When Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, the US Government burgled the office of his psychiatrist to look for medical evidence to discredit him. Julian Assange has been obliged to submit himself, while in a mentally and physically weakened state and in...
Assange Extradition: Judge Pushes To Expedite Witness Testimony
Monday was a frustrating day as the Assange Hearing drifted deep into a fantasy land where nobody knows or is allowed to say that people were tortured in Guantanamo Bay and under extraordinary rendition. The willingness of Judge Baraitser to accept American red lines...
Testimony on US War Crimes Heard at Assange Extradition
Friday gave us the most emotionally charged moments yet at the Assange hearing, showed that strange and sharp twists in the story are still arriving at the Old Bailey, and brought into sharp focus some questions about the handling and validity of evidence, which I...
Assange Extradition: Prosecution’s Dirty Tricks Elicits Anger From Judge
A less dramatic day, but marked by a brazen and persistent display of this US Government’s insistence that it has the right to prosecute any journalist and publication, anywhere in the world, for publication of US classified information. This explicitly underlay...
Daniel Ellsberg Explains the Importance of WikiLeaks at Assange’s Extradition
Yet another shocking example of abuse of court procedure unfolded on Wednesday. James Lewis QC for the prosecution had been permitted gratuitously to read to two previous witnesses with zero connection to this claim, an extract from a book by Luke Harding and David...
Expert Witnesses Say Assange’s Extradition Is Political
The gloves were off on Tuesday as the US Government explicitly argued that all journalists are liable to prosecution under the Espionage Act (1917) for publishing classified information, citing the Rosen case. Counsel for the US government also argued that the famous...
Assange Extradition: Eric Lewis on the Plight He Faces in the US
Things became not merely dramatic in the Assange courtroom today, but spiteful and nasty. There were two real issues, the evidence and the procedure. On the evidence, there were stark details of the dreadful regime Assange will face in US jails if extradited. On the...
Witnesses in Assange’s Extradition Hearing Explain the Case Against Him Is Political
The great question after yesterday’s hearing was whether prosecution counsel James Lewis QC would continue to charge at defense witnesses like a deranged berserker (spoiler – he would), and more importantly, why? QC’s representing governments usually...
Judge Cuts Witness Testimony Short at Assange’s Extradition Hearing
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITHThis morning we went straight in to the evidence of Clive Stafford Smith, a dual national British/American lawyer licensed to practice in the UK. He had founded Reprieve in 1999 originally to oppose the death penalty, but after 2001 it had branched...
CIA Spying on Assange’s Privileged Legal Conversations
Here is an image of Julian and I talking in the Ecuadorean Embassy, part of the spycam footage that was commissioned by the CIA from Spanish security firm Global. Julian and I were discussing a number of overseas missions to liaise with foreign governments, which I...