{"id":191910,"date":"2021-08-16T12:01:21","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T11:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=191910"},"modified":"2021-08-16T06:39:38","modified_gmt":"2021-08-16T05:39:38","slug":"john-pilger-a-day-in-the-death-of-british-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/08\/john-pilger-a-day-in-the-death-of-british-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"John Pilger: A Day in the Death of British Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

12 Aug 2021 – The veteran journalist has covered Julian Assange\u2019s case from the beginning, and he was in the High Court in London this week to witness the latest shameful episode. Here is his dispatch.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The High Court at the Royal Courts of Justice. London, UK
(David Castor\/Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

The reputation of British justice now rests on the shoulders of the High Court in the life or death case of Julian Assange.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I sat in Court 4 in the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday with Stella Moris, Julian Assange\u2019s partner. I have known Stella for as long as I have known Julian. She, too, is a voice of freedom, coming from a family that fought the fascism of Apartheid. Today, her name was uttered in court by a barrister and a judge, forgettable people were it not for the power of their endowed privilege.<\/p>\n

The barrister, Clair Dobbin, is in the pay of the regime in Washington, first Trump\u2019s then Biden\u2019s. She is America\u2019s hired gun, or \u201csilk<\/em>\u201d, as she would prefer. Her target is Julian Assange, who has committed no crime and has performed an historic public service by exposing the criminal actions and secrets on which governments, especially those claiming to be democracies, base their authority.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For those who may have forgotten, WikiLeaks, of which Assange is founder and publisher, exposed the secrets and lies that led to the invasion of Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the murderous role of the Pentagon in dozens of countries, the blueprint for the 20-year catastrophe in Afghanistan, the attempts by Washington to overthrow elected governments, such as Venezuela\u2019s, the collusion between nominal political opponents (Bush and Obama) to stifle a torture investigation and the CIA\u2019s Vault 7 campaign that turned your mobile phone, even your TV set, into a spy in your midst.<\/p>\n

WikiLeaks released almost a million documents from Russia which allowed Russian citizens to stand up for their rights. It revealed the Australian government had colluded with the US against its own citizen, Assange. It named those Australian politicians who have \u201cinformed<\/em>\u201d for the US. It made the connection between the Clinton Foundation and the rise of jihadism in American-armed states in the Gulf.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

(L) John Pilger. \u00a9 RT \/ Darmouth films;
(R) Julian Assange.\u00a9 RT \/ Darmouth films<\/p><\/div>\n

About Those Who Take Us to War<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is more: WikiLeaks disclosed the US campaign to suppress wages in sweatshop countries like Haiti, India\u2019s campaign of torture in Kashmir, the British government\u2019s secret agreement to shield \u201cUS interests<\/em>\u201d in its official Iraq inquiry and the British Foreign Office\u2019s plan to create a fake \u201cmarine protection zone<\/em>\u201d in the Indian Ocean to cheat the Chagos islanders out of their right of return.<\/p>\n

In other words, WikiLeaks has given us real news about those who govern us and take us to war, not the preordained, repetitive spin that fills newspapers and television screens. This is real journalism; and for the crime of real journalism, Assange has spent most of the past decade in one form of incarceration or another, including Belmarsh prison, a horrific place.<\/p>\n

Diagnosed with Asperger\u2019s syndrome, he is a gentle, intellectual visionary driven by his belief that a democracy is not a democracy unless it is transparent, and accountable.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the United States sought the approval of Britain\u2019s High Court to extend the terms of its appeal against a decision by a district judge, Vanessa Baraitser, in January to bar Assange\u2019s extradition.\u00a0 Baraitser accepted the deeply disturbing evidence of a number of experts that Assange would be at great risk if he were incarcerated in the US\u2019s infamous prison system.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=k9xbokQO4M0<\/p>\n

Professor Michael Kopelman, a world authority on neuro-psychiatry, had said Assange would find a way to take his own life \u2013 the direct result of what Professor Nils Melzer, the United Nations rapporteur on torture, described as the craven \u201cmobbing<\/em>\u201d of Assange by governments \u2013 and their media echoes.<\/p>\n

Those of us who were in the Old Bailey last September to hear Kopelman\u2019s evidence were shocked and moved. I sat with Julian\u2019s father, John Shipton, whose head was in his hands. The court was also told about the discovery of a razor blade in Julian\u2019s Belmarsh cell and that he had made desperate calls to the Samaritans and written notes and much else that filled us with more than sadness.<\/p>\n

Watching the lead barrister acting for Washington, James Lewis \u2013 a man from a military background who deploys a cringingly theatrical \u201caha!<\/em>\u201d formula with defence witnesses \u2013 reduce these facts to \u201cmalingering<\/em>\u201d and smearing witnesses, especially Kopelman, we were heartened by Kopelman\u2019s revealing response that Lewis\u2019s abuse was \u201ca bit rich<\/em>\u201d as Lewis himself had sought to hire Kopelman\u2019s\u00a0 expertise in another case.<\/p>\n

No Contradiction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lewis\u2019s sidekick is Clair Dobbin, and yesterday was her day. Completing the smearing of Professor Kopelman was down to her. An American with some authority sat behind her in court.<\/p>\n

Dobbin said Kopelman had \u201cmisled<\/em>\u201d Judge Baraister in September because he had not disclosed that Julian Assange and Stella Moris were partners, and their two young children, Gabriel and Max, were conceived during the period Assange had taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.<\/p>\n

The implication was that this somehow lessened Kopelman\u2019s medical diagnosis: that Julian, locked up in solitary in Belmarsh prison and facing extradition to the US on bogus \u201cespionage<\/em>\u201d charges, had suffered severe psychotic depression and had planned, if he had not already attempted, to take his own life.<\/p>\n

For her part, Judge Baraitser saw no contradiction. The full nature of the relationship between Stella and Julian had been explained to her in March 2020, and Professor Kopelman had made full reference to it in his report in August 2020. So the judge and the court knew all about it before the main extradition hearing last September. In her judgement in January, Baraitser said this:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Professor Kopelman] assessed Mr. Assange during the period May to December 2019 and was best placed to consider at first-hand his symptoms. He has taken great care to provide an informed account of Mr. Assange’s background and psychiatric history. He has given close attention to the prison medical notes and provided a detailed summary annexed to his December report. He is an experienced clinician and he was well aware of the possibility of exaggeration and malingering. I had no reason to doubt his clinical opinion<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She added that she had \u201cnot been misled<\/em>\u201d by the exclusion in Kopelman\u2019s first report of the Stella-Julian relationship and that she understood that Kopelman was protecting the privacy of Stella and her two young children.<\/p>\n

In fact, as I know well, the family\u2019s safety was under constant threat to the point when an embassy security guard confessed he had been told to steal one of the baby\u2019s nappies so that a CIA-contracted company could analyse its DNA. There has been a stream of unpublicised threats against Stella and her children.<\/p>\n

Based on a Fraudster<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For the US and its legal hirelings in London, damaging the credibility of a renowned expert by suggesting he withheld this information was a way, they no doubt reckoned, to rescue their crumbling case against Assange. In June, the Icelandic newspaper Stundin reported that a key prosecution witness against Assange has admitted fabricating his evidence. The one \u201chacking<\/em>\u201d charge the Americans hoped to bring against Assange if they could get their hands on him depended on this source and witness, Sigurdur Thordarson, an FBI informant.<\/p>\n

Thordarson had worked as a volunteer for WikiLeaks in Iceland between 2010 and 2011. In 2011, as several criminal charges were brought against him, he contacted the FBI and offered to become an informant in return for immunity from all prosecution. It emerged that he was a convicted fraudster who embezzled $55,000 from WikiLeaks, and served two years in prison. In 2015, he was sentenced to three years for sex offenses against teenage boys. The Washington Post described Thordarson\u2019s credibility as the \u201ccore<\/em>\u201d of the case against Assange.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Lord Chief Justice Timothy Holroyde made no mention of this witness. His concern was that it was \u201carguable<\/em>\u201d that Judge Baraitser had attached too much weight to the evidence of Professor Kopelman, a man revered in his field. He said it was \u201cvery unusual<\/em>\u201d for an appeal court to have to reconsider evidence from an expert accepted by a lower court, but he agreed with Ms. Dobbin it was “misleading<\/em>” even though he accepted Kopelman\u2019s \u201cunderstandable human response<\/em>\u201d to protect the privacy of Stella and the children.<\/p>\n

If you can unravel the arcane logic of this, you have a better grasp than I who have sat through this case from the beginning. It is clear Kopelman misled nobody. Judge Baraitser \u2013 whose hostility to Assange personally was a presence in her court \u2013 said that she was not misled; it was not an issue; it did not matter. So why had Lord Chief Chief Justice Holroyde spun the language with its weasel legalise and sent Julian back to his cell and its nightmares? There, he now waits for the High Court\u2019s final decision in October \u2013 for him, a life or death decision.<\/p>\n

In the Land of Magna Carta<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

And why did Holroyde send Stella from the court trembling with anguish? Why is this case \u201cunusual\u201d? Why did he throw the gang of prosecutor-thugs at the Department of Justice in Washington \u2013 who got their big chance under Trump, having been rejected by Obama \u2013 a life raft as their rotting, corrupt case against a principled journalist sunk as surely as Titanic?<\/p>\n

This does not necessarily mean that in October the full bench of the High Court will order Julian to be extradited. In the upper reaches of the masonry that is the British judiciary there are, I understand, still those who believe in real law and real justice from which the term \u201cBritish justice\u201d takes its sanctified reputation in the land of the Magna Carta. It now rests on their ermined shoulders whether that history lives on or dies.<\/p>\n

I sat with Stella in the court\u2019s colonnade while she drafted words to say to the crowd of media and well-wishers outside in the sunshine. Clip-clopping along came Clair Dobbin, spruced, ponytail swinging, bearing her carton of files: a figure of certainty: she who said Julian Assange was \u201cnot so ill\u201d that he would consider suicide. How does she know?<\/p>\n

Has Ms. Dobbin worked her way through the medieval maze at Belmarsh to sit with Julian in his yellow arm band, as Professors Koppelman and Melzer have done, and Stella has done, and I have done? Never mind. The Americans have now \u201cpromised\u201d not to put him in a hellhole, just as they \u201cpromised\u201d not to torture Chelsea Manning, just as they promised\u2026<\/p>\n

And has she read the WikiLeaks\u2019 leak of a Pentagon document dated 15 March, 2009? This foretold the current war on journalism. US intelligence, it said, intended to destroy WikiLeaks\u2019 and Julian Assange\u2019s \u201ccentre of gravity\u201d with threats and \u201ccriminal prosecution\u201d. Read all 32 pages and you are left in no doubt that silencing and criminalising independent journalism was the aim, smear the method.<\/p>\n

I tried to catch Ms. Dobbin\u2019s gaze, but she was on her way: job done.<\/p>\n

Outside, Stella struggled to contain her emotion. This is one brave woman, as indeed her man is an exemplar of courage. \u201cWhat has not been discussed today,\u201d said Stella, \u201cis why I feared for my safety and the safety of our children and for Julian’s life. The constant threats and intimidation we endured for years, which has been terrorising us and has been terrorising Julian for 10 years. We have a right to live, we have a right to exist and we have a right for this nightmare to come to an end once and for all.\u201d<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>John Pilger has won an Emmy and a BAFTA for his documentaries, which have also won numerous US and European awards. His articles appear worldwide in newspapers such as <\/em>The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Mail & Guardian (South Africa<\/em>), Aftonbladet (Sweden<\/em>), Il Manifesto (Italy). He writes a regular column for the <\/em>New Statesman, London. In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Sophie Prize for \u201930 years of exposing injustice and promoting human rights.\u2019 In 2009 he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. His earlier film is <\/em>The War You Don\u2019t See<\/a> (2010). His new film,<\/em> The Coming War on China, is available in the U.S. from www.bullfrogfilms.com<\/a>. He can be reached through his website www.johnpilger.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 Aug 2021 – The veteran journalist has covered Julian Assange\u2019s case from the beginning and was in London this week to witness the latest shameful episode. “The reputation of British justice now rests on the shoulders of the High Court in the life or death case of Julian Assange.” Here is his dispatch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":191911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[229,918,910,942,487,378,651,234,911,454,572,639,292,70,126,921,113],"class_list":["post-191910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","tag-activism","tag-assange","tag-big-brother","tag-ecuador","tag-human-rights","tag-journalism","tag-justice","tag-media","tag-surveillance","tag-sweden","tag-torture","tag-uk","tag-un","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-whistleblowing","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}