[ad_1]
September 18. Central Criminal Court, London.
Julian Assange’s extradition trial at the Old Bailey accelerated today. The testimonies encompassed the importance of classified information in war journalism, the mocking offer of a pardon for Assange by US President Donald Trump, the torture inflicted by the US Central Intelligence Agency, the chilling effect. of the charges under the Extradition Act and the legacy of the collateral murder. video.
Hager, war and journalism
Investigative journalist Nicky Hager dusted off and fixed Assange’s image through testimony given in a video link: not the “difficult and horrible” individual talked about in the mainstream media, he claimed, but a “dedicated figure. “to” try to make the world. ” a better place in an era where freedom of information is declining in most parts of the world. “Hager found Assange” thoughtful, funny and energetic. ”
In her written testimony, Hager talks about the role of journalism, the kind that matters, in any case, and war. “In general, it is impossible to research and write about war to a useful standard without access to sources that the concerned authorities consider sensitive and off-limits, and even more so on the subject of war crimes.” Classified information, especially in warfare, “is essential to enable journalism to carry out its role of informing the public, enabling democratic decision-making, and deterring wrongdoing.”
Hager managed to leverage a contemporary parallel about the importance of publishing Collateral Murder, describing the criminal killings of civilians and journalists in New Baghdad. The exposure of the incident and the language used by the helicopter crew (“Look at those dead bastards”) contributed to “world opinion on the misuse of state power” in the same way that the video of George Floyd’s murder did. at the hands of the Minneapolis police. to the current debate.
The prosecution was not in the mood for this more nuanced Assange, sensitive to caution and discretion. For them, he remains a cold figure and calculator of dangerous idiosyncrasies, who put people’s lives in danger by publishing unwritten documents. Hager had understood that WikiLeaks only released the documents once the cables had already reached platforms like Cryptome, courtesy of posting the password in an unencrypted file in a book by guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. “WikiLeaks went to great lengths to keep it a secret, and it was released everywhere first.”
James Lewis QC for the prosecution suggested a correction: that 154,000 US cables marked “simply protect” had already been posted a week earlier. Hager responded that this account was in dispute. In any event, the nine months between the initial release and the public availability of the unredacted material gave US authorities sufficient time to protect the sources and “warn whistleblowers who may have been named.” The precautionary measures “taken by Julian Assange at the beginning help to explain why there was no total damage to those unwritten documents that found their way out.”
Robinson, Trump offers and pardon
The second installment of the day’s proceedings brought the Trump administration to the fore, particularly because of the inescapable implication that this entire program is unmistakable and insolubly political. The defense returned to a statement from Jennifer Robinson, Assange’s ever-committed legal counsel, which had already been issued in the extradition proceedings held on February 24, 2020. It covered an alleged meeting between former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and Trump’s partner Charles Johnson with Assange and Robinson in August 2017 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The theme: a possible pardon for Assange, with a different and thorny trap.
As Robinson’s statement, discussed by Edward Fitzgerald QC in Woolwich Crown Court in February recalled, “the proposal put forward by Congressman Rohrabacher was that Assange identify the source of the 2016 election publications in exchange for some sort of clemency. , guarantee or agreement that would politically benefit President Trump and avoid prosecution and extradition by the United States. ”
In Robinson’s testimony, Rohrabacher made his visit to the embassy with the executive blessing of Trump. Upon his return to Washington, he would be granted a presidential audience. The congressman wanted to “resolve ongoing speculation about Russian involvement” in the publication of the Democratic National Committee disclosures by WikiLeaks in 2016. Such speculation was proving “detrimental to US-Russian relations, which was reviving the old policy. of the Cold War, and it would be in America’s best interest if the matter could be resolved. ” One way to do this would be for Assange to provide relevant information about the source behind the DNC leaks, something of “interest, value and assistance to the president.”
Assange was not forthcoming, preferring to pressure Rohrabacher to pressure Trump on the First Amendment implications of any indictment against the publisher. With the duo leaving empty-handed, the defense’s suggestion is credible: Prospects for an impeachment, deemed unlikely during the Obama administration, had hardened. Prosecutor Lewis gently dismissed the entire episode. “Obviously, we do not accept the truth of what others have said.”
El-Masri and torture
Prosecutors had already made efforts to thwart the insertion of Khaled el-Masri’s account into the proceedings, a revealing point given his experiences of torture at the hands of the CIA in 2004. There were disputes over whether he was heard live by video or to have your statement read in court. “We see no use in having Mr. el-Masri in court,” the prosecution said. This caused an intervention de Assange: “I will not accept that you censor the statement of a torture victim before this court.”
The prosecution yielded to the reading of a summary, on the understanding that it did not stipulate that el-Masri had been tortured by the United States government. This was rich and unpleasant stuff. El-Masri, a German national, had been kidnapped on the Macedonian border, detained and held incommunicado for 23 days in 2004. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed the CIA’s work in torturing him- Masri and hold Macedonia accountable. for being an accomplice and not investigating the case. There was no warrant for his arrest; their transfer to the US authorities amounted to “an extrajudicial transfer of persons from one jurisdiction or state to another, for the purpose of detention and interrogation outside the normal legal system, where there was a real risk of torture of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” At Skopje airport, el-Masri “was brutally beaten by several disguised men dressed in black”, subsequently “stripped and sodomized with an object”.
As el-Masri put it, “I place on record here my belief that without a dedicated and courageous exposition of the state secrets in question, what happened to me would never have been recognized and understood.” His “exposition of what happened was necessary not only for me, but also for law and justice around the world. My story here is not yet finished. ”
His statement also points to the broader international dimension of collusion, a point reiterated in court by defense attorney Mark Summers QC. Only with the publication of the cables by WikiLeaks, el-Masri notes, “it became clear what pressures had been produced beyond Macedonia’s collusion with the United States.” This included the ineffective issuance of warrants for thirteen CIA agents issued by a German state prosecutor. In February 2007, the German deputy director of security, Rolf Nikel, was warned by the deputy chief of mission in Germany that “the issuance of international arrest warrants would have a negative impact on our bilateral relationship. It reminded Nikel of the repercussions on bilateral relations between the United States and Italy following a similar move by the Italian authorities last year. ”
El-Masri’s treatment, and the significance of the WikiLeaks disclosures in exposing him, have already been noted in the testimony and statement of John Goetz, who worked for Mirror between 2010 and 2011. The published cables provided “an explanation of why there were so many difficulties during the investigation.” It was “only by reading the diplomatic cables that we saw the role the United States government was playing behind the scenes.” Impediments to a fair and equitable resolution of the case continued, including threats from the Secretary of State of the United States, Mike Pompeo, to sanction those who bring cases before the International Criminal Court. El-Masri remains in danger.
Carey Shenkman and the espionage law
Carey Shenkman, a specialist in the First Amendment and historian of the Espionage Act of 1917, duly summarized his testimony regarding the implications of his revealing and disturbing overview of the application of the Act. The prosecution, this time led by Clair Dobbin, followed based on rulings in the law that suggested that journalists were allowed to be prosecuted. Challenges had been raised about their scope and they had failed. The jurisprudence on the statute has been refined over the years.
Shenkman reminded the prosecution that such cases were marked by punishment from government sources and insiders, not representatives of the media. Suggesting that the jurisprudence on the law had been “refined” was also a point of objection, given that “national defense information” had been expanded to include anything the government considers sensitive. He also disagreed with Dobbin’s view that prosecutors who showed themselves considered “restraint” in using the Act. The mere fact that an indictment under its provisions had been brought against a journalist, regardless of his prospects for success, instilled a “significant chilling effect”, potentially applicable to anyone who reads or retweets defense information.
Yachts, trauma and collateral murder
The final part of the proceedings for the day was handed over to the statement of the former head of the Reuters office in Baghdad, Dean Yates. His subject of torment: the murder of two of his colleagues, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, among other civilians, by the crew of the Apache helicopter depicted in the Collateral Murder video. Their deaths prompted Yates to identify the chain of events. He filed a request for the Freedom of Information Act; was rejected. The US military showed him selected portions of the video, an act of intentional omission. From the depths of the deep confusion, he blamed Namir “thinking that the helicopter fired because he had made himself look suspicious and it simply erased from my memory the fact that the order to open fire had already been given.” Assange had smelled that the rules of engagement had not been followed.
Trauma continued. Feelings of failure by not adequately protecting your staff. Crushing shame. Yates commented on the powerful effect of Collateral Murder, the embarrassment it caused the US military, “fully aware that experts believe that shooting the truck was a possible war crime.” Without the role played by Chelsea Manning and Assange, “Namir and Saeed would have been forgotten statistics in a war that killed countless human beings, possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians.” The act of revealing the gruesome encounter on July 12, 2007 was “100% an act of telling the truth, exposing to the world what the war in Iraq really was and how the US military behaved and lied.”
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. E-mail: [email protected]
[ad_2]
