World Affairs Brief, February 28, 2020 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.

Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com).

ASSANGE EXTRADITION HEARINGS EXPOSE DEEP STATE CONTROL IN UK

Few people have the stamina and patience to sit through days of a trial, but the extradition hearings going on now before a hand-picked UK court are important because they demonstrate what a lackey the UK courts are to the Deep State—not the US Deep State, necessarily, but the larger global Deep State that has infested the entire Western world. Few understand that the Deep State conspiracy of power is really an integral part of the larger globalist conspiracy, which controls not only our country but the UK and most of Western Europe. It is not just the total disregard for the Assange defense team’s able defense, but the continued harassment of Assange, even as he is treated like a caged animal in handcuffs while transported from prison to the courts. He isn’t even allowed to sit with his attorneys or have a privileged conversation with them without government officials eavesdropping. This treatment is unprecedented even for violent criminals and Assange isn’t a criminal at all. All the world now knows this after the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture documented how Swedish police manufactured the original rape charge (which has since been withdrawn) out of thin air. He isn’t even a white collar (financial) criminal, but a political prisoner for having exposed US Deep State illicit secrets via Wikileaks—making him an “enemy of the state.”

The ongoing treatment of Assange is literally unheard of in British courts, unless you go back to the 15th century. The UK Deep State, taking all its cues from the US, is trying Assange as if he were a terrorist, using all the anti-constitutional terror statutes. As one British blog writes,

Standing outside the Woolwich courthouse adjacent to the Belmarsh prison where Assange is detained, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said, “This is an anti-terrorist court here beside Belmarsh [prison], and Julian is treated as a terrorist. He is strip-searched. He is handcuffed ten or 11 times a day. His [legal] material is taken away from him. It is totally unacceptable.”

Hrafnsson was speaking about the toll the proceedings and confinement are taking on Assange. In the afternoon, when the judge asked Assange if he needed a break, he stood up to address the court. He complained yet again about the lack of access to his attorneys and how there are security guards around him any time he wants to have a privileged conversation.

I cannot communicate with my lawyers or ask them for clarifications without the other side seeing. There has been enough spying on my lawyers already. The other side has about 100 times more contact with their lawyers per day.”

The next paragraph shows how biased and controlled the woman judge is:

These remarks came near the end of the day, and the defense informed the judge they would like Assange to be able to sit with them in the well instead of the glass box. She opposed the request, contending it was unreasonable to think she could approve that without a “risk assessment” from personnel involved in security.

Risk assessment while sitting in a court room in handcuffs, surrounded by guards? You would think this was Carlos the Jackal, a vicious terrorist, instead of the mild mannered founder of Wikileaks. Here is a more detailed account of the horrendous conditions Assange was subjected to and the judge’s refusal to help:

Julian Assange’s lawyers have repeatedly submitted unsuccessful requests to the Judge on his case, over the past few months, for her to intervene over his prison conditions, which have included denying Assange proper access to his case file.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been subjected to “horrendous” treatment at the hands of prison authorities, the Belmarsh Magistrate’s Court (sitting at Woolwich Crown Court) heard on 25 February. The award-winning journalist and publisher was handcuffed 11 times as he was shuttled between the courthouse and the prison (despite the two locations being practically connected to each other), he was also strip-searched twice, and his legal papers were confiscated from him, according to his legal team and fellow WikiLeaks journalists. [This is purposeful harassment]

Edward Fitzgerald, one of Assange’s barristers, pleaded with Judge Vanessa Baraitser to intervene with prison authorities.

Former British Ambassador Charles Murray offered more detail on the exchange:

Magistrate Baraitser looked at Fitzgerald and stated, in a voice laced with disdain, that he had raised such matters before and she had always replied that she had no jurisdiction over the prison estate. He should take it up with the prison authorities. Fitzgerald remained on his feet, which drew a very definite scowl from Baraitser, and replied that of course they would do that again, but this repeated behaviour by the prison authorities threatened the ability of the defence to prepare. He added that regardless of jurisdiction, in his experience it was common practice for magistrates and judges to pass on comments and requests to the prison service where the conduct of the trial was affected, and that jails normally listened to magistrates sympathetically.

Sputnik News continues:

On 13 January 2020 Gareth Pierce, veteran human rights solicitor and part of Assange’s legal team, gave Baraitser precedent of a High Court judge who called up Belmarsh prison’s governor on the phone to instruct him to change the prison’s practices towards an inmate. But Baraitser was only prepared to go as far as to make a generalised statement in court that it would be “helpful” if the prison improved Assange’s access to his lawyers and his case file. Baraitser had also previously refused to intervene on 19 November 2019.

Craig Murray daily reporting from the gallery noted much more about the bias of the judge on day three when she refused to allow Assange out of his glass cage to sit by his attorneys, as is common practice for even violent offenders, when handcuffed to a security officer:

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser is under a clear instruction to mimic concern by asking, near the end of every session just before we break anyway, if Julian is feeling well and whether he would like a break. She then routinely ignores his response. [like a cat playing with a mouse before killing it] Yesterday he replied at some length he could not hear properly in his glass box and could not communicate with his lawyers (at some point yesterday they had started preventing him passing notes to his counsel, which I learn was the background to the aggressive prevention of his shaking the hand of his Spanish lawyer, Baltasar Garzon to bid him goodbye).

Baraitser insisted he might only be heard through his counsel, which given he was prevented from instructing them, was a bit rich. This being pointed out, we had a ten minute adjournment while Julian and his counsel were allowed to talk down in the cells – presumably where they could be more conveniently bugged yet again.

On return, attorney Edward Fitzgerald made a formal application for Julian to be allowed to sit beside his lawyers in the court. Julian was “a gentle, intellectual man” and not a terrorist. Baraitser replied that releasing Assange from the dock into the body of the court would mean he was released from custody. To achieve that would require an application for bail.

This is ludicrous. Bail is to be released from prison to anywhere, and never simply to appear in court. She’s grasping at straws. Murray continues.

Prisoners, even the most dangerous of terrorists, gave evidence from the witness box in the body of the court next to the lawyers and magistrate. In the High Court prisoners frequently sat with their lawyers in extradition hearings, in extreme cases of violent criminals handcuffed to a security officer.

Baraitser replied that Assange might post a danger to the public. It was a question of health and safety. How did Fitzgerald and Lewis think that she had the ability to carry out the necessary risk assessment? It would have to be up to Group 4 to decide if this was possible. [Group 4 is the security conglomerate “Group 4 Falck,” which pioneered the private contracting of detention facilities and prisons in Britain, just like our Deep State uses “private” contractors to run prisons in the US—all tied to the “dark side.”]

Baraitser started to throw out jargon like a Dalek when it spins out of control. [Daleks are violent, merciless and pitiless cyborg aliens, (from movie Dr. Who) who demand total conformity to their will and who are bent on the conquest of the universe and the extermination of what they see as inferior races.]“Risk assessment” and “health and safety” featured a lot. She started to resemble something worse than a Dalek, a particularly stupid local government officer of a very low grade. “No jurisdiction” – “Up to Group 4”.

Recovering slightly, she stated firmly that delivery to custody can only mean delivery to the dock of the court, nowhere else in the room. If the defence wanted him in the courtroom were he could hear proceedings better, they could only apply for bail and his release from custody in general. She then peered at both barristers in the hope this would have sat them down, but both were still on their feet.

All of Murray’s recitations on the interaction with this judge is important so readers can see what a controlled Deep State puppet she is.

In any fair court in the Western world, this kind of conduct by the state and prosecution would be grounds for immediate dismissal, or grounds for an appeal, and that is why the false specter of terrorism is always used to justify anything including these subtle forms of torture and harassment.

This is an extradition hearing, and it is all based on a very one-side extradition treaty with the US, signed in 2003 during the height of the phony war on terror, which provided in essence that the US could demand extradition of anyone in the UK for any reason, but the UK couldn’t do the same—all in the name of protecting the USA against terror, which our own Deep State created and continues to run.

Despite the one-sided nature of the treaty, as is customary in Western nations, there is always a clause prohibiting the extradition of political prisoners. Although never defined, this refers to people who have become enemies of the state as dissidents, or those who have exposed state secrets that hide illicit acts. However, just before signing this treaty with the US, the 2003 Parliament removed any exception for political crimes in the Extradition Act. We see now why they removed this exception—the only Western country to ever do so.

This made it convenient for the prosecution to state that neither the US nor UK allows international treaties to overrule domestic law. This isn’t necessarily true. The US allows treaties to supercede domestic law when it wants to and objects to it when it doesn’t.

The defense correctly countered this domestic law allowing extradition for political purposes by saying that this extradition hearing, of necessity, is in process solely because there exists a US-UK treaty, so that treaty language cannot be dismissed as “not part of domestic law.” In fact, The U.S.-U.K. treaty dealt with this issue by specifically listing violent offenses that were to be excluded from the political offense exception, thereby acknowledging that the US recognizes the political exception to extradition law.

And, more importantly, Assange has not been charged with any crimes on that US/UK Treaty violence list. The UK Daily Mail noted that section 4.1 of the treaty is key to the defense’s claim that Assange is a political prisoner.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot legally be handed to the US for ‘political offences’ because of a 2003 extradition treaty, his lawyers have claimed. The 48-year-old is wanted in the US for allegedly conspiring with army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to expose military secrets between January and May 2010.

A US grand jury has indicted Assange on 18 charges – 17 of which fall under the Espionage Act – including conspiracy to receive, obtain and disclose classified diplomatic and military documents. The Trump administration argues Britain’s Official Secrets Act removed the ‘public interest’ defence when it came to revealing security matters.

It is deemed in the “public interest” if the US were to engage in hiding the truth, or engage in illegal actions, which the Wikileaks exposure did show. Once again, the judge showed her bias:

Judge Vanessa Baraitser seemed receptive to the prosecution’s argument for disregarding the treaty. Before James Lewis, the lead prosecutor, responded to the defense, Baraitser instructed the defense to stop their argument about political offenses and focus on whether the treaty is relevant to proceedings.

The defense did not stop and gave several examples in international law of extradition being barred for political actions against the state. But that didn’t stop the judge from evading the truth. Human Rights lawyer Edward Fitzgerald, …argued that Assange’s extradition to the U.S. is “politically motivated” because Trump hopes to ward off any potential whistleblowers or leaks during his presidency. He further claimed that Assange would not receive a fair trial in the U.S. “because of the political opinions he holds.”

“Prosecution is not motivated by genuine concern for criminal justice but by politics,” Fitzgerald said. “This extradition should be barred because the prosecution is being pursued for political motives and not in good faith.”

Ambassador Murray continued his chronicle of the arguments.

Solicitor Mark Summers stated that the USA charges were entirely dependent on three factual accusations of Assange behavior:

1) Assange helped Manning to decode a hash key to access classified material.

Summers stated this was a provably false allegation from the evidence of the Manning court-martial.

2) Assange solicited the material from Manning

Summers stated this was provably wrong from information available to the public

“Solicitor Summers then walked through the facts of the case. He said the charges from the USA divide the materials leaked by Manning to Wikileaks into [four] categories:”

a) Diplomatic Cables

b) Guantanamo detainee assessment briefs

c) Iraq War rules of engagement

d) Afghan and Iraqi war logs

Summers then methodically went through each in turn of the alleged behaviors… making twelve counts of explanation and exposition in all. This comprehensive account took some four hours.

Summers at great length demonstrated conclusively that Manning had access to each material provided to Wikileaks without needing any code from Assange, and had that access before ever contacting Assange. Nor had Manning needed a code to conceal her (his) identity [Chelsea (Bradley) Manning is actually a male who claims transgender status] as the prosecution alleged – the database for intelligence analysts Manning could access – as could thousands of others – did not require a username or password to access it from a work military computer. Summers quoted testimony of several officers from Manning’s court-martial to confirm this.

Watch how the judge starts arguing with counsel:

Baraitser replied that this did not constitute proof she knew she (he) could not be traced. Summers said in logic it made no sense to argue that she was seeking a code to conceal her user ID and password, where there was no user ID and password. Baraitser replied again he could not prove that. At this point Summers became somewhat testy and short with Baraitser, and took her through the court martial evidence again.

The Defense continued along the following lines:

1. They showed that “It’s simply untrue that Julian Assange put sources’ lives at risk.” Assange had given the data dump of US classified cables to 3 newspapers who were tasked with using journalistic discretion to make sure nothing improper was released that would put agents or sources at risk. The UK Guardian (a left-wing newspaper) was one of the three. Assange documented to his attorneys how the UK Guardian leaked the names of sources, not him.

2. Attorney Summers also told the court that The Guardian was responsible for publishing the password for the encrypted, un-redacted State Department cables that WikiLeaks and its media partners were slowly publishing. When The Guardian made the entire archive available, Assange called the State Department to warn them. Does that sound like someone trying to hurt US sources?

Ambassador Charles Murray who was in court offered more dramatic detail on how bad the US government looked after the arguments:

The bulk of Summers’ argument went to refuting behaviour 3), putting lives at risk. This was only claimed in relation to materials a) and d). Summers described at great length the efforts of Wikileaks with media partners over more than a year to set up a massive redaction campaign on the cables. He explained that the unredacted cables only became available after Luke Harding and David Leigh of the Guardian published the password to the cache as the heading to Chapter XI of their book Wikileaks, published in February 2011.

Nobody had put 2 and 2 together on this password until the German publication Der Freitag had done so and announced it had the unredacted cables in August 2011. Summers then gave the most powerful arguments of the day: The US government had been actively participating in the redaction exercise on the cables. They therefore knew the allegations of reckless publication to be untrue.

Once Der Freitag announced they had the unredacted materials, Julian Assange and Sara Harrison instantly telephoned the White House, State Department and US Embassy to warn them named sources may be put at risk. Summers read from the transcripts of telephone conversations as Assange and Harrison attempted to convince US officials of the urgency of enabling source protection procedures – and expressed their bafflement as officials stonewalled them. This evidence utterly undermined the US government’s case and proved bad faith in omitting extremely relevant fact. It was a very striking moment.

Correct. It proves the US wanted it to appear damage was done to sources so they could blame Assange. “You might think that would be something you would have known when the government submitted the extradition request,” Summers told Baraister.”

The lackey judge, did not seem to care, and was unmoved by the argument. As for the Guardian, after profiting for years off of the Wikileak’s releases, it engaged in a campaign against Assange that is ongoing.

3. That the “US considered “kidnapping or poisoning” Assange inside UK Ecuadorian Embassy.” Spencer Neale reported that,

Human rights lawyer Edward Fitzgerald, arguing against the extradition of Assange to the U.S., said Monday that the U.S. intelligence community plotted to kill the WikiLeaks founder after he released 250,000 top-secret U.S. Department of State cables, according to the Daily Mail. The plot to murder Assange was exposed by a mysterious Iberian whistleblower who told investigators that U.S. authorities were in contact with a Spanish private security firm that helped target audio and video devices inside London’s Ecuadorian Embassy.

“There were conversations about whether there should be more extreme measures contemplated, such as kidnapping or poisoning Julian Assange in the embassy,” said Fitzgerald. [This was important to establish that Assange is at risk of death in US custody.]

Last week, Fitzgerald also revealed that president Trump had attempted to broker a presidential pardon for Assange by way of a secret meeting with former California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher under the condition that Assange refute claims that Russia was behind the Democratic National Committee hack that dominated the 2016 presidential election.

But, embarrassed by the leak to the anti-Trump media about Trump’s attempt to help Assange, the White House turned tail and ran, claiming the hypothetical pardon was a “complete fabrication and a total lie.”

The defense made a proper case that what Assange did, in embarrassing US secrets, was to defend liberty and transparency in government, but the prosecution said “that is not for this court to decide.” Actually, it is very relevant to the issue of the political exception to extradition, and that is why the judge won’t consider it.

4. The defense did not have a good answer to the prosecution’s claim that documents found in al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hideaway after U.S. Navy SEALs killed the terrorist leader could only have come from the WikiLeaks document dumps. Had they been reading the WAB they would have known that Osama bin Laden was never living in the Pakistani complex, only his CIA look-a-like, who was killed. This would mean that documents planted at the site also came from the CIA, trying to implicate Assange.

The defense did quote from Assange’s father, John Shipton, who, in turn, quoted from former Secretary of State Robert Gates, who told Congress that “no damage was done” by the Wikileaks data dump.

Liberty Conservative News also found out that Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, the openly gay Richard Grenell led the railroading of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange out of the Ecuadoran embassy.

Finally, at a “Free Julian Assange” rally at a British church, George Galloway, followed Craig Murray’s recitation of the trial gave one of the most stirring speeches heard in Britain condemning those who should be “trembling in indignation” over the treatment and torture of Julian Assange and yet do not. It is not long, and I consider it a classic “must listen.” Galloway is from the Left wing in the UK, but like some sincere socialists take great umbrage at the workings of the Deep State and injustice within the corrupt legal system. Listen to it here.