so that that person can answer a question, a court process somewhere else. Julian is an Australian citizen, he happens to be in the United Kingdom so the United Kingdom is responding to an extradition request in relation to a non-citizen in relation to Julian as an Australian citizen. All extradition treaties do involve some common understanding about how those processes work and they generally certainly the ones that Australia enters into include supervision arrangements and the sort of the capacity for Australia to continue to monitor the welfare and circumstances of an Australian citizen who has been extradited will go through a process and then may be acquitted or may be subject to the outcomes of that prosecution. And that's right and some of the reasons why we occasionally are wary of entering into an extradition treaty would generally be because we're not confident that that kind of proper supervision can occur but you know the bottom line in Julian's case the bottom line is that he shouldn't be being prosecuted at all. That's the bottom line. He certainly shouldn't be incarcerated any longer and it's in everyone's interests, principally in Julian's interest in the interests of those who are closest to him but frankly it's in the interests of all of us, of everyone who cares about human rights and fair process that this matter come to an end and it is significant. I mean the work that we do that David and I and Bridget and Andrew as a co-companies and the broader membership of the group do is important but the fact that we have now got to a point in Australia where both the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition are saying publicly and the government is saying in its communication with the UK administration and certainly with the US administration that enough is enough and this matter should come to an end. That's pretty important and you would hope that when we make those arguments as we always do through this letter and other things like the delegation that David took part in to the United States last year we undertake that sort of forcefully but respectfully and we hope that our message is received on that basis and certainly one of the things we're trying to press on on our friends in the United States and in the UK is the strength of feeling in the broader Australian community about Julian's circumstances and the injustice that he's experienced and the importance of him going free. If I might just welcome David and put it in a nutshell if you like. Since an extradition is signed by the requesting and sending country and since we have heard that the UK after deporting or extraditing someone doesn't particularly monitor whether their human rights are being respected my question is really would Australia even have standing to enter into any kind of process with the US in relation to Julian? Let's hope that never happens but would they actually have standing? You're muted, still can't hear you. Well David plays around with that. The point is that Julian Assange is an Australian citizen so Australia will always have some consular access and other ability to inquire into his circumstances and to have access to him and all of those things as we have done through the period of his incarceration in the United Kingdom. So that would continue if God forbid he was extradited to the United States for the prosecution that they want to bring against him. That would continue because that's just the part and parcel of the ordinary diplomatic and consular arrangements between countries certainly between ourselves and the United States but that's not... Not enough. That doesn't make Australia a party to a contract between the United States and the UK. We just don't nobody wants that to be the case. Nobody wants to see Julian extradited. Extradition processes exist for good reason. It's not that extradition processes are wrong in themselves. We seek to extradite people to Australia so that they can be held accountable for conduct that occurs here and other countries do the same in relation to Australian citizens. It's part of the framework of international war and when it works properly it means that people don't get to commit a crime somewhere and escape justice by... Yeah but Julian didn't commit a crime in the US. Well that's quite right and that's the case with Julian has many layers that make it deeply improper. The fact that he's not a US citizen the fact that he's been sought sort of territorially for conduct that on the one hand they would like to hold him accountable for disclosing matters that they have decided to be secret that were in any case put into the public domain already the matters that were published in the United States and in the terrible and I would say ridiculous scenario where Julian is held accountable but doesn't have the protection of the Fifth Amendment which people doing exactly the same thing in the United States would have the protection of. I mean there are just many many many reasons why what has happened so far in relation to Julian Assange is deeply wrong and of course that's what we say is the convenience of this group and many parliamentarians say reflecting the strong groundswell of opinion in the Australian community but we are heartened and they would definitely be able to speak to this as someone who was in the United States pretty recently. There's a lot of people in the United States who feel that way too. Yes the Fifth Amendment protection is definitely a thing and that for people who don't know that relates to a so-called crime being foreseeable as a crime and it relates to Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights somebody has to know that something is a crime and in fact this is unprecedented the prosecution of a publisher for espionage is totally unprecedented in the United States and Julian could not possibly have foreseen in 2010 where the judicial the political situation was quite different and you know it's actually still a routine matter to publish classified material and that more importantly is protected by the First Amendment which is the right to freedom of speech and I think more importantly even freedom of the press to give us the facts and facts that can be verified not false information but truthful information that's where it is especially egregious to forget about the First Amendment and to say that this guy a foreigner doesn't have the right to tell our citizens or the whole world the truth I think that's one of the beauties the gem of the US Constitution is their First Amendment and they're about to dump both the First Amendment and the Fifth by prosecuting someone for publishing I'll say one thing on that and then I'll perhaps I will leave you with that because I now have to get off so this might be in the end of two-part thing which is a shame because I'm catching up with David but David and I spent some time in Indonesia looking at some very interesting development assistance projects recently and I'll look forward to catching up with him in Parliament House when it resumes next week but you're right Cathy the bottom line too about this the judicial system that there are many invidious parts of what has been inflicted on Julian one of them is almost this sword and shield bit where he's sort of the espionage act is being wielded against him he doesn't have the benefit of some of the protections that apply in the United States for people in the same circumstances and occasionally I find this frustrating there will be people who talk about the application of the espionage act to people who are bona fide journalists or publishers or not and there are some in the United States who say and some outside the United States who say well Julian is not a journalist and therefore doesn't get that the reality as I understand it is the espionage act doesn't actually make that distinction so the idea that that's how the espionage act works is wrong another does the First Amendment that's quite right and so you know people should remember that and lots of people have spoken to this including Daniel Ellsberg that if any country can can pass a piece of law that says look we've got certain bits of information that we may or may not be able to control ourselves but we just regard that information as sort of sacrosanct and notwithstanding the fact that it gets out of our control in this case through the actions of one of their own citizens anyone else who then publishes which could be using social media or repeats or distributes or disseminates that information can be prosecuted under our domestic law for something that we regard as espionage I mean that is quite extraordinary and to apply it extraterritorially to a non-citizen in these circumstances it is bizarre and it is unjust and it's gone on for an enormously long time and Julian Assange who's not been convicted for any substantial offence has effectively suffered the kind of penalty that would apply to a reasonably serious crime he's already suffered that and he hasn't been convicted he hasn't been convicted of anything so I'm very glad like the credit for this particular letter is much more to David who did some of the work right at the Christmas New Year period and so I will jump off and leave you to speak with him and thanks for the work that you do drawing attention to a range of things but particularly this issue from my point of view and hopefully we'll get to talk again a bit later in the year Yes well we're journalists too Of course We've got skin in the game Of course Alright Cathy I'm going to jump off Alright thank you so much Josh Bye bye and David Oh David what's going on with your microphone I can't hear you mate I still can't hear you Can you hear me now Cathy? I can hear you! I've gone from my desktop to my laptop to my phone it can't get any smaller so the angle's not great but I hope it does the job I'm so pleased to be talking to you today and I'd also like to thank you on behalf of the politics in the pub group for taking part in that wonderful event the other night in Sydney getting justice for Julian Assange Okay so I've been asking Josh about the letter that was written to the UK Home Secretary what you've been trying to achieve with that telling the audience that Julian will not only be appealing the decision of the district judge where she only ruled in his favour on health grounds but all the other reasons as well but more importantly he's also in relation to this letter that the Australian parliamentarians have written he's also appealing the decision of the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to extradite him on the basis of assurances of caveat written assurances given by the US that she'll be right mate so I was asking if this letter you have hopes that this will actually trigger the testing of those assurances eventually in the Supreme Court The reason we wrote the letter and it was a letter from the co-chairs of the parliamentary friends group we wrote the letter because we all thought it was important to do what we could to ensure that the process that's been undertaken in the UK courts engages with recent legal changes and in doing that engages with the very real risks to Julian's life that come about from this extradition we saw that the trial judge say that there was a very real possibility that his health would be dreadfully impaired by being extradited including potential suicide because of the significant mental health issues not only was he suffering in prolonged attention in the UK but that would inevitably flow from further incarceration in high security US prison so the Court of Appeal in the UK on application by the United States effectively said well that doesn't really matter because the UK government has been given an assurance by the US government that his health and welfare will be protected and it's not the job of the courts to go behind that assurance, that bare assurance well it turns out that in proceedings that were happening pretty much at the same time in relation to challenges to the UK's proposal to send refugees who arrived by boat to Rwanda that the UK's highest court found that the government couldn't just rely upon the bare assurances from the Rwanda government that people's rights would be respected that the courts had to make it inquiries whether or not those rights their rights and their safety they had to make a separate inquiry about the rights they had to make a separate inquiry about whether or not that was a safe process to undertake and you couldn't just rely upon the bare assurances from the Rwandan government even if they're supported by the UK government and we've found out since that while the UK government was resisting that in the courts they were at the same time granting refugee status to a whole series of Rwandans because they had acknowledged that there was a very real chance that they would be persecuted by the Rwandan government that was happening at the same time as the UK government was saying it's safe to send refugees to Rwanda so the courts are very low normally to accept just bare unsubstantiated assertions from any litigant they normally operate on the basis of evidence but in the Assange case the court said well we don't want to look at the evidence at least on appeal we must rely upon the bare assurances given by the US and the UK and on that basis they were quite comfortable with the extradition so what we said in our letter to the UK Home Secretary was well, applying the rationale in the AAA case which is a Rwandan refugee case applying that to the Assange case then there has to be a thorough and independent assessment of the genuine risks faced to Julian to the US and faces years and years more of detention there and another trial and further solitary confinement and you can't just rely upon the bare assertions of the US government and that I think there's a very strong arguable case that's what the law in the UK requires so that's a matter that we are hopeful that the UK Home Secretary will seriously engage with in these proceedings obviously there are party to the proceedings it's a matter that I would expect that Assange's legal counsel will aggressively pursue but it's also something that we should expect in any liberal democracy that our courts aren't there just to rubber stamp what the government says our courts are there to test the truth of assertions that are made whether it's by government or by citizen and if that is tested in Julian's case it's pretty hard to see how on the evidence that we know that's already in the public domain the evidence that we saw in that first trial it's pretty hard to see how any court could permit the extradition to go ahead so that's the purpose of directing that correspondence I want to acknowledge the assistance of Greg Barnes in helping me sort of work my way through some of those legal issues and pull the correspondence together I think his assistance was very valuable in doing that and our intent is to enliven these issues both in the political debate and hopefully legal proceedings yes well it's a bit ironic really that you have to ask again for testing as you mentioned all of this was tested in the lower court there were four expert medical witnesses and all four agreed even those for the prosecution the Julian was a suicide risk if extradited but the one that Judge Baraitza relied on the most was Professor Koppelman simply because he had hundreds of pages of notes and detail that made her convinced that his diagnosis and also Professor Quentin Deely who was a world expert in autism and Asperger's syndrome the Julian would find a way whatever they did to prevent it he would find a way of suiciding but the judge's decision was not just based on the medical testimony a key witness who was mentioned in the ruling was Maureen Baird and she was a senior administrator of SAMS special administrative measures in US prisons and of course the most horrible piece of evidence my heart sunk actually when we were in court listening to it when she testified that the the Bureau of Prisons who had the final say on the regime of incarceration that they are advised by the security state and when she was further asked would that include the CIA she said yes so you know there's a point of being handed back to the ones who wanted to kidnap or kill him and of course the assurance if you can call it that that was offered by the US was that those special administrative measures wouldn't be applied initially to Julian Assange but they definitely left open the option of applying them at a future point if circumstances changed and you know that's the assurance that isn't an assurance so even on its own terms the assurance hardly provides protection for Julian from what could be very very brutal detention measures that are applied in some federal prisons so even the assurance that was offered is really not worth the paper that was written on but I think sometimes you know yes these are some of the issues that are arising in these extradition proceedings but it's also interesting to know what issues aren't permitted to be raised in the extradition proceedings and I think from a sort of global human rights perspective in some ways that's as telling about what this process is. I mean the process is a very very narrow process designed largely to facilitate extradition and what won't be able to be challenged in these proceedings is the very idea of a US law that seeks to say no matter where you are on the planet no matter if you're a US citizen or not no matter if you have any contractual obligation or legal obligation, legal connection with the United States, no matter where you are no matter when you do it if you spill US military secrets they can hunch you down and prosecute you and jail you for life now how is any independent country on the planet saying actually that's okay we're going to facilitate that we're going to facilitate this extraordinary overreach by the United States and its security apparatus. How could any self-respecting country say we're comfortable with that US law but remarkably although we've had some movements from our government our government hasn't challenged that overreach by the United States the UK government hasn't challenged that overreach by the United States and the UK courts aren't really looking at it and I find that quite remarkable and I think it goes to show just how loaded the dice are against Julian in these legal proceedings and why we're all deeply worried about the prospect of him being extradited. Yes well I think that's right to raise this issue of extraterritoriality but the detail not that extraterritoriality though Cathy there is well established legal precedent for extraterritoriality when you're doing heinous or notorious crimes slavery and piracy child sexual exploitation there are categories where it's acknowledged that you can have a form of extraterritoriality but spilling a government's secrets that's the first time ever that any jurisdiction apart from perhaps you know overtly totalitarian regimes like in China and Russia but apart from those extremely overt totalitarian regimes it's the first time we've ever seen this proposal come from the notional you know Liberal West. Yeah well the point I wanted to make is that they are applying their laws selectively to Assange they're applying the Espionage Act that punishes the first amendment that protects and that's where people should feel I think the most uncomfortable and also Julian whatever Julian did was also done by the editors of the New York Times by the editors of The Guardian by countless sort of senior media officials across the United States and across the planet yet none of them have faced prosecution they're singling out this individual and you know I would have thought that the prospect that once they get Julian in the bag the prospect that they then may go after whoever they choose after that have been established the precedent that should send a chill down the spine of any non-US citizen engaged in media or truth telling anywhere on the planet that should send a genuine chill down everyone's spine so I wouldn't want to be the editors of the UK Guardian this happen. Oh yeah it's very much a your next thing but even in the case of these unredacted cables there were names mentioned and all that that was also an American citizen who published all that first and it didn't even come from WikiLeaks that was there but smuggled out. And he has never even been bothered about that. Well we know that there was a significant amount of the material published by US online media outlet well before it was published by WikiLeaks and I'm not encouraging the prosecution of that outlet or people associated with it I'm glad they haven't been prosecuted but you know it again points to the selective nature of the prosecution against Julian Assange and of course the politics behind this are pretty hard to comprehend the Obama administration refused to prosecute Assange basically for reasons that I can comprehend that it was a poor precedent prosecuting somebody who was engaged in a form of journalism now the Obama administration always tried to suggest that it wasn't journalism but I think any fair-minded observer would say it's a form of journalism that it was a bad look to be prosecuting them and trying to put them in jail for spilling the secrets particularly given the nature of some of the material that was produced about the US involvement in the war in Iraq so the Obama administration said they wouldn't do it for I think you know a good set of reasons and then we then find the Trump administration getting all excited by it being pushed by the security state it would seem and then deciding to have a red hot go at prosecuting Julian Assange and now we have the Biden administration which was meant to be you know a breath of fresh air since the Trump administration we now have the Biden administration saying they're not going to press on with it. They're committed to pressing on with it and committed to Julian Assange for as much of his life as they possibly can how they think it will play out in a US election year trying to put a journalist behind bars bringing him shackled into the United States and doing that under a Democratic administration how they think that will play out in election year it's hard to see how that works well for the Biden administration it will further burn off support from many people on the liberal left it will also burn off support from people in more conservative circles who quite rightly and recently praised the First Amendment as one of the sort of underpinnings of US democracy Yes I think that maybe they should have done this 10 years ago before the world became aware of all of the lies that have been told about this guy in order to smear him in order to set him aside from other journalists we've also become aware that there have been deceptions by the US the Special Secrets Act and Malcolm Turnbull won a case the spy catcher case in relation to this it's not an offence in the UK to publish classified material if it's already in the public domain and its republication will not cause an imminent disaster or great risk to national security now that very much applied to Assange but evidence was withheld that hundreds of websites had published this information they're trying Julian on before not just the first time which was definitely the Guardian and Der Spiegel but the second time which is the one writing on Krypton, the pirate bay and hundreds of websites before WikiLeaks republished it those are matters that I think will be explored in detail if Julian is ever extradited I would expect them to be critical to the defence in the case in the US but if we get to that point if those trials have been heard in the US and Julian's in jail facing this endless ongoing prosecution we have a very real fear that he won't ever come back to Australia that he won't ever leave a US jail other than in a coffin and he's an Australian citizen I'm an Australian senator I can't rest while knowing that that's a possible outcome that I think extremely brave Australian citizen faces the good news is I think for your listeners and your viewers that the number of Australian politicians who feel the same way as myself is growing, we heard from Josh earlier I think he's very genuine and committed to this Bridget Archer, you know a liberal politician very committed and genuine about this Barnaby Joyce went with me to the United States and of course Andrew Wilkie an independent MP much respected because of his stance on whistleblowing is very committed to this the number of friends that Julian has in the Australian parliament is growing the number of friends that he has growing and since our visit to Washington the number of friends he has in Washington on both sides of the political divide in Washington is growing too I can only hope that the powerful legal arguments together with a growing political resolution to save Julian's life and to save the principles that he stood up for I can only hope and work towards achieving the goal that we all want which is not him being convicted not him being extradited but him being freed so he can come home to Australia freely and re-establish his life with his wife Stella and his kids and putting the politics to a side on a human level let's do everything we can to make that happen Yeah Well I would have hoped that that argument would come out in the British courts to establish that there's no dual criminality because there has to be between the Nash Act and the Official Secrets Act but if not do you think the European Court of Human Rights can protect him? Well look I mean that's obviously a matter for his very highly competent UK legal team and I'm quite certain that's in the forefront of their mind I'm pretty sure their plan A is to win this case though and so I backed them in plan A to win this case of course if that doesn't succeed then it may well be a race a race for them to file the appeal in the European Court and meanwhile there'll be the CIA and the US Department of State trying to put him on a secret plane to Virginia on the other side and the thought that someone's life may be determined by who wins that race is I think deeply troubling Kevin Yeah it's the wacky races Yeah indeed Thank you very much Thank you so much David for coming in and thanks also to Josh Wilson who had to leave us this has been Kathy Bogan for Consortium News on CN Live until next time Goodbye Get out your notebook 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 and 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