Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Belligerent Savant » Sat Nov 14, 2020 2:56 pm
by Harvey » Sat Nov 14, 2020 4:49 pm
by norton ash » Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:00 pm
by Grizzly » Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:24 pm
by Joe Hillshoist » Sun Nov 22, 2020 7:55 am
by Harvey » Mon Jan 04, 2021 12:14 am
Craig Murray
@CraigMurrayOrg
I strongly recommend this article.
Just arrived in London for the Assange extradition verdict. Julian's father has written to the court delegating me to represent the family tomorrow. But still no reply from the court on admittance.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956474820978070
We can’t say we weren’t warned
Peter Oborne and Millie Cooke British Journalism Review vol.31 no4 December 2020
If Julian Assange is extradited to the United States to face espionage charges for publishing details of US war crimes, he will almost certainly be convicted and sent to a maximum-security prison for the rest of his life.
For the British media, the consequences are grim, especially for investigative journalism. Any story which depends on obtaining documents from US government sources will become impossibly dangerous. No British journalists would dare to handle it, let alone publish it. Indeed, the same would be true of stories relying on leaked official information from other friendly countries. Any journalists involved could find themselves subject to an extradition request. The more serious the story, the more it needed to be published, the more danger of extradition and prosecution overseas.
This means that the Assange hearing in September was the most important court case concerning free speech this century.
Consider the Pentagon Papers revelations, which revealed the illegal US bombing of Laos and Cambodia and ultimately helped bring the Vietnam War to an end. Every investigative journalist reveres the whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, now 89, the former US marine officer responsible for the revelations which exposed many lies told by the US government about the war.Ellsberg gave eloquent testimony in defence of Assange. He told the court that he felt “a great identification” with the Wikileaks founder.
Ellsberg explained that while he was serving in Vietnam, details of US war crimes were confined to a tiny circle. By contrast, he pointed out, more than 100,000 people had access to the Iraq and Afghan war logs leaked by Chelsea Manning. This meant, said Ellsberg, “torture and assassination have been normalised”.
Yet, for the British media, Ellsberg’s evidence was of little or no interest. Indeed, the whole Assange story was treated by much of the British media like an awkward family secret. We have documented media coverage.
Only a handful of reporters regularly attended Assange’s four-week hearing at the Old Bailey: one from the specialist agency Central Court News, another from the Press Association; court reporter James Doleman filing daily reports for Bridges for Media Freedom. A BBC representative attended every day but appears not to have filed anything that was published. There was a reporter from the Morning Star.
The Economist (which supports Assange’s extradition) ignored the hearing altogether. Likewise, the New Statesman (eyebrow-raising, given the paper’s historic connection with left-wing causes and support for a free press). As far as we can discover, the New Statesman has taken no editorial position, though its writers have tended to take a negative line about Assange. Last year, Suzanne Moore used the Wikileaks founder as a means of bashing Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, writing: “For many of us, it also looks like a deluded, creepy man who has being [sic] hiding in a cupboard is being lauded by Labour’s front bench.” A New Statesman spokesperson said: “The New Statesman has covered this story and will continue to cover it. We are a magazine mostly of essays, long reads and cultural criticism, not a breaking news site or a newspaper. And we don’t publish court reports.”
The Spectator avoided the issue, barring a few cursory references. The Sunday Telegraph has not mentioned Julian Assange since April 2019. The Daily Mail’s major contribution was a laborious treatise about Assange’s personal life, which contained a throwaway two paragraphs about the merits of the case, in which the author wrote: “Wherever you stand on these issues – and I believe extraditing Assange, 49, is wrong for it would set a terrible precedent – his despicable treatment of women, his egotism and above all his hypocrisy leave a very bitter taste, even among those who have admired his work.”
Earlier, the Daily Mail’s columnist Richard Littlejohn had provided readers with a sneering denunciation of Assange’s personal hygiene, claiming that, upon leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy last year, “he stank the place to high heaven”. Although it published some reports of the hearing, the paper took little interest in the fundamental issues at stake and expressed no opinion. The Daily Express was little better. The Daily Mirror and The Sunprovided short and crisp reports. Likewise, The Times, Guardian and Telegraph provided dutiful reports.
None of these papers covered the story with the depth that readers were entitled to expect from a case of such significance. Coverage of the Assange hearing was swamped by the coverage allocated to the libel hearing involving the actor Johnny Depp.
The BBC did not fill this vacuum. As far as we can discover, BBC News at Ten did not publish a single substantive item on the case, apart from a passing reference on the opening day. One would have thought that, as a public service broadcaster, the BBC had an obligation to cover an event of this importance in some detail. The BBC evidently disagreed. At the very end of the four-week hearing, its world affairs editor John Simpson delivered a three-and-a-half-minute report on the Radio 4 PM programme.
We asked the BBC about its failure to cover the hearing, given the presence of a reporter throughout. A spokesperson replied: “We decide what to cover based on editorial merit and newsworthiness. It is not unusual to have a member of staff present at major court cases in order to monitor events and pass news lines on to editorial staff if and when they develop.”
His only crime was that of investigative reporting
The Media Lens website (which provided caustic commentary on the structural failings of British media coverage) challenged the BBC home affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford on Twitter about the lack of coverage. He replied: “The case is being covered by our World Affairs unit. I have been in a few hearings, and it is slightly repetitive at the moment. It will return as a news story.”
This was a strange remark, since there was an abundance of material. The court heard how a US Congressman offered Julian Assange a pardon in return for information that would “benefit President Trump politically”. It heard troubling information about Assange’s psychiatric condition. It learnt dreadful new details about Abu Hamza’s incarceration in a US jail. They show that no promise about extradition conditions for a prison can be relied on.
Lindsay Lewis, a US attorney, told how, during Hamza’s extradition from the UK, the US government provided assurance in court that he would not be detained in the Colorado ADX Supermax prison. But he has been held there ever since his conviction five years ago. Lewis said “most-special- administration-measures inmates spend all day, almost every day, completely alone and for years at a time”, with phone calls limited to one a month and family visits all but impossible.
The Guardian coverage of the hearing demands special treatment because the paper is intimately tied into the Assange story. The Guardian (along with The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and many other international news organisations) cooperated with Assange and WikiLeaks for the original publication of the Afghan and Iraq war logs. There was then a falling out.
The role of The Guardian became an important part of proceedings, with the defence and prosecution providing radically different accounts of what happened 10 years ago. These are deep waters. The paper’s critics – most eloquently, the former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook – accuse the paper of providing minimal coverage and failing to deal fully and transparently with its own role. The Guardian denies this, and points out that it has opposed Assange’s extradition from the outset.
There is no question that the Assange hearing goes to the heart of why journalism matters. The facts are these. Assange is accused by the US of conspiring with the whistle-blower Chelsea Manning to hack a Pentagon computer. The US indictment says Assange agreed to attempt to crack a password (although it is unclear whether or not this attempt was successful). Crucially, the indictment also charges Assange with actions that are no different to the standard practices of journalism. For example, the indictment alleges that: “Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records.” This may be an offence from the point of view of the United States authorities, but no self-respecting newspaper editor would demand less.
It claims that Assange “actively encouraged Manning” to provide the information. Once again, this is exactly the kind of behaviour that one would expect of any self-respecting journalist. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, remarked: “It is dangerous to suggest that these actions are somehow criminal, rather than steps routinely taken by investigative journalists who communicate with confidential sources to receive classified information of public importance.”
As for the Wikileaks revelations, they were shattering. We were able to see a video of US helicopter gunmen laughing as they shot at and killed unarmed civilians in Iraq. Fifteen individuals were killed in the attack, including a Reuters photographer and his assistant. The US military refused to discipline the perpetrators of this grotesque crime. The same tranche of documents, leaked by Manning, revealed that the total number of civilian casualties in Iraq was 66,000 – far more than had previously been admitted.
WikiLeaks disclosed the systematic nature of the abuse of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, and that 150 innocent inmates were held for years without charge. Clive Stafford Smith, founder of the human rights charity Reprieve, who has represented 87 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, paid tribute to the importance of Wikileaks in enabling him to prove charges against his clients had been false. Earlier this year, Stafford Smith noted that Assange “would be the first person ever jailed in the US for receiving a leak, as well as the first journalist for publishing something. Proportionately what is worse: publishing documents about torture or doing the torture?”.
It is no surprise that the United States is furious with Assange and wants to lock him up. But the lack of interest by so much of the British media in US attempts to do so is worthy of note. The Americans accused Assange of espionage. However, Julian Assange’s defence, led by Edward Fitzgerald QC, argued forcibly that Assange’s only crime was the crime of investigative journalism.
The Economist at least did not duck the issue
The American philosopher Noam Chomsky submitted written evidence at the Assange hearing, arguing that “Julian Assange, in courageously upholding political beliefs that most of us profess to share, has performed an enormous service to all the people in the world who treasure the values of freedom and democracy and who therefore demand the right to know what their elected representatives are doing. His actions in turn have led him to be pursued in a cruel and intolerable manner”.
According to some supporters of Mr Chomsky, the mainstream media is owned and in large part controlled by a handful of media tycoons and, as a result, has come to reflect powerful corporate and state interests. Many media organisations therefore act as gatekeepers, deciding what is acceptable reporting and what cannot be discussed.
The Assange case suggests that this analysis is plausible. At best, the London media reported Assange dutifully. At worst, not at all. To find out what was taking place in the courtroom, it was necessary to ignore the mainstream and read outside organisations such as Bridges for Media Freedom (which “works to educate the public and key stakeholders about threats to media freedom across the entire sphere of modern digital reporting”) and Media Lens.
The former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray (sitting in the public gallery with members of the Assange family) provided a series of long, brilliantly written daily reports. They will be assembled into a book. Mr Murray’s raw testimony made compelling reading. No British newspaper provided a remotely comparable service. Only a few papers even took a line on extradition. So full credit to those that did.
The Observer stated forcefully that “there can be no ambivalence about the danger posed to all journalists by the indictment he faces in America”. The Mail on Sunday (which covered the case energetically) called it a “sinister, shameful attack on free speech”.
The Independent published many comment pieces on the issue, including veteran correspondent Patrick Cockburn’s compelling criticism of the media. He argued that their silence not only makes them “complicit in the criminalisation of newsgathering by the American government”, but also “mortally threatens freedom of the press in Britain”
We feel that The Economist deserves credit for having the moral courage to support the extradition. Although it ignored this year’s hearings, the paper argued in April 2019 that “the central charge – computer hacking – is an indefensible violation of the law. Neither journalists nor activists, like Mr Assange, have carte blanche to break the law in exercising their First Amendment rights. They are entitled to publish freely; not to break and enter, physically or digitally, to do so”. More honourable by far than continuing to duck the issue, like so many British magazines and newspapers.
It is relevant to compare the media reporting of the Assange hearing with the reporting of the Leveson Inquiry and its aftermath 10 years ago. The Leveson Inquiry was brought about in a moment of national disgust at the behaviour of newspapers which had broken the law to hack phones and intrude on the private lives of celebrities and also ordinary people, notoriously including the murdered schoolgirl Millie Dowler. The Spectator was the first voice in the media to raise the alarm over Leveson. As we have seen, the magazine ignored Assange.
In the wake of Leveson, Mike Harris in The Daily Telegraph warned that “three centuries of press freedom will be consigned to the dustbin of history, with investigative journalism almost impossible and shackles imposed on our much-loved local press”. But when it came to the defence of Assange, the Telegraph had nothing to say.
When Leveson proposed tougher regulation to prevent similar abuses in the future, the press reacted with powerful opposition. In the Mail, Richard Littlejohn warned that the Cameron government was proposing the “suppression of free speech”, a “classic hallmark of a fascist regime”. This is the same Littlejohn who later mocked Assange for his wretched physical condition when he emerged from the Ecuadorian Embassy.
This double standard raises urgent questions about the sincerity of the fears of the threat to free speech and investigative journalism expressed by British newspapers in the aftermath of Leveson. The silence of so many newspapers and media organisations over Assange gives ammunition to critics who maintain that they don’t care about either. Too many of them left it to outside organisations to point out the consequences for journalism.
Reporters Without Borders warned of the “extremely serious consequences for press freedom”. Amnesty International said the “UK authorities are under a clear and unequivocal obligation not to send” Assange to the US. The International Federation of Journalists warned of an “extremely dangerous precedent for journalists, media organizations and freedom of the press”. The Committee to Protect Journalists stated that “a successful prosecution would chill whistle-blowers and investigative reporting”. According to the National Union of Journalists, “Assange’s extradition to the United States would establish a dangerous precedent with regard to the prosecution of journalists in this country”.
Future generations of journalists may look with anger and even stupefaction at Fleet Street’s collective failure to show a fraction of the anger and moral passion about the extradition of Assange as they did about Leveson – or, for that matter, the Johnny Depp case. The presiding judge, Vanessa Baraitser, will deliver her verdict on January 4. If, as expected, she nods through Assange’s extradition, investigative journalism will suffer a devastating blow. War criminals, murderers, torturers and law-breakers will be able to sleep a little easier in their beds.
Peter Oborne writes a column for Middle East Eye. Millie Cooke is a student of investigative journalism at City, University of London.
by Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jan 04, 2021 7:33 am
by Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jan 04, 2021 7:34 am
by Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jan 04, 2021 7:37 am
by Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jan 04, 2021 7:38 am
by Belligerent Savant » Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:45 am
@ggreenwald
·
4h
The rejection by the UK court of the US Govt's request to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial on espionage charges is obviously great news. But the judge endorsed most of the USG's theories, but ultimately found the US prison system too inhumane to permit extradition.
@ggreenwald
·
4h
The US DOJ has already said it intends to appeal. The question -- and I'm hearing different things on this -- is whether the courts will keep Assange imprisoned while that appeal is pending. The court ordered him released, but it's unclear if the DOJ appeal will keep him in jail.
@ggreenwald
·
4h
This wasn't a victory for press freedom. Quite the contrary: the judge made clear she believed there are grounds to prosecute Assange in connection with the 2010 publication.
It was, instead, an indictment of the insanely oppressive US prison system for security "threats."
@ggreenwald
·
4h
Ultimately, though, from a humanitarian *and* a political perspective, what matters most is that Assange be freed as soon as possible. The US Govt doesn't care what prison he's in, or why: they just want him silenced and in a cage.
He should be freed immediately.
404.The defence sets out the history relevant to this submission: on 24 June 2020 the second superseding indictment added a series of new factual allegations; on 29 July 2020 the US served the new indictment on the court; on 12 August 2020 the US issued a fresh extradition request dated 17 July 2020, founded upon the new indictment; on 21 August 2020, the US served its revised opening note, with an ‘addendum’ which explained the import of the new indictment; and, on 7 September 2020,the request was executed.
405.The US submits that there is no example in the authorities of the courts excising the conduct from an extradition request where it would otherwise satisfy an Extradition Act and, ordinarily, form the basis of an extradition order. Two cases in which the power to excise was used by the courts are identified. In Dabas v. Spain[2007] 2 A.C 31 per Lord Hope at §51:
131“...The second observation, which I make with reference to the test of double criminality in section 64(3), is this. A judge may conclude that this test is not satisfied because part of the conduct which is said to constitute the offence mentioned in the Part 1 warrant occurred before it constituted an offence under the law of the relevant part of the United Kingdom if it occurred there. The question is whether in that situation he has no alternative other than to order the person's discharge under section 10(3).
In my opinion it would be open to the judge in such circumstances to ask that the scope of the warrant be limited to a period that would enable the test of double criminality to be satisfied. If this is not practicable, it would be open to him to make this clear in the order that he issues when answering the question in section 10(2) in the affirmative. The exercise that was undertaken by your Lordships in Ex p Pinochet Ugarte (No 3) [2000] 1 AC 147 , 229–240, shows how far it was possible to go under the pre-existing procedure to avoid the result of having to order the person's discharge in a case where part of the conduct relied on took place during a period when the double criminality test was not satisfied. It can be assumed that the Part 1 procedure was intended to be at least as adaptable in that respect as that which it has replaced....”
406.In Osunta v. Germany[2008] 3 W.LR 26 at §22, per Treacy J:“...It seems to me that the argument that effect should be given to extradition arrangements and that the court should seek to avoid discharging a warrant where serious offences are alleged is a powerful one, as is the need to trust the judicial arrangements in other jurisdictions. If excision is necessary to achieve justice in those circumstances then I find it hard to understand how an excision relating to temporal matters should be acceptable whereas one relating to matters of geography should be unacceptable”.
407. The defence complains that the late service of the second superseding indictment has resulted in unfairness in the preparation of its case. Mindful of any potential unfairness flowing from the late service of this amended indictment, on Friday 14 August 2020,I invited the defence to consider applying to adjourn the evidential hearing which was due to commence on 7 September 2020. I gave them the opportunity to consider this invitation over the course of a week but, on 21 August 2020, the defence confirmed that it would not be seeking to adjourn proceedings. No further applications were made between that date and 7 September 2020.
408.In my judgment the appropriate remedy for any unfairness arising from the late indictment would have been to allow the defence sufficient time prepare its case and advance any relevant arguments. That time was offered in August 2020 and declined.
409.I reject the defence submissions concerning staying extradition as an abuse of the process of this court.
by Harvey » Mon Jan 04, 2021 1:17 pm
Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jan 04, 2021 12:38 pm wrote:Who saw that coming?
by dada » Mon Jan 04, 2021 4:50 pm
by Harvey » Thu Jan 07, 2021 11:23 am
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/01/both-tortuous-and-torturous/
Both Tortuous and Torturous
January 6, 2021 by Craig Murray
Magistrate Vanessa Bararitser walked into Westminster Magistrates Court No.1 at 10.12am this morning with the sunniest smile and most carefree disposition I have ever seen her adopt. Her shoulders appeared visibly lifted. She positively beamed at Clair Dobbin, counsel for the US government, as she invited her to put the case for the prosecution as to why Julian Assange should not be released on bail.
Mrs Dobbin has one of those gloomy, presbyterian personalities that only fully comes to life when it has the chance to condemn somebody. There is nothing like a flat Belfast accent for a really rousing condemnation, and this was a collector’s item.
Julian Assange, she stated in tones that made plain she considered that name in itself to be suspicious and unsavoury, had shown he would go to great lengths to avoid extradition to the United States. The judgement against his extradition turned only on one single point – that of his mental health – and that single point might easily be overturned by the High Court.
Assange had helped Edward Snowden to flee justice; he had boasted about it. As detailed in the US Government’s second superceding indictment, he had organised flights for Snowden and arranged a distraction operation to throw the CIA off the scent. When the US authorities had trapped Snowden in Russia by canceling his passport, Assange had tried to arrange not just private jets but even Presidential jets to help Snowden escape further. Such was Assange’s reach and ability.
Furthermore, the President of Mexico had made a public offer of asylum, giving Assange a firm motive to escape. Many countries would wish to support him and he might again enter a foreign Embassy. He had hidden for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy to avoid extradition to the USA. He had broken his bail commitments in 2012: “any idea that moral or principled reasons would bear on Mr Assange’s conscience turned out to be ill-founded indeed”.
The British government had been obliged to spend £16 million on the surveillance of Mr Assange while he was in the Ecuadorean Embassy. Those who had stood surety for him had failed in their duty to ensure that he presented himself in court in 2012. Tracy Worcester, who was among those offering surety now and had offered accommodation for the Assange family, had failed in her duty in 2012.
Furthermore Julian Assange had obtained diplomatic status from Ecuador, a further example of his seeking means to avoid extradition.
Dobbin then stated the US Government was appealing against the judgement not to extradite, and said it would do so on the grounds that Baraitser had made an error in law in incorrectly applying the relevant test on conditions that would bar extradition. In effect, Baraitser had set a new test of whether measures would be in place to make suicide impossible, whereas the correct test was whether measures would be in place to mitigate against the risk of suicide, and on that proper test the evidence was that the US system was sufficiently robust.
The test required a rigorous assessment of the facilities for treatment and prison conditions in the USA. This assessment had not taken place.
Dobbin went on to say that Baraitser had misinterpreted the law as to whether the cause of the immediate suicidal impulse was current circumstance or an underlying medical condition. She then argued that Assange’s young family ought not to be a factor, because they had been born while Assange was in the Embassy, and therefore in full knowledge that his future was entirely uncertain. Taken together, Dobbin concluded, these arguments posed an insurmountable obstacle to the granting of bail.
Edward Fitzgerald then replied that Baraitser’s judgement against extradition changes everything. Since October 2019, when the prison sentence for bail-jumping concluded, Assange had been held in Belmarsh prison solely on the basis of this extradition request. Now the request had been refused, he must be entitled to his liberty pending any appeal, as specified in the discharge order of Monday’s judgement. The status quo now was that the extradition request has been refused. Therefore the grounds for detention were gone, and further detention would be oppressive.
The court had accepted that incarceration was deleterious to Assange’s mental health, and he needed the support of his family. Conditions in the prison were made much worse by further lockdown due to Covid-19. Assange had not received a family prison visit since March 2020.
There followed a strange interlude where Fitzgerald stated that there was a major Covid epidemic in Belmarsh and 59 prisoners had tested positive in December. Dobbin rose to deny this and said there had been only 3 positive tests for Covid in Belmarsh, brandishing an email sent by the prison authorities at 10.49pm the previous night. There was heated discussion as to the veracity of this figure.
Fitzgerald next stated that the supervising prosecutor in the USA in this case had put on record his doubts that the incoming Biden administration would wish to continue this prosecution. He also pointed out that the Mexican offer of asylum was specifically for after the conclusion of legal proceedings and after discussion with the UK at foreign minister level. It was not an invitation to abscond.
Assange had no reason to abscond. There was little or no precedent for the High Court overturning any ruling against extradition on Section 91 health grounds. The defence strongly refuted the US government’s claim that the relevant tests had not been properly considered and applied by the court. Numerous expert witnesses had been heard. The Lauri Love case was the most relevant precedent. Stringent monitoring and bail conditions could be applied, but with the presumption now against extradition, Julian Assange should be returned to life with his family pending any US appeal, to give him a chance to recover his health.
Baraitser then immediately gave her decision. She stated that Assange had been a fugitive from British justice since 29 June 2012 when he failed to report to court as ordered. His entire motive for his residence in the Ecuadorean Embassy had been avoidance of a US extradition request. Assange therefore still had a motive to abscond. He had the backing of a powerful international network of supporters who could facilitate his escape.
The US government had the right to appeal and the High Court had the right to determine the matters at issue. It was therefore essential to ensure that Assange appeared before the High Court.
Assange had been deeply involved in the organisation of Edward Snowden’s escape which further underlined his contempt for the law. His health problems could be managed well in Belmarsh. Baraitser specifically accepted the figure of 3 COVID cases in Belmarsh given officially by the prison authorities. In conclusion, bail was refused.
COMMENT
All of Julian’s team were optimistic before this hearing and it seems perverse that, a judgement against extradition having been made, Julian should continue to be held in high security prison pending the US government appeal. He has already been in jail for over 14 months just in the extradition matter, after the expiry of his unprecedentedly harsh sentence for bail-jumping.
In effect, having already served that sentence, Julian is now being punished again for the same offence, spending years in extreme prison conditions purely because he once jumped bail, for which he already served the full sentence.
The logic of holding Julian now is simply not there, given the current legal position is that he is not being extradited. Furthermore this continuing raising and lowering of his spirits, and never-ending incarceration with no fixed limit, is destroying his fragile health. Baraitser has played cat and mouse this week. Julian is living his life in conditions both torturous and tortuous.
It is ironic to hear Baraitser declare in condemnatory tones, without equivocation, that Julian only entered the Embassy to escape extradition to the USA. This is of course perfectly true. But I remember the many years when the Establishment line, from the government and repeated in several hundred Guardian columns, was that this truth was a fiction. They claimed there was never any intention to extradite to the USA, and actually he was avoiding extradition to Sweden, on allegations that never had any basis and which disappeared like mist when the time actually came. I suppose we should be grateful for at least this much truth in proceedings.
Today’s judgement makes plain that whatever is happening with Monday’s judgement, it is not genuinely motivated by concern for Julian’s health. Yanis Varoufakis yesterday stated that the ultimate aim is still to kill Julian through the penal system. Nothing that happened today would contradict him.
The extraordinary figure of only 3 Covid infections in Belmarsh is very hard to believe and contradicts all previous information. Plainly Covid is less of a risk than anywhere else in London, and perhaps we should all break in to improve our isolation and safety. The only explanation that occurs to me is that the vast majority of prisoners are denied access to testing and are therefore not confirmed cases. or that the prson has chosen to give testing results for a single day and chosen to misrepresent the meaning of the statistic. In fact the point is not central to the bail application, but as a possible example of yet further malfeasance by the Belmarsh medical team, it is particularly intriguing.
The decision not to grant bail can be appealed to the High Court. I expect that will happen (there has been no chance yet to consult Julian’s wishes), and happen in about a fortnight.
by Harvey » Thu Jan 07, 2021 12:20 pm
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 41 guests