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Byron Shire
March 18, 2024

Catastrophic US Assange trial continues at London’s Old Bailey

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Julian Assange and Stella Morris. Photo WikiLeaks

Mia Armitage with Dr John Jiggens and Rob Osborne

‘It’s becoming catastrophic. I’m fighting for his life.’

So said lawyer Stella Morris as she tried to deliver a freedom petition for her 49-year-old partner, and father of their two young sons, Gabriel and Max.

He’s better known as WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange.

Ms Morris took the petition, signed by 80,000 people, to the famous residence of the UK prime minister in London’s Downing Street earlier this month.

But she was turned away owing to pandemic restrictions, and told waiting reporters that she would post it instead.

Assange family reunites for brief moment

Mr Assange was finally allowed to see his young family again late last month with physical distancing and face masks.

The Australian prisoner was told if he touched his children he would have to self-isolate for two weeks.

With his trial at that time due to restart in twelve days, the emotional and psychological strain would have been more like something from a Martin Scorsese film than life as we thought we knew it in a Western democracy.

United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, long ago decried Mr Assange’s continued detention as meeting international legal definitions of torture. Yet, to date, nobody listening has responded with enough power in Mr Assange’s favour.

A ‘threat to freedom of speech’

Back home, former Australian foreign minister, Bob Carr, is on Mr Assange’s side, telling supporters at a solidarity event in Sydney last week the case was ‘a frightening precedent for people who might be given secrets’.

Mr Carr is also a former ABC journalist and said journalists might be given secrets and publish those secrets ‘because that’s what journalists do’.

‘And it often leaves governments uncomfortable,’ Mr Carr later told community radio’s The Wire.

‘That those journalists are branded as spies and put on trial under espionage law – is a threat to freedom of speech.’

More than 5,000 docs on abandoned Swedish charges

US extradition hearings against Mr Assange continue at the Old Bailey courthouse in London, with his father and regular voice on Bay FM, John Shipton, present.

Mr Shipton spoke to Community Newsroom reporter Dr John Jiggens, in the week leading up to the resumption of hearings, as the campaign for his son’s freedom intensified.

‘We are on the trail of bringing Julian home,’ Mr Shipton said, having just collected a ‘trove’ of more than 5,000 documents from Sweden, related to the now dropped charges against the WikiLeaks founder.

The controversial matter never made it to court in time before a Swedish statute of limitations took effect after ten years, and disqualified it.

But the consequences for Mr Assange were drastic: an arrest warrant in the UK; almost seven years of near solitary asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy; and current imprisonment in Belmarsh high security as the US extradition case unfolds and the pandemic crisis continues.

A London rally in support of Julian Assange. Photo Facebook

No time to prepare for 18 new charges

Mr Assange’s legal defence team face more pressure thanks to US prosecutors, in June, adding eighteen new charges against the journalist; seventeen of them under the US Espionage Act.

Defence lawyers last week tried to have hearings postponed to give them more time to respond to the new charges, but Judge Vanessa Baraitser was undeterred.

Judge Baraitser said the defence had already been given a chance to ‘vacate’ the set date for hearings to start on 7 September and had failed to take the opportunity.

She read from a previous case and effectively said if the lawyers weren’t ready, they had no one to blame but themselves.

Later Mr Shipton told Community Newsroom his son hadn’t seen his lawyers for six months prior to last week’s hearings.

US prosecution tries to ‘silence’ Assange defence witnesses

Mr Shipton also said US prosecutors tried to argue against defence witnesses being allowed to speak during the opening hearings.

The prosecutors argued that since witnesses had all supplied written statements, it was time-consuming and unnecessary to have them speak, and that hearings should move straight to cross-examination.

‘The defence argued that was wrong, and that the public should be able to hear and participate,’ Mr Shipton told Community Newsroom.

Judge Baraitser agreed time-saving was a worthy consideration but allowed witnesses to speak for a maximum of thirty minutes.

Hey Payne, get on the blower to Mike Pompeo!

Mr Shipton said Judge Baraitser also made a statement refusing online access requests to hearings from Amnesty International Reporters Without Borders, and 40 other NGOs and European parliamentarians.

‘They were neither permitted to attend the court nor observe online,’ said Mr Shipton and it’s unclear whether Judge Baraitser explained her reasoning for the lockouts.

Mr Shipton says ‘only the outrage, only the determination’ can right his son’s predicament.

But former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr disagrees, telling The Wire he thinks ‘any Australian minister is entitled to pick up the phone to Mike Pompeo and say to the Secretary of State, “Mike, I think you’d agree that we’re a very good ally”, and then put the case for this extradition being quietly dropped.

‘Because he is an Australian citizen,’ Mr Carr said, ‘he’s not guilty of espionage’.

Pandemic delays hearings

In yet another film-worthy dramatic turn last week, hearings were adjourned until the end of the day on Thursday when Judge Baraitser heard one of the US lawyers may have been exposed to COVID-19.

The response comes after repeated denial of requests for Mr Assange to be removed from high security in Belmarsh, owing to his categorisation as a high-risk COVID-19 candidate and outbreaks of the virus at the prison.

Most journalists trying to access hearings on Monday via video link say they were repeatedly ‘bumped off’ due to technical glitches, including former ABC presenter, Mary Kostakidis, who has been live-tweeting reports on the trial, and it’s unclear how many journalists were physically present in the courtroom that day.

Tune in to BayFM’s Community Newsroom for regular reports from John Shipton: https://bit.ly/3ivYH8Z.


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9 COMMENTS

  1. Julian & Stella need all the support they can get. This is more than
    a run-away train & the rigging is there for all to see. A blame game
    & ‘America … home of the brave’. It’s a nightmare.

  2. Why is this being allowed? It is clearly illegal, Assange is not a US citizen and if US forces can cross borders to carry out murder – Osam Bin Laden ( who may or may not have deserved it , but he WAS a foreign national in a foreign country and he was murdered but US forces who went it with the intention of committing murder) Then if they are at liberty to commit international attrocities then why do they want to kill a guy who is not even one their citizens and has never committed a crime on US soil? Assange should be considered a hero – let the USA make him a martyr , I am not sure what whirlwind they may reap – will they reap one? Freedom an liberty is their favourite call so why not provide it, instead of abuse it?

  3. I’d say it’s being allowed because the British Government
    cow-tows to the US just as we do. What the US thinks it
    wants, it gets. Big Daddy Trump & CO know best. Our
    political parties just party on & allow Assange to be
    thrown to the wolves. Now that’s democracy?

  4. Bring Julian HOME…….he is a hero NOT a criminal. The U.S is determined to make an example of Julian, as he dared to release military codes of conduct(or rather misconduct) this has angered the likes of Trump& to them is even more galling than the “collateral damage” tapes. The US Authoritiies will simply claim that the soldiers responsible thought those civilians (murdered) were armed…end of story. BUT the unveiling of US codes of practice in a war zone/ torture procedures etc has really pissed them off. Also the claim that Julian released un-redacted confidential info, is a lie Guardian journos & German journos already did this.Julian sought assistance from the White House to do this so people named would be protected BUT they weren’t interested. They knew that when Mr Assange was caught that they could then use this ( un -redacted names) as apart of his prosecution .How cynical & disgusting. Trump just this month has pardoned violent murders in prison BUT not Julian. Democracy is dead , support WIKILEAKS.

    • Julian is certainly a hero and an example to all decent thinking people. I have personally nominated him for Australian of the year three times and I suggest we all should. In the meantime perhaps we could offer John Howard in a swap, as we all know, he was the Australian responsible for our part in these war crimes. Answers are needed to explain why the USA are hell bent on international lies and manipulation, in order to punish those who expose the real criminals in this American sanctioned mass murder.
      Cheers, G”)

  5. Ms Morris took the petition, signed by 80,000 people, But she was turned away

    United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, long ago decried Mr Assange’s continued detention as meeting international legal definitions of torture.

    Judge Baraitser said if the lawyers weren’t ready, they had no one to blame but themselves.

    The prosecutors argued that since witnesses had all supplied written statements, it was time-consuming and unnecessary to have them speak,

    Later Mr Shipton told….. his son hadn’t seen his lawyers for six months prior to last week’s hearings.

    Judge Baraitser allowed witnesses to speak for a maximum of thirty minutes.

    British Justice once meant something. Now, it means whatever Donald Trump requires.

  6. It’s not ‘time consuming’ when 80,000 signatures are known
    to be there. I know about them so does ‘the Law’ – or it it
    “The Slaw!”

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