London WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange complained of hearing imaginary voices and music while detained in a high-security British prison, a psychiatrist who has interviewed him told his extradition hearing on Tuesday. Michael Kopelman, a psychiatrist who has interviewed Assange around 20 times, said the former hacker would be a "very high" suicide risk if he were extradited to the United States for leaking military secrets.

He cited as evidence Assange's "severe depression" and "psychotic symptoms," which included auditory hallucinations while in solitary confinement in his cell at the high-security Belmarsh Prison in southwest London.

Kopelman told the Old Bailey court in central London that Assange said he hallucinated music and voices saying "you are dust, you are dead, we are coming to get you".

Assange's suicidal impulses "arise out of clinical factors... but it is the imminence of extradition that will trigger the attempt," he added, warning "he will deteriorate substantially" if extradited.

Assange's partner Stella Moris has previously said she feared he would take his own life, leaving their two young sons without a father.

James Lewis, representing the U.S. government, quizzed Kopelman over the veracity of some of Assange's claims, suggesting he may have made them up.

Assange faces 18 charges under the U.S. Espionage Act relating to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Washington claims he helped intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to steal the documents before exposing confidential sources around the world.

If convicted, Assange who has been held at Belmarsh for the last 16 months could be jailed for up to 175 years.

U.S. authorities recently laid out new evidence, alleging that Assange and others at the whistleblowing site recruited hackers.

The extradition hearing is the latest in a series of legal battles faced by Assange since the leaks a decade ago.

In 2010, he faced allegations of sexual assault and rape in Sweden, which he denied.

He was in Britain at the time but dodged an attempt to extradite him to Sweden by claiming political asylum in Ecuador's embassy in London.

For seven years he lived in a small apartment in the embassy, but after a change of government in Ecuador, Quito lost patience with its guest and turned him over to British police in April 2019.

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Julian Assange of WikiLeaks at "very high" risk of suicide attempt if U.S. extradition bid successful, psychiatrist tells court - CBS News

Many people ask how can Julian Assange, an Australian whos never operated in the U.S., be prosecuted under the U.S. Espionage Act. Here is the answer.

Territorial ReachThe 1961Amendment That Imperils Assange

By Joe LauriaSpecial to Consortium News

If the original 1917 Espionage Act were still in force, the U.S. government could not have charged WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange under it. The 1917 language of the Act restricted the territory where it could be applied to the United States, its possessions and international waters:

The provisions of this title shall extend to all Territories, possessions, and places subject to the jurisdiction of the United States whether or not continguous thereto, and offenses under this title when committed upon the high seas or elsewhere within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States

Scarbeck led by FBI agents.

WikiLeaks publishing operations have never occurred in any of these places. But in 1961 Congressman Richard Poff, after several tries, was able to get the Senate t0 repeal Section 791 that restricted the Act to within the jurisdiction of the United States, on the high seas, and within the United States.

Poff was motivated by the case of Irvin Chambers Scarbeck, a State Department official who was convicted under a different statute, the controversial 1950 Subversive Activities Control Act, or McCarran Act, of passing classified information to the Polish government during the Cold War.

(Congress overrode a veto by President Harry Truman of the McCarran Act. He called the Act the greatest danger to freedom of speech, press, and assembly since theAlien and Sedition Laws of 1798, a mockery of the Bill of Rights and a long step toward totalitarianism. Most of its provisions have been repealed.)

Newspaper account of Scarbeck affair.

Polish security agents had burst into a bedroom in 1959 to photograph Scarbeck in bed with a woman who was not his wife. Showing him the photos, the Polish agents blackmailed Scarbeck: turn over classified documents from the U.S. embassy or the photos would be published and his life ruined. Adultery was seen differently in that era.

Scarbeck then removed the documents from the embassy, which is U.S. territory covered by Espionage Act, and turned them over to the agents on Polish territory, which at the time was not.

Scarbeck was found out, fired, and convicted, but he could not be prosecuted under the Espionage Act because of its then territorial limitations. That set Congressman Poff off on a one-man campaign to extend the reach of the Espionage Act to the entire globe. After three votes the amendment was passed.

The Espionage Act thus became global, ensnaring anyone anywhere in the world into the web of U.S. jurisdiction. After the precedent being set by the Assange prosecution, it means that any journalist, anywhere in the world, who publishes national defense information is not safe from an Espionage Act prosecution.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London and began his professional career as a stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe .

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Why Julian Assange, a Non-US Citizen, Operating Outside the US, Is Being Prosecuted Under the Espionage Act - Consortium News

DiEM25 continues to show that democracy is one of its core beliefs by not only covering Julian Assanges extradition trial and pointing out the cases implications for our democracies, but also taking a stand in the streets against this latest attack on the free press by the Trump administration.

As former Brazil President Lula notes, Assanges only crime was exposing war crimes committed by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan:

No one who believes in democracy can allow someone who provided such an important contribution to the cause of liberty to be punished for doing so. Assange, I repeat, is a champion of democracy and should be released immediately.

John Shipton, Assanges father, spoke about the terrible conditions his son has had to endure during his detention in a recent interview published by the Progressive International; a joint initiative between DiEM25 and the Sanders Institute to form a coalition progressive forces around the world.

The protest took part in front of the citys famous Beethoven monument at noon where multiple people approached our members to find about this attack on the freedom of the press, what has been the response from our governments, and what they could do to help fight this injustice.

One passerby who expressed her support for the release of Julian Assange said she contacted local groups about the extradition trial but was disappointed when she found out they were not taking any actions. After a short discussion with our members, she decided to join us in solidarity (shown in the picture wearing a hat).

One of the organizers of the event, Yunus Arikan, said the following:

Brave whistleblowers and investigative journalists are essential building blocks of our democratic societies. Julian Assange in the world and Myesser Yldz along with OdaTV in Turkey are the best of their classes. And yet, they are both threatened to death, which should be slammed and resisted by all progressives. As the members of the transnational movement DiEM25, I am proud to stand with my comrades in Bonn to call for freedom of Julian Assange, Myesser Yldz and under their name, of all brave whistleblowers and investigative journalists around the world.

Although Julian Assanges trial is a high-profile one with some coverage in the mainstream media, other journalists suffering the same faith barely get any attention. Such is the case of Myesser Yldz, a Turkish journalist, who is currently imprisoned for her investigative work.

If you, like us, believe journalists should be protected to do their jobs without state censorship we invite you to stand in solidarity with us by talking about these injustices with your family and friends and by signing this petition. Thank you.

#FreeAssange

In solidarity,

DSC Bonn

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Protests against the extradition of Julian Assange in Bonn, Germany - DiEM25

There is an old joke, from the time of the World War I, about the exchange of telegrams between the German army headquarter and the Austrian-Hungarian one: from Berlin to Vienna, the message is The situation on our part of the front is serious, but not catastrophic, and the reply from Vienna is: With us, the situation is catastrophic, but not serious.

The reply from Vienna seems to offer a model for how we tend to react to crises today, from Covid-19 pandemic to forest fires (not only) in the West of the US: yeah, we know a catastrophe is pending, media warn us all the time, but somehow we are not ready to take the situation quite seriously

Its a legal and moral catastrophe just recall how he is treated in prison, unable to see his children and their mother, unable to communicate regularly with his lawyers, a victim of psychological torture so that his survival itself is under threat. They are for certain killing him softly, as the song goes. But very few seem to take his situation seriously, with an awareness that our own fate is at stake in his case.

The forces which violate his rights are the forces which prevent the effective battle against global warming and the pandemic. They are the forces because of which the pandemic makes the rich even richer and hits the hardest the poor. They are the forces which ruthlessly exploit the pandemic to assert their control over our social and digital space, regulating and censoring it at our expense the forces which protect us, but also from our own freedom.

Assange fought for the public transparency of the digital space, and there is a cruel irony in the fact that the pandemic is used as a pretext to isolate him from his family and his defense. We are always ready to protest the limitation of basic human freedoms imposed on Hong Kong by China should we not turn the gaze back on ourselves? Today one should remember Max Horkheimers old saying from late 1930s: Those who dont want to talk critically about capitalism should also keep silent about Fascism. Our version is: those who dont want to talk about the injustice done to Assange should also keep silent about the violation of human rights in Hong Kong and Belarus.

Now that Assanges very survival is at stake, only such a movement can (perhaps) save him. Remember the lyrics (written by Joan Baez to Ennio Morricones music) of Heres to you, the title song of the movie Sacco and Vanzetti:

Heres to you, Nicola and Bart / Rest forever here in our hearts / The last and final moment is yours / That agony is your triumph.

There were mass gatherings all around the world in defense of Sacco and Vanzetti and the same is needed now in defense of Assange, although in a different form. Assange cannot die even if he dies (or disappears in a US prison cell like a living dead), that agony will be his triumph, he will die in order to live in all of us. This is the message we all must deliver to those who held him: if you kill a man, you create a myth which will continue to mobilize thousands.

The message to us of those who are after Assange is clear: everything is permitted (to us). Why only to them? What they are doing to Assange is radically changing the political weather, so perhaps we need new Weathermen.

Photo: drawing of Julian Assange by Daniel Fooks.

Photo Source: Daniel Fooks on Twitter.

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Here's to you, Julian Assange! - DiEM25

LONDON More than 160 current and former world leaders, lawmakers and diplomats have endorsed a call for the U.K. to free WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and stop his extradition to the U.S.

The signatories of the open letter, addressed to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and several government ministers, included the president of Argentina and two former presidents of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Assange, 49, is currently fighting extradition to the U.S. where he faces up to 175 years in prison on espionage charges over WikiLeaks' release of confidential diplomatic cables in 2010 and 2011. The letter was first written by the group Lawyers for Assange in August, and then received the support of the international signatories whose names were released on Monday.

It laid out several legal reasons why Assange shouldnt be extradited, including the claim that he wouldnt face a fair trial in the U.S., and that he would be exposed to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

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His extradition would gravely endanger freedom of the press, the letter said.

This demonstrates the growing opposition around the world to U.S. efforts to extradite and prosecute Assange, and the political nature of this case, Assange's lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, told NBC News.

Many of the letters signatories, which also include Venezuelan leader Nicols Maduro and former Ecuadoran leader Rafael Correa, are fierce critics of the U.S. and have previously spoken out against American foreign policy.

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Last week, Robinson told a London court that Assange was offered a presidential pardon in 2017 by then-Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and Trump associate Charles Johnson if he helped to resolve the "ongoing speculation about Russian involvement" in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails leaked during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.

At the hearing in London on Friday, James Lewis, prosecutor for the U.S. government, said: "The position of the government is we don't contest these things were said. We obviously do not accept the truth of what was said by others."

Assange has been in a British prison since his ejection from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019. He was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012 over fears he would face possible extradition to the U.S. related to his work with WikiLeaks.

Prosecutors in the U.S. say Assange conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables and military files.

His supporters say the leaked documents exposed U.S. military wrongdoing, and argue he was acting as a journalist.

Among the files published by WikiLeaks in 2010 was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

The extradition hearing, which began in February but was postponed in April because of the pandemic, is due to last until early October.

Rachel Elbaum

Rachel Elbaum is a London-based editor, producer and writer.

Michele Neubert is a London-based producer for NBC News.She has been awarded four Emmy Awards, an Edward R. Murrow Award and an Alfred I. duPont Award for her work in conflict zones, including the Balkans, Afghanistan and Kurdistan.

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Release WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, say current and former world leaders - NBC News

JulianAssangesheroic but tragic life is coming to a head in the next weeks. A British court shall soon rule whetherAssange, ostensibly a publisher and journalist, shall be extradited to the United States to bechargedwith espionage. Though many people around the world have followedAssangeshardships on and off during the last decade, it is really now, during thisshamtrial in London, that the importance of the struggle for political freedom should become clear to all.

In the widest sense, political freedom can be defined as freedom from state coercion. Granted the existence of a state, however small, political freedom is therefore never complete. And it can never be taken for granted; political freedom must always be fought for, if only to hang on to the gains of the past. Though there is more political freedom in the West today than when Bertrand Russell was locked up for opposing conscription during World War I, the state still has no qualms about trampling on individual rights when it deems that its interests are at stake.Assangehas beenspied upon,incarcerated, andtortured. The right to privacy of millions of ordinary people hasbeen violated through secret, illegal surveillance programs conducted by intelligence agencies, some of which havebeendisclosedbyAssangeand the sources he worked with.

AlthoughAssangeis not exactly a libertarian, he acts upon the libertarian idea that thestate shall have no secrets from the people. In hiswords, transparency and accountability (of the state) are moral issues.It is the moral principle that the people have a right to know everything that their state servants say, write, and do; especially when they commit acts that are illegal under the states own legal system. Of course, this point becomes more relevant as the State grows in size and scope; if it were cut down to a night watchman state, there would be far less to know.

The public acceptance of the states oversized role in society has been achieved over generations through the public education system and an obedient mainstream media. It has been enforced by the threat of violence (or actual violence if needed, as in the case ofAssange) in order to deal with serious dissenters. The state requires a compliant public opinion in order to ruleand will therefore not tolerate anyone who might weaken the peoples tacit acceptance of a state with fingers in all pies.

Since the rise of the modern state, many so-called enemies of the statehave been at the receiving end of its power, from Voltaire and Emma Goldman to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. The struggle for political freedom is difficult because of the seriousness of the challenge, as JulianAssangeis experiencing now. When this struggle starts yielding results it entails immediate dangers, because the state, like any organism, will defend itself; it cannot accept successful attempts to undermine its legitimacy, to curtail its power, to make it accountable, or to expose its secrets. It will start by trying to dissuade and, often successfully, dangle benefits to sway the less determined. If that doesnt work, the state will warn its victims, in true mafia style, and can then decide to ruin careers, imprison, and finally resort to murder if that is required to remove a serious threat.

This is what is happening to JulianAssange, as to many before him. Ironically, the unacceptable treatment ofAssangeconfirms theabhorrentnature of the state. The US government perceivesAssangeas a serious threat, because he has successfully helped expose its crimes and could continue to do so unless he is stopped. Thanks to Wikileaks, whichAssangehas led, the public now knows about the US militaryswar crimes, the CIAs mass surveillance program (Vault7), US political corruption (DNC email archive), and many other illegal acts committed by the state apparatus. Because all such crimes have to be kept secret in order to maintain the illusion of the states benevolence, the US government has decided to punishAssangefor exposing them, thus also deterring others from emulating him.

This frontal attack onAssangeby Washington, DC,confirms the particularly unaccountable and deleterious character of the US federal government. European states are far from innocent but behave better in our time because they are more internally and externally circumscribed. Despite this, or because of it, Britainand Europeis incapable or unwilling to stand up to the United States, even if it means sacrificing its most fundamental principles as it does its bidding. As JohnPilgerwrote, the land that gave us MagnaCarta, Great Britain, is distinguished by the abandonment of its own sovereignty in allowing a malign foreign power to manipulate justice.

The US, in collaboration with the UK and the mostlycomplicitmainstream media, seesAssangeas an enemy that needs to be neutralized, even if that means openly going against the fundamental principles of rule of law that this state has publicly pretended to abide by for so long. The most important of these principles,freedom of speech and of the press, is, of course, supposedly protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Yet the fact that the US and UK are now floutingAssangesbasic rights in plain daylight is a real risk to their reputation and thus also a sign of desperation.

Though the US government has not won this battle yet,Assangesfuture looks quite bleakdespite the support he is getting from many well-known institutions.But, in the long term, his very public case may likely help the cause of political freedom in the West. His fate at the hands of the state for publishing truthful information about its illegal and immoral behavior may finally make more people recognize that many of the states activities, concealed or not, are fundamentally antagonistic to their interests. Though the general population cannot be expected to defend political freedom like JulianAssangehas, his case might help wake them from their political slumber, for, as George Santayana wrote:

Unless all those concerned keep a vigilant eye on the course of public business and frequently pronounce on its conduct, they will before long awake to the fact that they have been ignored and enslaved.

The trial of JulianAssangewill have consequences that are far larger than the man himself. Whatever will beAssangesfuture, he is already one more martyr in the historic struggle for political freedom from which everyone can take inspiration.

Link:

Why They Need to Destroy Julian Assange - The Shepherd of the Hills Gazette

By Oscar Grenfell 21 September 2020

The response of the corporate media over the eleven months sinceEl Pais first revealed details of a vast spying operation against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, while he was a United Nations-recognised political refugee in Ecuadors London embassy, has been decidedly muted.

The initial El Pais article in October last year has been followed by a raft of damning information. This has established that the surveillance, conducted by the UC Global security company in charge of managing security at the embassy, included the illegal interception of Assanges conversations with his lawyers, in a flagrant breach of attorney-client privilege, menacing probes into his partner and infant child, and discussions about the possibility of kidnapping or even poisoning the WikiLeaks founder.

The mechanisms of the surveillance, which likely involved the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have also become clearer. UC Global chief David Morales, it is alleged, entered into a secret agreement with emissaries of US intelligence to surveill Assange in 2015, and pass on all of the material gathered, in an operation that extended until March, 2018.

The statements of former UC Global employees, and documentary evidence, have indicated that the security company of Las Vegas casino mogul and leading Trump donor Sheldon Adelson served as the middle-man between Morales and US intelligence. The former Spanish navy marine turned mercenary was raided and arrested by Spanish police late last year, and faces the prospect of substantial criminal charges.

In other words, the apparent lack of media interest is not for want of information, or because the unprecedented surveillance of the worlds most famous persecuted journalist is not newsworthy. Rather, it is a continuation of the alignment of the corporate media with the US-led vendetta against Assange, bound up with their close ties to the intelligence agencies and the official political parties that have spearheaded his persecution, as well as their broader support for an agenda of militarism and authoritarianism.

This was given striking confirmation in an article published by investigative journalist Max Blumenthal on the Grayzone website last Friday. Blumenthals detailed report was based on the statements of an anonymous WikiLeaks source, along with extensive comments from Stefania Maurizi, an Italian journalist who has partnered with the media organisation for the past decade. Hitherto unpublished communications from Morales were also featured, further establishing his and UC Globals secret collaboration with US authorities.

Blumenthal noted the fact, already well-established, that the UC Global spying eventually came to encompass all of Assanges visitors. Among those targeted were Washington Post national security reporter Ellen Nakashima, who visited the embassy in December, 2017 to interview Assange, and Lowell Bergman, who has worked for the New York Times and PBS.

Nakashima was subjected to the standard UC Global protocol for Assanges visitors. She was compelled to leave her possessions at the front desk, and they were then rifled through and photographed by its staff. This included taking details of her phone, which would enable it to be hacked, and an unsuccessful attempt by a UC Global employee to steal her voice recorder.

What was new in Blumenthals article, but not surprising, is that the Washington Post and other leading publications have rebuffed requests that they publish information of the espionage, which clearly constituted an attack on press freedom and their own reporters, and have refused to join a legal action that Maurizi is seeking to launch in October. Blumenthal wrote:

Correspondents from a major US newspaper were presented with detailed evidence of UC Global spying on Assange and his associates, and documentation of the firms relationship with the CIA and Sheldon Adelson, a WikiLeaks source told The Grayzone.

Not only were the reporters initially uninterested in the spying scandal, the WikiLeaks source said one correspondent justified the CIAs surveillance on national security grounds. He said, well, thats what an intelligence service is supposed to, the source recalled, describing the experience as crazy.

Nakashima herself has never mentioned the spying publicly or responded to multiple requests for comment about it from Blumenthal and others. Maurizi, who was also extensively spied on, explained that she had not received a positive reply from a single corporate US reporter, who she has asked to join a class action to be filed in Spains National Court on behalf of journalists who were caught in the dragnet. Nakashima ignored her correspondence. Bergman said he was not interested.

Randy Credico, a US comedian, activist and WikiLeaks supporter, recounted a similar response, telling Blumenthal that he went to everybody, with information about the surveillance, which he was also subjected to.

I went to MSNBC, to the Wall Street Journal, CNN, to journalists I knew, and I couldnt get anyone interested. I mean, all these reporters hate Trump, and here you had [US Secretary of State] Pompeo and Sheldon Adelson, the guy who finances Trump, breaking the law. You would think this would be a big deal to these lean forward progressives. And they havent said shit. Its appalling that they havent come forward and said something about this.

The Grayzone report points to some of the obvious reasons for the hostility of corporate publications to any exposure of the CIAs activities. The Washington Post, for instance, is owned by Amazon, which has multi-billion dollar contracts with the Pentagon. Nakashima, when she visited Assange, listed her employer, not as the Washington Post, but as Amazon.

The major publications, moreover, including the New York Times, function as the public mouthpieces of the intelligence agencies. Press releases from the CIA are published almost verbatim, while the word of unnamed intelligence officials, whose unsubstantiated assertions fill so much column space, is treated as the gospel truth.

These publications, moreover, have for over a decade repeated the lies and slanders concocted by the intelligence agencies to undermine support for Assange and WikiLeaks.

This has included the endless promotion of the bogus Swedish investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against Assange, the preliminary stage of which was discontinued for the third and final time last year because of the absence of any evidence, without Assange ever having been charged with a crime. Also notable has been the immense coverage devoted to the discredited conspiracy theory that WikiLeaks 2016 exposure of gross corruption on the part of the Democratic National Committee was the product of some sort of Russian plot.

In every instance, the aim has been to poison public opinion against Assange, and divert attention away from the war crimes, diplomatic conspiracies and political abuses that WikiLeaks has exposed. The fact that Assange was the victim of a massive US government spying operation, which violated innumerable international laws and domestic legislation across multiple jurisdictions, simply does not suit the official narrative.

There may be additional reasons for the reticence of the corporate publication, however. Many of them featured material from surveillance inside the embassy, before UC Globals operations became public knowledge last year.

Footage of what appeared to be the sole occasion that Assange momentarily stood on a skateboard was aired ad nauseum after his expulsion from the Ecuadorian embassy and brutal arrest by the British police. This served to justify the absurd claim that the Ecuadorian government had illegally revoked Assanges asylum because he was a bad house guest, and not because it was one of the conditions for massive international loans and closer ties with the US.

The skateboard footage, and other films aimed at degrading Assange, were probably shot with UC Global cameras. While it is likely the material was leaked by the new Ecuadorian regime of President Lenin Moreno, to justify its attack on Assange, it is doubtful that the CIA would have objected.

The question inevitably arises: is it plausible that all of the major corporate publications, and their staff, who enjoy the closest relations with the US intelligence agencies and have participated with glee in the campaign against Assange, did not know of the UC Global spying as it was occurring? And if they did, but chose not to report it at the time, does that not make them complicit in major attacks on press freedom and the institution of political asylum, which is protected by international law?

Meanwhile, Blumenthals article put paid to UC Global head Morales lame denials that he was working for US intelligence. For instance it cites messages from Morales to his employees, informing them in May 2017, that he was travelling to Miami to provide the agency of the stars and stripes with a budget for the installation of more sophisticated surveillance equipment to spy on Assange.

Morales, apparently in reference to his ultimate employer, posted cartoons of US President Donald Trump in response to further inquiries from UC Global staff.

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Corporate publications hostile to exposure of CIA spying on Assange and their own reporters - WSWS

Two political figures claiming to represent Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a win-win deal to avoid extradition to the US and indictment, a London court has heard.

Under the proposed deal, outlined by Assanges barrister Jennifer Robinson, the WikiLeaks founder would be offered a pardon if he disclosed who leaked Democratic party emails to his site, in order to help clear up allegations they had been supplied by Russian hackers to help Trumps election in 2016.

According to a statement from Robinson read out to the court, the offer was made by the then Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher and Trump associate Charles Johnson at a meeting on 15 August 2017 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Assange was then sheltering. At the time he was under secret investigation by a US grand jury.

Robinson added: The proposal put forward by Congressman Rohrabacher was that Mr Assange identify the source for the 2016 election publications in return for some kind of pardon, assurance or agreement which would both benefit President Trump politically and prevent US indictment and extradition.

Rohrabacher said he had come to London to talk to Assange about what might be necessary to get him out, Robinson said, and presented him with a win-win situation that would allow him to leave the embassy and get on with his life without fear of extradition to the US.

The barrister added that Assange did not name the source of the emails.

While Assanges legal team first made the claim in February detailing a deal for a pardon in exchange for denying the source of the emails was Russia, Robinsons statement admitted as evidence by the court provides substantial details of the meeting.

After the initial claims, a White House spokesman said: The president barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than hes an ex-congressman. Hes never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject. It is a complete fabrication and a total lie. This is probably another never-ending hoax and total lie from the DNC [Democratic National Committee].

During the 2016 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks published a series of DNC emails damaging to the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, that US intelligence believes were hacked by Russia as part of its effort to influence the election.

Assange is fighting extradition to the US over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011. He is facing 18 charges there, including plotting to hack computers and conspiring to obtain and disclose national defence information.

The alleged approach of the two men, just four months after the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the allegations of Russian interference, came at a time when Trump was coming under increasing scrutiny over what members of his campaign knew about the leaked emails. Russia denied meddling and Trump has denied any campaign collusion with Moscow. Mueller did not establish that campaign members conspired with Russia.

Robinsons description of the offer suggests Trump was prepared to consider a pardon for Assange in exchange for information almost a year before a federal grand jury issued a sealed indictment against the WikiLeaks founder.

If it is confirmed that the approach did indeed have the approval of Trump, it would mark the latest in a number of interventions by the US president in relation to the investigation into Russian election interference.

In her statement, Robinson said Rohrabacher and Johnson wanted us to believe they were acting on behalf of the president.

They stated that President Trump was aware of and had approved of them coming to meet with Mr Assange to discuss a proposal and that they would have an audience with the president to discuss the matter on their return to Washington DC, she said.

Congressman Rohrabacher explained he wanted to resolve the ongoing speculation about Russian involvement in the Democratic National Committee leaks to WikiLeaks, which were published by WikiLeaks and other media organisations in 2016.

He stated that he regarded the ongoing speculation as damaging to US-Russian relations, that it was reviving cold war politics, and that it would be in the best interests of the US if the matter could be resolved.

He and Mr Johnson also explained that any information from Mr Assange about the source of the DNC leaks would be of interest, value and assistance to Mr Trump.

The meeting was concluded on the basis that Congressman Rohrabacher would return to have a direct conversation with President Trump about exactly what would be done to prevent Mr Assanges indictment and extradition.

Appearing to confirm that the approach had been made, James Lewis QC, for the US government, said: The position of the government is we dont contest these things were said, adding: We obviously do not accept the truth of what was said by others.

In his own statement in February, Rohrabacher admitted meeting Assange but denied speaking to Trump about the issue.

At no time did I offer Julian Assange anything from the president because I had not spoken with the president about this issue at all. However, when speaking with Julian Assange, I told him that if he could provide me information and evidence about who actually gave him the DNC emails, I would then call on President Trump to pardon him, he said.

Read more:
Trump 'associates' offered Assange pardon in return for emails source, court hears - The Guardian

Saturday, 19 September 2020, 7:20 amArticle: David Swanson

ByWorld BEYOND War, September 18, 2020https://worldbeyondwar.org/assange/

1.The effort to extradite and prosecute Julian Assange forjournalism is a threat to future journalism that challengespower and violence, but a defense of the media practice ofpropagandizing for war. While the New York Timesbenefitted from Assanges work, its only reporting on hiscurrent hearing is an articleabout technical glitches in the court proceedings utterly avoiding the content of those proceedings, evenfalsely suggesting that the content was inaudible andotherwise unobtainable. The corporate U.S. media silence isdeafening. Not only does President Donald Trumps effortto imprison Assange (or, as he has publicly advocated in thepast, kill him) conflict with media fictions about Russia,and contradict fundamental pretenses about U.S. respect forfreedom of the press, but it also serves an importantfunction that is clearly in the interest of media outletsthat promote wars. It punishes someone who dared to exposethe malevolence, cynicism, and criminality of U.S.wars.

2. The Collateral Murder videoand the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs documented some of thegreatest crimes of recent decades. Even the exposure of themisdeeds of a U.S. political party was a public service, nota crime certainly not the crime of treason againstthe United States by a non-U.S. citizen, a concept oftreason that would make the entire world subject to imperialdictates and certainly not the crime of espionagewhich has to be committed on behalf of a government, not onbehalf of the public interest. If U.S. courts were toprosecute the actual crimes exposed by Julian Assange andhis colleagues and sources, they would have little timeavailable for prosecutingjournalism.

3. The idea thatpublishing government documents is something other thanjournalism, that real journalism requires hiding governmentdocuments while describing them to the public, is a recipefor misleading the public. Claims that Assange assisted asource in criminally (if morally and democratically)obtaining documents lack evidence and appear to be asmokescreen for the prosecution of basic journalisticpractices. The same goes for claims that Assangesjournalism harmed people or risked harming people. Exposingwar is the very opposite of harming people. Assange withhelddocuments and asked the U.S. government what to redact priorto publishing. That government chose not to redact anything,and now blames Assange without evidence for a smallnumber of deaths in wars that have killed huge numbers ofpeople. We have heard testimony this week that the Trumpadministration offered Assange a pardon if he would reveal asource. The offense of refusing to reveal a source is an actof journalism.

4. For years theUnited Kingdom maintained a pretense that it sought Assangefor criminal accusations from Sweden. The idea that theUnited States sought to prosecute the act of reporting onits wars was mocked as paranoid fantasy. For global societyto now accept this outrage would be a significant blow topress freedom globally and to the independence of any vassalstate from U.S. demands. Those demands tend to be, first andforemost, to buy more weapons, and, secondarily, toparticipate in the use of thoseweapons.

5. The United Kingdom, evenoutside of the European Union, has laws and standards. Theextradition treaty it has with the United States prohibitsextradition for political purposes. The United States wouldpunish Assange brutally pre-trial and subsequent to anytrial. The proposal to isolate him in a cell in a prison inColorado would amount to a continuation of the torture thatUN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer says Assangehas already been subjected to for years. An espionagetrial would deny Assange the right to put forward any casein his own defense that spoke to his motivations. A fairtrial would also be impossible in a country whose toppoliticians have convicted Assange in the media for years.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called Wikileaks anon-state hostile intelligence service. Presidentialcandidate Joe Biden has called Assange a hi-techterrorist.

6. The legal processthus far has not been legal. The United States breachedAssanges right to client-lawyer confidentiality. Duringthe last year at the Ecuadoran Embassy, a contractor spiedon Assange 24 hours a day, seven days a week, includingduring his private meetings with his attorneys. Assange hasbeen denied the ability to properly prepare for the currenthearings. The court has displayed extreme bias in favor ofthe prosecution. Were corporate media outlets reporting onthe details of this travesty, they would soon findthemselves treated in a hostile manner by those in power;they would find themselves on the side of the seriousjournalists; they would find themselves on the side ofJulian Assange.

David Swanson isan author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He isexecutive director of WorldBeyondWar.organd campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org.Swanson's books include WarIs A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.organd WarIsACrime.org.He hosts TalkNation Radio. He is a 2015,2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Follow himon Twitter: @davidcnswansonand FaceBook.

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Six Reasons Julian Assange Should Be Thanked, Not Punished - Scoop.co.nz

The ninth day of the Assange extradition trials had a marathon round of testimonies from New Zealander journalist Nicolas Hager, Khaled el Masri, who was abducted and tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and also journalist John Goetz. The day also included testimony from Carey Shenkman, a US journalist, who continued from his round of testifying and cross-questioning yesterday.

The day began with testimony from Hager, whose focus was to demonstrate that it is a necessity for investigative journalists working on wars and conflicts to gain access to classified information. Hager was one of the journalists who worked with Assange to publish the US embassy cable leaks for the New Zealand press.

As part of his testimony, Hager noted that Wikileaks took great caution when releasing classified documents, disputing the narrative of Assanges actions having caused harm to individuals. I found the WikiLeaks staff to be engaged in a careful and responsible process, he said.

According to Hager, the Wikileaks team in December 2010 responded to criticism of past releases and decided on a slower, more controlled process of release gradually country by country with a range of media partners from around the world.

He also pointed out the importance of the releases made in the Afghan and Iraq War Logs and also the publication of diplomatic cables, pointing out it prompted the New Zealand government to review the role of its troops operating in these wars overseas.

Hager was followed by a brief testimony by Khaled el Masri. El Masri, a German citizen, was abducted by the CIA from the Macedonian border in 2004, and was abused, tortured and held in inhuman conditions for months. El Masris abduction turned out to be a result of a mistaken identity. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) declared that the CIA agents were guilty of torturing him, making it the first such judicial pronouncement of the espionage agencys actions.

El Masri read out a statement, through a translator, and credited the release of the diplomatic cables by Wikileaks between 2010 and 2011, as crucial to the outcome of his case in the ECHR. WikiLeaks publications were relied on by the (ECHR) in obtaining the redress, he said.

El Masri also added that the exposure of what happened was necessary not just for myself but for law and justice worldwide. Journalist John Goetz supported El Masris statement by adding he found it extremely difficult to report on El Masris case, to make sense of how the case progressed and why there was little to no repercussions on the perpetrators. He pointed out the pressure tactics that both the US and the CIA employed on sovereign nations and also el Masri to cover up the incident.

The U.S. diplomatic cables revealed the extent of pressure brought upon the German authorities (and in parallel, relevant Spanish authorities) not to act upon the clear evidence of criminal acts by the USA even though by then exposed, Goetz told the court. He also added, to reinforce el Masris point, that if it was not for Wikileaks publishing the leaks the whole case would still be buried.

This article was first published in Peoples Dispatch.

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CIA Torture Survivor Testifies That Cable Leaks Were Crucial to Securing Redressal - NewsClick