Wikileaks

Please try this experiment for me. Try asking this question out loud, in a tone of intellectual interest and engagement: “Are you suggesting that the two have the same effect?”. Now try asking this question out loud, in a tone of hostility and incredulity bordering on sarcasm: “Are you suggesting that the two have the same effect?”. Firstly, congratulations on your acting skills; you take direction very well. Secondly, is it not fascinating how precisely the same words can convey the opposite meaning dependent on modulation of stress, pitch, and volume? Yesterday the prosecution continued its argument that the provision in the 2007 UK/US Extradition Treaty that bars extradition for political offences is a dead letter, and that Julian Assange’s objectives are not political in any event. James Lewis QC for the prosecution spoke for about an hour, and Edward Fitzgerald QC replied for the defence for about the same time.

Wikileaks editor Kristin Hrafnsson was temporarily barred from the extradition hearing for publisher Julian Assange, who was reportedly handcuffed 11 times, stripped twice, and robbed of his legal papers after the first court day. Hrafnsson was pulled out of the crowd as he attempted to enter the public gallery of Woolwich Crown Court on Tuesday morning, he told RT, after someone shouted “Where is the WikiLeaks editor?” Explaining that he was given “no grounds” for the order and was unable to locate the head of the court to get an answer, he recorded and released a statement denouncing his exclusion from the supposedly-public proceedings as “outrageous” and calling on the public to “demand some answers — because I’m not getting any.”

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.”