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Misconduct In Public Office In The Assange Case

Above photo: 1/5/2016 Judge Deborah Taylor Sentences Julian Assange in 50 weeks imprisonment at HMP Belmarsh for skipping Bail.

Crime Reports Filed by Rod Driver for Paul Close, Emma Arbuthnot, Deborah Taylor, and Michael Snow.

Misconduct in Public Office Crime Reports

I have recently written police crime reports for Misconduct in Public Office by the following 4 people in relation to their treatment of Julian Assange.

Paul Close – The CPS lawyer who secretly conspired with the Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, to leave Julian’s case in limbo for many years. Close wrote to Ny recommending that she should not interview Julian in the UK. He later wrote telling her not to drop the case, saying “don’t dare get cold feet”. All prosecutors have a duty to progress a case.

Emma Arbuthnot – The senior magistrate overseeing Julian’s case. She presided over the hearing on 7 Feb 2018 and ruled on 13 Feb 2018. She has serious conflicts of interest, which have been documented in detail by DeclassifiedUK (1) . She, her husband, and her son, are firmly entrenched within the UK National Security establishment. She stopped hearing Julian’s hearings herself to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, but has remained as the supervising magistrate, overseeing the current magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser. Arbuthnot has also demonstrated many of the extreme biases against Julian that are discussed below.

Deborah Taylor – Magistrate in charge of Julian’s hearing at Southwark Crown Court on 1 May 2019.

Michael Snow – Magistrate in charge of Julian’s hearing at Westminster Magistrate’s Court on 11 April 2019.

Both Snow and Taylor showed extreme bias against Julian. Their hearings were about Julian seeking asylum at the Ecuadorean Embassy in 2012, which meant that he had not complied with his bail conditions relating to earlier hearings. Under UK law, you do not have to comply with your bail conditions if you have a good reason. When Julian asked for asylum, it was based on the risk that he could be extradited to the US. The Ecuadorean authorities accepted this as a reason for granting him asylum. This is self-evidently a reasonable excuse for not complying with bail conditions.

At both hearings involving Snow and Taylor, and an earlier hearing with Arbuthnot, all the magistrates chose to pretend that there was no risk of extradition to the US, and therefore no justification for failing to comply with bail conditions. Snow actually stated “he hasn’t come close to establishing reasonable excuse.” However, by the time of the Snow and Taylor hearings, the US extradition request was public knowledge. Snow and Taylor deliberately ignored the real risk of harm that compliance with Julian’s bail conditions would have exposed him to.

Snow and Taylor also ignored:

The communications between the Swedish and British prosecutor mentioned above.
The conflicts of interest of Arbuthnot, mentioned above. Snow aggressively refused to consider this.

The evidence that Sweden has illegally rendited people to the CIA for torture.
The evidence for Julian’s poor health

Taylor stated that Assange had been charged with an offence in Sweden (2) . This was incorrect. Julian was never charged with any offence in Sweden. Julian had to correct her. Even after this correction, Taylor’s misunderstanding of the most fundamental aspects of the case made no difference to her analysis or sentencing.

Numerous legal experts from all over the world have complained about the way that Julian is being treated. In one open letter they wrote:

“Snow has further exhibited bias and unprofessionalism by participating in the defamation of Mr. Assange’s character, labeling the multi-award-winning public interest publisher and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee a “narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests” in response, ironically, to Mr. Assange’s legal team raising what were patently legitimate concerns regarding bias in the proceedings.” (3)

Taylor’s conduct showed such serious bias that she was criticised by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention UNWGAD, which condemned Taylor’s sentence. (4)

Taylor was also criticised by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer. In his report to the British government about Assange’s treatment, Melzer (5) stated:

“no objective observer can escape the conclusion that Mr. Assange’s due process rights have been seriously, consistently and deliberately violated in every phase of each judicial proceeding conducted against him in all involved jurisdictions.”

The Misconduct of the three magistrates and the CPS lawyer are consistent with the strategy recommendation of the consulting firm, Stratfor, to keep Julian Assange in legal limbo, by moving him from country to country facing various charges for 25 years (6).

Their misconduct is clearly of a degree that it amounts to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder, and is creating harm to public confidence in the administration of justice. Their decisions and actions have clearly been intentional. For these reasons it is important that they are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

References:

(1). https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-11-14-julian-assanges-judge-and-her-husbands-links-to-the-british-military-establishment-exposed-by-wikileaks/

(2). https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-11-15-conflicts-of-interest-judge-in-julian-assange-case-fails-to-declare-sons-links-to-uk-and-us-intelligence/

(3). https://wiseupaction.info/2019/10/10/the-sentencing-remarks-by-district-judge-taylor-illustrate-bias-against-julian-assange/

(4). https://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/open-letter.html

(5). https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24552

(6). https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=24926

(7). https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/10/1056763_re-discussion-assange-arrested-.html

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