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Post by swamprat on Jun 4, 2019 21:52:59 GMT
WSWS Protests in London and Edinburgh demand freedom for Assange and Manning By our reporters
3 June 2019
Campaigners demanding the release from prison of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning demonstrated on Saturday in London and Edinburgh, Scotland. Socialist Equality Party stalls were also set up in Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds to promote upcoming public meetings in those cities.
Julian Assange supporters protest in Trafalgar Square (credit Julian Assange Defence Committee)
Members of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) attended the protest in Trafalgar Square in London. The protest was called on social media and was endorsed by the Julian Assange Defence Committee (JADC).
Around 50-60 people attended the lively protest, many bringing homemade banners. Protesters chanted slogans including “US, UK, hands off Assange!” and “There’s only one decision, no extradition!”
Protesters denounced the role of the UK, US and Ecuadorian governments in persecuting the heroic publisher. They drew attention to the conclusion by UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer that the conditions in which Assange is being held and has been held over the last seven years constitute torture, and distributed Melzer’s statement.
Many passersby stopped to take material from the JADC and to read WSWS articles on Assange distributed by SEP members. Members of the public temporarily joined the protest at regular intervals and participated in many of the chants in defence of Assange.
Earlier that day, SEP members and supporters held a campaign stall outside Brixton underground station in South London. Campaigners distributed the WSWS statement “New charges against Julian Assange under the Espionage Act criminalise journalism,” which was well received.
Several Labour Party members stopped to discuss with SEP campaigners, expressing their frustration over party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s silence on Assange and the fact that he is in favour of Assange being sent to Sweden on trumped up allegations of sexual misconduct. They expressed interest in the SEP’s model resolution on Assange and told campaigners that they would try to bring the resolution up at their local Constituency Labour Party branches.
Protesters outside the US Consulate in Edinburgh
A protest in Edinburgh was called by archivist and student Valentina Flex and attended by supporters of the Socialist Equality Party. After registering their protest outside the US Consulate, campaigners moved to Princes Street, Edinburgh’s main shopping area, to discuss with members of the public the issues raised by the targeting of WikiLeaks. Those participating agreed to further campaigning in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
In Manchester, SEP members campaigned in St Peter’s Square and spoke to workers and youth about the campaign to defend Assange and Manning. Several signed up to join the campaign and to receive the regular newsletter about the activities being organised by the campaign for their release.
Alex, originally from Romania said, “He could be any one of us. If Assange gets prosecuted this sets a legal precedent. It means no one can call the government out. I don’t want that.”
As he signed up to the campaign, Adam said, “Its been quite obvious there has been a slanderous attempt on Assange’s name by the media.”
Ali was in town with his family. He said, “It is important to have the freedom of the press and capturing Julian Assange after they forced him into hiding should not be done. We have to live in a free world. Look, Assange has done a good job. The US and other governments try to hide a lot of things and Assange has given this information to the world. We should all fight against this.”
Attend public meetings:
Free Julian Assange! Free Chelsea Manning!
Manchester
Wednesday June 5, 7 p.m.
Friends Meeting House (behind Manchester Central Library)
6 Mount St
Manchester, M2 5NS
Leeds
Saturday June 8, 2.30 p.m.
Woodhouse Community Centre
197 Woodhouse Street
Leeds, LS6 2NY
Sheffield
Tuesday June 11, 7 p.m.
Central URC Church
60 Norfolk Street
Sheffield, S1 2JB
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/03/prot-j03.html
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2019 14:22:38 GMT
Inside BelMarsh (beautiful Swamp) Prison
room is 36 not the ending room 10...like 10 downing message on shirt love is enough was nice
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2019 18:48:05 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2019 18:51:33 GMT
testing testing forensic reconstruction in process
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2019 19:15:46 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2019 7:29:02 GMT
so we are shown a man extracted from the embassy..all news agencies save rt were told to stay away..a man who ways about 20-30 more pounds than the subject on thevideo released from inside BelMarsh (beautiful Sawmp)..It took 5 men to carry the subject from the embassy into the Van ..holding a magazine..usually when arrested and handcuffed one is not allowed to hold anything..ask anyone who has been hit on the side of the head with a rolled up newspaper.Having worked with LE I can attest to this..the subjects hair appears more white than past fotos.I have dozens and dozens...and looking at face closeup toothless..when screaming and resisting forces the first impulse is to bite or bare teeth..we see open mouth no teeth.. Subject 2 in Belmarsh which I agree is Assange....is taken allegedly at a time near arrival.with shorter hair..stubby facial hair...before health rapidly declined..and would not evidence the rapid decline seen ...he should if as claimed..have more weight..
the interior of cell..in max..appears deteriorated ..cement on edfes worn (breathing dust hazard) ..large numbers of books (fire hazard) under bed..metal objects on window ledge tea ..use of ceramic/metal plate being washed (potential weapon)..most peculiar in a hi max jail where large numbers of jihadists held..having been a correctional officer..and a good one at that.I can say you may as well as supplied the inmates with a file and chisel.. I would have to suspend disbelief as in a staged movie..to accept what I see..but he is He's in a jail..but we really don't know really for how long..perhaps a lot longer than we are being told and extracted easily much earler..(as when construction took place next door months earlier)..but subject #1 imo is not Assange.. In a couple of days we will know..what is what.. maybe..certainly as all this staging may be for something unexpected ..and shocking...
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2019 16:29:11 GMT
Power of The Shofar!
Bet you jumped when you clicked on that
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Post by swamprat on Oct 17, 2019 1:55:01 GMT
WikiLeaks Updates
1 hr • October 16, 2019
« Joyce’s statements on the case of Julian Assange have a significance that goes far beyond his past or current status within the Australian establishment. They reflect anxiety in both political and media circles that the widespread disquiet over their collaboration in the US-led persecution of an Australian citizen is going to burgeon into public anger over the coming weeks and months.
Assange, an internationally recognized and awarded journalist and publisher, is being held in solitary confinement and harsh conditions in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison in London. His family members and high-profile supporters who have been able to visit him are making strident warnings that his psychological and physical state is deteriorating. His father John Shipton stated this month: “His health has been declining and has reached a point where he may die.” » • By James Cogan ➻ World Socialist Web Site
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Post by swamprat on Oct 20, 2019 23:58:47 GMT
UN official’s briefing on torture of Assange boycotted by US media By Oscar Grenfell
18 October 2019
Nils Melzer
In a press briefing at the United Nations headquarters in New York on October 15, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer restated his assessment that WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange has been subjected to an unprecedented campaign of persecution that amounts to “torture.”
The UN finding, first issued in May, and updated by Melzer at the briefing, should have provoked banner headlines in the major newspapers in the US, Britain and internationally.
Melzer’s warnings carry the weight and authority of a UN official and an internationally-respected legal expert. They concern Assange, the world’s most famous persecuted journalist, who has done more than any publisher to expose the brutal realities of imperialist war, diplomatic intrigue and pervasive CIA surveillance.
As it was, footage aired by the Russian-funded RT outlet showed a grand total of four people in the audience, surrounded by rows of empty chairs. To date, the RT article, and an accompanying video, appears to be the only report on the briefing by any media outlet in the world.
If Melzer had been condemning the persecution of journalists in Iran, Russia, China, or another country in the crosshairs of US imperialism, he would have been surrounded by dozens of reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and other conduits for the intelligence agencies. They doubtless would have published stories, warning in sombre tones of an assault on the media and insisting on the necessity to defend press freedom.
Because Assange is being targeted by the US government and its allies, including Britain and Australia, for his role in revealing American war crimes, the establishment media simply did not show up.
The press boycott is all the more striking given that even corporate publications have acknowledged that if Assange is extradited from Britain to the US, it will establish a precedent for journalists anywhere in the world to be hauled before US courts for the “crime” of publishing true and newsworthy information that the American government sought to conceal.
The New York Times and the Washington Post, moreover, have noted that the 17 Espionage Act charges that have been levelled against Assange by the Trump administration pose a direct threat to the US Constitution’s press freedom protections, and could be used against other publications in the future—including their own.
The silence on Melzer’s remarks can therefore only be understood as a political decision, aimed at suppressing any public discussion on Assange’s persecution, in the lead-up to court hearings next February that will rule on his extradition from Britain to the US.
Melzer explained that when he visited Assange in May he was accompanied by two medical experts. “We came to the conclusion that he had been exposed to psychological torture for a prolonged period of time,” the UN rapporteur stated. “That's a medical assessment.”
Speaking of his recommendations, addressed to the US, British, Swedish and Australian governments, Melzer said: “We asked for involved states to investigate this case and to alleviate the pressure that is being placed on him and especially to respect his due process rights, which in my view have been systematically violated in all these jurisdictions.”
Melzer stated: “Unfortunately none of those states agreed to conduct an investigation, although that is their obligation under the convention on torture.”
In official letters to those governments in May and June, Melzer had meticulously documented the way in which each of them had trampled upon Assange’s democratic and legal rights.
The UN official reviewed the way in which bogus allegations of sexual misconduct were seized upon by the Swedish authorities to blacken Assange’s name and to create a pretext for his prolonged detention in Britain.
In his letter to the Swedish government, Melzer wrote: “For almost nine years, the Swedish authorities have consistently maintained, revived and fuelled the ‘rape’-suspect narrative against Mr. Assange, despite the legal requirement of anonymity, despite the mandatory presumption of innocence, despite the objectively unrealistic prospect of a conviction, and despite contradicting evidence suggesting that, in reality, the complainants never intended to report a sexual offence…”
The rapporteur has condemned the British state for pursuing Assange relentlessly on the fraudulent pretext of a minor bail offense. Melzer has noted that since Assange’s illegal arrest by British police on April 11, the UK judiciary has denied his right to due process, as it prepares to hand the WikiLeaks’ founder over to his persecutors in the US.
Most recently, British judges have decreed that Assange will remain behind bars indefinitely, despite his custodial sentence on the bail offenses having expired on September 22. In other words, he is explicitly being held as a political prisoner at the behest of the Trump administration.
The ruling followed a warning from Assange’s father John Shipton that he fears his son may die in prison. Despite the deterioration of his medical condition, Assange has been held in conditions of virtual solitary confinement in the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, without access to computers and legal documents necessary for preparing his defence.
Melzer has also warned that Assange has no prospect of a fair trial in the United States, under conditions in which senior US politicians have called for his assassination for exposing American war crimes and global diplomatic conspiracies. He has denounced the Australian government for failing to defend Assange, despite the fact that he is an Australian journalist and citizen.
All of the governments involved responded to Melzer with evasive letters, blithely dismissing his charges and asserting that their pursuit of the Assange was entirely lawful. The response underscores the extent to which the protracted persecution of the WikiLeaks’ founder has involved the trampling on international norms and institutions.
The media censorship of Melzer’s press briefing further demonstrates that the corporate publications are complicit partners in the attacks against Assange. For years, they have trumpeted every slander against him that has been concocted by the US government, its allies and the intelligence agencies.
In his report last May, Melzer noted that the corporate media bears its own share of responsibility for the torture inflicted on Assange, having enthusiastically participated in what the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture aptly described as “public mobbing.”
To join the fight to defend Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, look for the form in the article at this URL:
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/10/18/melz-o18.html?fbclid=IwAR3nXzNzwlO8R4L52lsEPW7fsLXFj9E-ss1daDulzNVD-KphYkI2UmbtN58
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Post by swamprat on Nov 10, 2019 17:10:26 GMT
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Post by HAL on Nov 10, 2019 23:56:02 GMT
So Assange should not have tried to hide from the Swedish police.
That was the start of his downfall.
I have no sympathy for him.
HAL
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Post by swamprat on Nov 17, 2019 21:58:39 GMT
Julian Assange’s judge and her husband’s links to the British military establishment exposed by WikiLeaks By Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard• 14 November 2019
The husband of Lady Emma Arbuthnot, the Westminster chief magistrate overseeing WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the US, has financial links to the British military establishment, including institutions and individuals exposed by WikiLeaks.
It can also be revealed that Lady Arbuthnot has received gifts and hospitality in relation to her husband, including from a military and cybersecurity company exposed by WikiLeaks. These activities indicate that the chief magistrate’s activities cannot be considered as entirely separate from her husband’s.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, a former defence minister, is a paid chair of the advisory board of military corporation Thales Group, and was until earlier this year an adviser to arms company Babcock International. Both companies have major contracts with the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD).
The revelations highlight concerns about conflicts of interest. Lady Arbuthnot began presiding over Assange’s legal case in 2017 and ruled this June that a full hearing would begin next February to consider the request for extradition from the UK made by the Trump administration.
British judges are required to declare any potential conflicts of interests to the courts, but it is our understanding that Lady Arbuthnot has not done so.
Lady Arbuthnot has recently appointed a district judge to rule on Assange’s extradition case, but remains the supervising legal figure in the process. According to the UK courts service, the chief magistrate is “responsible for… supporting and guiding district judge colleagues”.
Assange is currently being held in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London in conditions described by UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Meltzer, as “psychological torture”. If transferred to the US, Assange faces life in prison on espionage charges.
Lady Arbuthnot financially benefited from organisations exposed by WikiLeaks
At a time when Lady Arbuthnot was in her former position as a district judge in Westminster, she personally benefited from funding together with her husband from two sources which were exposed by WikiLeaks in its document releases.
The British parliament’s register of interests shows that in October 2014, Lady Arbuthnot was provided with tickets worth £1,250 to the Chelsea Flower Show in London along with her husband. The tickets were provided by Bechtel Management Company Ltd, part of the major US military corporation, Bechtel, whose contracts with the UK’s Ministry of Defence include a project worth up to £215m to transform its Defence Equipment & Support Organisation, the body that buys and supports all the equipment used by the British armed forces.
Another of Bechtel’s business lines is “industrial cybersecurity”, a term which is often a euphemism for cyber warfare and surveillance technology.
WikiLeaks’ releases on Bechtel have shown the company’s close connections to US foreign policy. Cables published in 2011, for example, show that the US ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Scobey, pressured the Ministry of Electricity and Power to award a tender for technical consultancy and design of Egypt’s first nuclear plant to Bechtel.
In another personal benefit declared to parliament, Lady Arbuthnot, again together with her husband, had flights and expenses worth £2,426 paid for a visit to Istanbul in November 2014. This was “to promote and further bilateral relations between Britain and Turkey at a high level”, according to Lord Arbuthnot’s declaration to the register of interests.
These expenses were paid by the British-Turkish Tatlidil, a forum established in 2011 during the visit to London of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and announced with then prime minister David Cameron. Tatlidil describes its objectives as “facilitating and strengthen [sic] relations between the Republic of Turkey and the United Kingdom at the level of government, diplomacy, business, academia and media”.
Its main role is to hold an annual two-day conference which is attended by the president of Turkey, and Turkish and British ministers. Lord Arbuthnot also attended the Tatlidil in Wokingham, a town just outside London, in May 2018.
As subjects of unwanted leaks, both Bechtel and Tatlidil have reason to oppose the work of Assange and WikiLeaks. Although the payments were entered into the parliamentary register of interests, the parties in the court case were not informed about them. Although Assange’s trial has attracted significant criticism around the world, Lady Arbuthnot did not consider it necessary to mention these payments to the parties, public and media.
The Turkey connection
In a key legal judgment in February 2018, Lady Arbuthnot rejected the argument of Assange’s lawyers that the then warrant for his arrest should be quashed and instead delivered a remarkable ruling.
She rejected the findings of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention—a body composed of international legal experts—that Assange was being “arbitrarily detained”, characterised Assange’s stay in the embassy as “voluntary” and concluded Assange’s health and mental state was of minor importance.
Lady Arbuthnot became involved in the Assange legal case around September 2017 and presided over the hearing on 7 February 2018, before delivering her judgment a week later. During some of this period — 29 January to 1 February — her husband was again in Turkey visiting Erdoğan and other senior Turkish government officials.
Some of these officials had been specifically exposed by WikiLeaks and had reason to oppose Assange’s release. There is no suggestion that Lord Arbuthnot was asked to, or did, exert any pressure on Lady Arbuthnot, nor that she succumbed to any such pressure, but there is an appearance of bias which could have been avoided had this connection been revealed and had Lord Arbuthnot avoided meeting those individuals at that time.
Arbuthnot was part of a four-member delegation, the others being Baroness Neville-Jones, a former chair of the British joint intelligence committee, which co-ordinates GCHQ, MI5 and MI6; Lord Polak, the president of Conservative Friends of Israel; and Lord Trimble.
Among those who Arbuthnot and the other Lords met on the trip were foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and energy minister Berat Albayrak, Erdoğan’s son-in-law. In 2016, WikiLeaks had published 57,934 of Albayrak’s personal emails, of which more than 300 mentioned Çavuşoğlu, in its “Berat’s Box” release.
Thus at the same time Lady Arbuthnot was presiding over Assange’s legal case, her husband was holding talks with senior officials in Turkey exposed by WikiLeaks, some of whom have an interest in punishing Assange and the WikiLeaks organisation.
The ramifications of Assange’s exposure of Berat Albayrak and the ruling AKP Party, which had occurred just over a year before, were ongoing at the time of the Lords’ meetings in Turkey. WikiLeaks’ publications led to a crackdown on the media in Turkey reporting it, including the imprisonment of journalists and an all-out ban on access to WikiLeaks in the country.
The visit of Lord Arbuthnot and other British lords to Turkey was paid for by the Bosphorus Centre for Global Affairs which describes itself as an NGO monitoring the accuracy of news on Turkey. However, WikiLeaks’ “Berat’s Box” files revealed that the centre was financed by Berat Albayrak and acted as a government front to suppress reporting critical of the government. The centre has also been exposed as running a number of pro-government troll accounts.
It is not known what was discussed on Lord Arbuthnot’s trip to Turkey, or if the issue of Assange was raised. However, the contacts that the husband of Assange’s judge had with powerful political figures who had recently been exposed by WikiLeaks raises concerns about conflicts of interest and whether these should have been declared by Lady Arbuthnot if they have not been.
Lord Arbuthnot’s military and intelligence connections
Lord Arbuthnot is a member of the House of Lords and was the defence procurement minister in the Conservative government from 1995-97. He later served as chief whip during William Hague’s leadership of the party. Arbuthnot was a strong supporter of David Cameron’s war in Libya in 2011 and it was Cameron who proposed the then James Arbuthnot MP for a peerage in 2015.
Lord Arbuthnot also has connections to former officials in the UK intelligence services which WikiLeaks has exposed in its publications and which have conducted intelligence operations in the UK against WikiLeaks.
Until December 2017, Lord Arbuthnot was one of three directors of a private security firm, SC Strategy, along with the former director of MI6, Sir John Scarlett, and Lord Carlile. Until June 2019, Arbuthnot remained a “senior consultant” to SC Strategy. Scarlett is mentioned in WikiLeaks releases and has largely remained out of public debates around privacy and surveillance.
Little is known of SC Strategy, which does not have a website, but Companies House lists an address in Watford. Carlile states on his register of interests that SC Strategy was formed by him and Scarlett in 2012 “to provide strategic advice on UK public policy, regulation, and business practice”. It lists one client as the Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Investment Authority.
It has been reported that SC Strategy “appears to maintain a degree of clout in Whitehall” and that in 2013 and 2104 the company had a private meeting with the cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood.
Lord Arbuthnot’s former partner at SC Strategy, Lord Carlile, was the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation in 2001-11 and is a prominent public defender of the intelligence services.
Lord Arbuthnot was also until February 2019 an “adviser” to the military corporation, Babcock International, on whose board sits the former head of GCHQ, Sir David Omand.
Until November 2018, Arbuthnot was a member of the advisory board of Information Risk Management, a cybersecurity consultancy based in Cheltenham, the home of GCHQ, one of whose “experts” is Andrew France, a former deputy director for cyber defence operations at GCHQ.
Before becoming a peer, Lord Arbuthnot was a member of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee from 2001-06. He is also currently an officer of the all party parliamentary group on cybersecurity which is administered by the Information Security Group (ISG) at Royal Holloway, University of London. The ISG manages a project worth £775,000 that is part-funded by GCHQ.
Lord Arbuthnot himself appears in documents published by WikiLeaks, including two confidential US diplomatic cables. A December 2009 US confidential cable notes Arbuthnot telling an official in the US embassy in London that he supported President Obama’s speech on US strategy towards Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Member of the British military establishment
Lord Arbuthnot’s past and present positions make him firmly a part of the British military industrial community. One of his profiles states that “he has a long history of involvement at the top of UK defence and political life”. WikiLeaks has styled itself as an adversary of the military community, with many of its releases focusing on the milieu in which people like Lord Arbuthnot operate.
Arbuthnot is a former chair of the parliamentary defence committee – a position he held for nine years between 2005 and 2014 – during which time WikiLeaks gained worldwide attention through its publishing of files on the Iraq and Afghan wars, in which the UK military was involved. He is also a former member of the national security strategy joint committee and the armed forces bill committee.
Arbuthnot’s parliamentary profile states: “From time to time the member receives hospitality from the UK defence forum, the all-party parliamentary group for the armed forces and the all-party parliamentary group on defence and security issues”.
Lord Arbuthnot is also the chair of the advisory board of arms corporation Thales Group which has been exposed by WikiLeaks in various releases.
Thales also has major contracts with the MOD including a £700m drone project and a £600m deal to maintain the royal navy’s warships. One of Thales’ lucrative business lines is “cybersecurity” and its website disparagingly refers to WikiLeaks and Assange personally as being able to “steal” information.
Thales produces “watchkeeper” drones used by the British military in Afghanistan which have been exposed in WikiLeaks releases. Arbuthnot is a strong supporter of drones: he was the chair of the defence committee when it produced a report highly supportive of British operations in 2014 which recommended “bringing watchkeeper to full operating capability”.
Lord Arbuthnot’s parliamentary profile also listed Babcock International as being a “personal client” in his role as consultant with SC Strategy until February 2019. Babcock has more than £22bn worth of contracts with the MOD and is its largest supplier of support services, supporting more than 70% of all MOD flying training hours.
Like Thales, Babcock has a business line in “cyber intelligence and security”. Arbuthnot was the procurement minister in 1996 when the government announced the sale of the controversial privatised Rosyth naval dockyard to Babcock.
Lord Arbuthnot is also chair of the Information Assurance Advisory Council, a body whose sponsors have included US arms corporations Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and which also works on cybersecurity, among other digital information issues. Raytheon is extensively exposed in WikiLeaks releases.
Conflict of interest
Lord Arbuthnot’s links to the British military establishment constitute professional and political connections between a member of the chief magistrate’s family and a number of organisations and individuals who are deeply opposed to the work of Assange and WikiLeaks and who have themselves been exposed by the organisation.
UK legal guidance states that “any conflict of interest in a litigious situation must be declared.” Judicial guidance to magistrates from the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice is clear:
“Members of the public must be confident that magistrates are impartial and independent. If you know that your impartiality or independence is compromised in a particular case you must withdraw at once… Nor should you hear any case which you already know something about or which touches upon an activity in which you are involved”.
Our understanding is that Lady Arbuthnot has failed to disclose any potential conflicts of interest in her role as judge or chief magistrate.
Lady Arbuthnot is known to have stepped aside from adjudicating two other cases due to potential conflicts of interest, but only after investigations by the media. In August 2018, as the judge at the heart of tech giant Uber’s legal battle to operate in London, she recused herself to avoid any perceived conflict of interest with her husband.
Lady Arbuthnot reinstated Uber’s London licence after it had been judged not a “fit and proper” private car hire operator. She eventually withdrew from hearing further appeals by the company after an Observer investigation raised questions about links between her husband’s work and the company.
Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, is a major investor in Uber. QIA was also a client of SC Strategy, where Lord Arbuthnot was a director and then consultant. Lady and Lord Arbuthnot claimed that neither knew QIA invested in Uber, despite it being one of the company’s largest shareholders.
In 2017, Lady Arbuthnot also stepped aside from adjudicating a case concerning the broadcast of “offensive” material on the Holocaust when the defendant’s legal team raised the issue of “reasonable apprehension of bias” on the part of the judge. This was related to her husband’s involvement with Conservative Friends of Israel, a body of which Arbuthnot is a former chair and which had in the past paid for at least one visit to Israel.
Neither Lady nor Lord Arbuthnot returned requests for comment.
www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-11-14-julian-assanges-judge-and-her-husbands-links-to-the-british-military-establishment-exposed-by-wikileaks/?fbclid=IwAR0OB8KFfODIuY_Nc-JMNI-zzG83zDWx00B7c2tMgmPEf3JZrvpc3zCn9K8
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Post by swamprat on Nov 18, 2019 2:57:27 GMT
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Post by ZETAR on Nov 18, 2019 3:50:03 GMT
“Members of the public must be confident that magistrates are impartial and independent. If you know that your impartiality or independence is compromised in a particular case you must withdraw at once… Nor should you hear any case which you already know something about or which touches upon an activity in which you are involved”.
SHALOM...Z
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Post by swamprat on Nov 18, 2019 22:12:11 GMT
UN special rapporteur exposes Swedish sexual misconduct frame-up of Assange By Oscar Grenfell
18 November 2019
An official letter to the Swedish government by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer provides a thorough exposure of the nine-year campaign by the Swedish judiciary and the state to smear WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange as a sex offender and to deprive him of fundamental legal and democratic rights.
Julian Assange
The letter, sent on September 12, was publicly released last week. Melzer had first written to the Swedish government, along with the governments of the US, Britain and Ecuador, in late May. That correspondence followed Melzer’s meeting with Assange in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison, and his conclusion that the WikiLeaks founder was being subjected to “psychological torture” as a result of ongoing state persecution and “public mobbing.”
The Swedish authorities replied to Melzer on July 12 and summarily rejected his finding that the years-long preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against Assange had been marked by judicial arbitrariness, along with flagrant violations of his rights to anonymity and due process. The Swedish government sought to shield itself behind invocations of the independence of the judiciary, despite Melzer’s documentation of blatant political interference in the case.
Melzer’s September 12 reply is a meticulous documentary exposure of those evasions and of the entire frame-up that has been perpetrated against Assange. It should be examined in full by all defenders of democratic rights, and by anyone who wishes to know the truth about the Swedish “investigation.”
In his conclusion, Melzer noted the crucial role played by the Swedish pursuit of Assange in the entire US-led vendetta against the WikiLeaks founder since 2010.
He wrote: “The medical, factual and circumstantial evidence at my disposal shows that the manner in which Sweden conducted its preliminary investigation against Mr. Assange, including the unrestrained and unqualified dissemination and perpetuation of the ‘rape suspect’ narrative, was the primary factor that triggered, enabled and encouraged the subsequent campaign of sustained and concerted public mobbing and judicial persecution against Mr. Assange in various countries, the cumulative effects of which can only described as psychological torture.”
Despite never having been charged with a crime, Sweden’s investigation provided the pseudo-judicial pretext for embroiling Assange in the legal system. Britain’s support for Sweden’s unprecedented request that Assange be extradited merely to “answer questions” forced him to seek political asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy in June 2012.
The Swedish investigation provided the bogus rationale for Britain’s siege of the embassy and its threats that it would arrest Assange if he set foot outside the building.
More broadly, the Swedish allegations served to malign Assange, and to hide the real reasons that he was being persecuted. They were used to enlist an entire layer of upper middle-class feminists, pseudo-leftists and self-styled civil liberties advocates in a campaign to demonise and abandon any defence of Assange. This was under conditions in which the American state apparatus was working to silence WikiLeaks due to its publication of leaked documents exposing US war crimes, mass surveillance operations and global diplomatic intrigues, affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
This campaign of “public mobbing” was essential to creating the political climate in which the Ecuadorian government could violate Assange’s asylum and hand him over to the British police. It fostered the political environment in which the US administration of President Donald Trump could unveil 18 charges against Assange, explicitly over his legal publishing activities.
In section three of the document, Melzer made a point-by-point substantiation of his assessment that the entire Swedish investigation was marked by arbitrariness and a violation of fundamental legal norms. Those points are listed below, along with examples of some the evidence cited by Melzer:
● Disregard for confidentiality and precaution: Within hours of the two female complainants approaching police solely to request that Assange be compelled to take an STI test, Swedish prosecutors had ordered his arrest on suspicion of rape and leaked the news to Expressen, the country’s largest newspaper. Assange’s own statement, on August 30, 2010, was likewise provided to the media, in violation of Swedish law. An investigation into the breaches was apparently dropped.
● Disregard for exculpatory evidence: The Swedish authorities ignored the assessment of the first prosecutor to review the case, who stated “I do not think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape” and that the “conduct alleged” by SW, one of the complainants, “disclosed no crime at all.” Text messages from SW to a friend, stating that she had never intended to file a complaint for a criminal offense and that “it was the police who made up the charges,” were similarly disregarded.
● Proactive manipulation of evidence: The day after the initial prosecutor dropped the investigation against Assange, “police officer IK, who had formally questioned SW on 20 August 2010, modified and replaced the content of SW’s original statement in the police database, upon instruction of her superior officer MG and without consulting SW.”
● Disregard for conflicts of interest: This included the fact that the investigating police officer, IK who interviewed SW and modified her statement was a friend of AA, the other complainant, and had expressed hostility to Assange on Facebook. Claes Borgström, the lawyer who sought to have the investigation revived after it had been dropped, had operated an attorney’s office with the former minister of justice, who had colluded with illegal US rendition operations inside Sweden.
● Disregard for the requirements of necessity and proportionality: This included the unprecedented decision of prosecutors to issue a European Arrest Warrant and Interpol “red notice” for Assange, merely on the grounds that they wished to question him. Moreover, prosecutors refused, over the course of almost five years, to question Assange via video link or in London, as is done regularly in other cases.
● Disregard for the right to information and adequate defence: Even after they ordered his detention in absentia, prosecutors refused to provide Assange’s lawyers with precise details of the allegations against him.
● Disregard for the right of appeal to the European Court of Human Rights: After the British Supreme Court dismissed Assange’s challenge to extradition to Sweden, Swedish prosecutors allegedly requested that his window of opportunity to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights be reduced to “zero hours.”
● Disregard for the Mutual Legal Assistance agreement: Melzer again pointed to the refusal of Swedish prosecutors to interview Assange, noting that this “raises serious doubts as to the good faith motivation of the Swedish prosecution.”
● Complacency or complicity with third-party interference: Melzer cited secret correspondence between the British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Swedish prosecutors. Most damningly, this revealed that when, in 2013, Swedish prosecutors were considering dropping the investigation into Assange, British officials demanded that it continue. Emails between Swedish prosecutors and the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) about the case had purportedly been lost, and no-one could remember their contents.
● Refusal to guarantee non-refoulement: Melzer noted that the authority’s refusal to guarantee that they would not dispatch Assange to the US if he was extradited to Sweden was in violation of “widespread international practice,” the “peremptory prohibition of refoulement towards the risk of torture and ill-treatment” and Assange’s “credible fear of extrajudicial onward extradition by Sweden to the United States, particularly given Sweden’s history of arbitrarily handing over persons to CIA custody and subsequent torture.”
Melzer noted that on April 10 he received a letter from the British authorities refusing to discuss the prospect of Assange’s extradition to the US because “it would not be appropriate for officials to speculate on hypothetical scenarios.” The following day, Assange was arrested by the British police, and it was immediately revealed that the US government was seeking his extradition.
The UN official noted that the Swedish authorities had no doubt similarly been apprised of US plans to seek Assange’s extradition over the course of the years that they were pursuing him. Melzer wrote: “Information made available to me concerning the case of Mr. Assange suggest that preliminary exchanges between Sweden and the United States regarding a potential extradition request would already have taken place, thus rendering the envisaged scenario anything but hypothetical.”
● Pervasive procedural procrastination: Melzer noted that “between 2010 and 2019, the preliminary investigation conducted against Mr. Assange in Sweden has been opened by one prosecutor, closed by another, re-opened and then closed again by a third, only to be re-opened by a fourth, without any decisive procedural progress being achieved for almost a decade.” Prosecutors have still not charged Assange. The statute of limitations on one of the women’s complaints has already expired, and the other will expire next year.
In the latter sections of his letter, Melzer pointed to Sweden’s open rejection of international rulings, including by United Nations bodies, that Assange had suffered years of arbitrary detention, and that his legal rights had been violated.
In a damning conclusion, Melzer wrote: “There is compelling evidence that Swedish officials have actively and knowingly contributed to the psychological torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment inflicted on Mr. Assange, whether through direct perpetration, or through complicity or participation, any of which is sufficient to trigger Sweden’s international obligation to investigate, prosecute, and provide redress and rehabilitation…” He demanded that those responsible for Assange’s persecution be investigated and brought to justice.
The document, from an internationally-recognised expert on torture and a UN official, constitutes an irrefutable indictment of the illegal character of the US-led pursuit of Assange.
It underscores the fact that in their persecution of the WikiLeaks’ founder, the states involved, including Sweden, have not only trampled upon the legal and democratic rights of Assange but of all citizens, setting a precedent for further frame-ups and state persecution.
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/18/assa-n18.html?fbclid=IwAR1Y8ItkOZuAmzhhzQk16j1u_SiuT5OwPS0ESVdxpj8WZW9FQPUOBqlNmmI
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