Extradition

This afternoon Julian’s Spanish lawyer, Baltasar Garzon, left court to return to Madrid. On the way out he naturally stopped to shake hands with his client, proffering his fingers through the narrow slit in the bulletproof glass cage. Assange half stood to take his lawyer’s hand. The two security guards in the cage with Assange immediately sprang up, putting hands on Julian and forcing him to sit down, preventing the handshake. That was not by any means the worst thing today, but it is a striking image of the senseless brute force continually used against a man accused of publishing documents. That a man cannot even shake his lawyer’s hand goodbye is against the entire spirit in which the members of the legal system like to pretend the law is practised.

London - Woolwich Crown Court is designed to impose the power of the state. Normal courts in this country are public buildings, deliberately placed by our ancestors right in the centre of towns, almost always just up a few steps from a main street. The major purpose of their positioning and of their architecture was to facilitate public access in the belief that it is vital that justice can be seen by the public. Woolwich Crown Court, which hosts Belmarsh Magistrates Court, is built on totally the opposite principle. It is designed with no other purpose than to exclude the public. Attached to a prison on a windswept marsh far from any normal social centre, an island accessible only through navigating a maze of dual carriageways, the entire location and architecture of the building is predicated on preventing public access.

The second day of the extradition hearing of Julian Assange opened today with a discussion about how he is being treated in prison. The court heard that yesterday alone, he was handcuffed 11 times, strip-searched twice and paperwork was removed from him by security staff. Edward Fitzgerald QC, for the defence, was supported by James Lewis QC for the Prosecution in asking the judge to “send a message,” to the prison authorities that this was unacceptable. Mark Summers QC, another member of the defence team, then rose to argue that the prosecution case that Assange had solicited material from former US soldier Chelsea Manning and had then recklessly put lives at risk by releasing it was “Lies, lies and more lies.”

In this extraordinary fifth installment of “Live on the Fly – Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom,” Randy Credico speaks with Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and professor at Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights; Lauri Love, who successfully avoided extradition to the U.S.; and John Kiriakou, former CIA analyst and case officer who blew the whistle on the official CIA torture program. Nils, among other revelations, cuts through the disinformation and lays out the truth regarding torture, unjust imprisonment and Julian’s case, including the smear campaign wrapped in trumped-up rape allegations out of Sweden. Lauri speaks on how he successfully avoided extradition to the U.S. And John—while noting that the United Nations has declared solitary confinement as it is practiced in the U.S. to be a form of torture—describes his own incarceration in the U.S. and how British courts have refused to extradite people to the U.S. because of the nature of its prison system.