Your Man in the Public Gallery – Assange Hearing Day One

By Craig Murray, February 25, 2020

Woolwich Crown Court, which hosts Belmarsh Magistrates Court, is built on totally the opposite principle. It is designed with no other purpose than to exclude the public. Attached to a prison on a windswept marsh far from any normal social centre, an island accessible only through navigating a maze of dual carriageways, the entire location and architecture of the building is predicated on preventing public access. It is surrounded by a continuation of the same extremely heavy duty steel paling barrier that surrounds the prison. It is the most extraordinary thing, a courthouse which is a part of the prison system itself, a place where you are already considered guilty and in jail on arrival.

Revealed: Chief Magistrate Lady Arbuthnot in Assange Case Received Financial Benefits from Secretive Partner Organisations of UK Foreign Office

By Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis, February 25, 2020

It can further be revealed that Lady Emma Arbuthnot was appointed Chief Magistrate in Westminster on the advice of a Conservative government minister with whom she had attended a secretive meeting organised by one of these Foreign Office partner organisations two years before.

Liz Truss, then Justice Secretary, “advised” the Queen to appoint Lady Arbuthnot in October 2016. Two years before, Truss — who is now Trade Secretary — and Lady Arbuthnot both attended an off-the-record two-day meeting in Bilbao, Spain.

Assange’s Extradition Hearing Begins: Truth-Telling Journalism on Trial

By Stephen Lendman, February 25, 2020

What’s going on affects all truth-telling journalists. We’re all Julian Assange on trial. His fate is ours. Who’s next on the US/UK hit list to silence?

In an Orwellian age, speech, media and academic freedoms are threatened on the phony pretext of protecting national security — at a time when alleged threats are invented, not real.

Censorship in the West already is the new normal. Extraditing Assange to the US for kangaroo court proceedings to convict is all about criminalizing journalism its ruling regime finds objectionable — the hallmark of totalitarian rule.

Julian Assange and the Imperium’s Face: Day One of the Extradition Hearings

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, February 25, 2020

If we are to believe it, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, the man behind showing the ugliness of power, is the one responsible for having abused it.  It is a running theme in the US case against this Australian publisher, who has been given the coating of common criminality hiding the obvious point: that the mission is to make journalism on official secrets, notably those covering atrocity and abuse, a crime.

Defend Journalist Julian Assange from Extradition to the United States

By Dr. Leon Tressell, February 21, 2020

On Wednesday Wikileaks editor Julian Assange appeared at a Westminster court for his final case management hearing before his extradition hearing which begins on 24 February.

The U.S. government will present its case arguing for Assange’s extradition to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one charge of computer crime which could carry a sentence, if convicted, of 175 years.

Did Trump Offer Assange A ‘Quid Pro Quo’ regarding “Russiagate” and the DNC Troves?

By Johanna Ross, February 21, 2020

A revelation in Westminster Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday sent shockwaves through the mainstream media. It is being widely publicised that in 2017 US President Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he was to declare that Russia had not been the source of the DNC hack, which had exposed emails discrediting then presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. A lawyer representing Mr Assange, the former Wikileaks editor who faces extradition to the United States, put forward evidence that former US congressman Dana Rohrabacher had visited him in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2017, in the early days of Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the US election.

Extradition of Assange Would Set a Dangerous Precedent

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, February 19, 2020

The Trump administration is seeking extradition of WikiLeaks founderJulian Assange to the United States for trial on charges carrying 175 years in prison. On February 24, a court in the U.K. will hold a hearing to determine whether to grant Trump’s request. The treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. prohibits extradition for a “political offense.” Assange was indicted for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a classic political offense. Moreover, Assange’s extradition would violate the legal prohibition against sending a person to a country where he is in danger of being tortured.

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