Declassified has also discovered that the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, has ordered extradition in 96% of the cases she has presided over for which information is publicly available.

Baraitser was appointed a district judge in October 2011 based at the Chief Magistrates Office in London, after being admitted as a solicitor in 1994. Next to no other information is available about her in the public domain.

Baraitser has been criticised for a number of her judgments so far concerning Assange, who has been incarcerated in a maximum security prison, HMP Belmarsh in London, since April 2019. These decisions include refusing Assanges request for emergency bail during the Covid-19 pandemic and making him sit behind a glass screen during the hearing, rather than with his lawyers.

Declassified recently revealed that Assange is one of just two of the 797 inmates in Belmarsh being held for violating bail conditions. Over 20% of inmates are held for murder.

Declassified has also seen evidence that the UK Home Office is blocking the release of information about home secretary Priti Patels role in the Assange extradition case.

Request denied

A request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was sent by Declassified to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) on 28 February 2020 requesting a list of all the cases on which Baraitser has ruled since she was appointed in 2011. The MOJ noted in response that it was obliged to send a reply within 20 working days.

Two months later, on 29 April 2020, an information officer at the HM Courts and Tribunals Service responded that it could confirm that it held some of the information that you have requested.

But the request was rejected since the officer claimed it was not consistent with the Constitutional Reform Act. The judiciary is not a public body for the purposes of FOIA and requests asking to disclose all the cases a named judge ruled on are therefore outside the scope of the FOIA, the officer stated.

The officer added that the information requested would in any event be exempt from disclosure because it contains personal data about the cases ruled on by an individual judge, and that personal data can only be released if to do so would not contravene any of the data protection principles in the Data Protection Act.

A British barrister, who wished to remain anonymous, but who is not involved with the Assange case, told Declassified: The resistance to disclosure here is curious. A court is a public authority for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and a judge is an officer of the court. It is therefore more than surprising that the first refusal argued that, for the purposes of the FOIA, there is no public body here subject to disclosure.

The barrister added: The alternative argument on data doesnt stack up. A court acts in public. There is no default anonymity of the names of cases, unless children are involved or other certain limited circumstances, nor the judges who rule on them. Justice has to be seen to be done.

Despite the HM Courts and Tribunals Service invoking a data protection clause, Declassified was able to view a host of cases with full names and details in Westlaw, a paid-for legal database. The press has also reported on a number of extradition cases involving Baraitser.

An internal review into the rejection of Declassifieds freedom of information (FOI) request upheld the rejection.

Identical request

On 10 April 2020 Declassified sent an identical information request to the MOJ asking for a case list for a different district judge, Justin Barron, who was appointed on the same day as Baraitser in October 2011.

This request was answered by the MOJ swiftly, within 17 days, compared to two months with Baraitser. The information officer also noted that it holds all the information you have requested rather than some in the case of Baraitser. It is unclear why the HM Courts and Tribunals Service would hold only partial information on Baraitser, but not on Barron.

On this occasion, the request was not blocked. Instead, the information officer asked for further clarification about the information being sought, suggesting issues such as final hearing dates, the defendants names and what the defendants were charged with.

Declassified clarified that it wanted the list to include the date, the defendant, the charge and the judges decision.

The officer eventually declined the request, stating that it would exceed the cost limit set out in the FOIA, but adding: Although we cannot answer your request at the moment, we may be able to answer a refined request within the cost limit.

With Baraitsers identical records, the possibility of refining the search was never offered two absolute exemptions being applied to the request from the start.

Baraitsers record

Despite the rejection by the MOJ, Declassified has found 24 extradition cases that Baraitser ruled on from November 2015 to May 2019, discovered using the media archive Factiva and Westlaw. Of these 24 cases, Baraitser ordered the extradition of 23 of the defendants, a 96% extradition record from publicly available evidence.

Baraitser has ordered the extradition of defendants to at least 11 countries in this period, including one person to the US. Six of the extraditions, or 26% of the rulings, were successfully appealed.

In one case, Baraitsers decision to extradite was overturned because the appeal judge attached considerable weight to the likely impact of extradition upon the health and wellbeing of the defendants wife, who will be left with very little support.

Recently, Baraitser controversially refused to guarantee anonymity to Assanges partner, Stella Moris, which led her to publicly reveal her relationship with Assange and their two children.

The appointment of Baraitser to preside over the Assange case remains controversial and the decision untransparent. It is likely that Chief Magistrate Lady Emma Arbuthnot was involved in the decision to appoint Baraitser to the case.

The chief magistrate has a leadership responsibility for the roughly 300 district and deputy judges across England and Wales. Arbuthnot hears many of the most sensitive or complex cases in the magistrates courts and in particular extradition and special jurisdiction cases.

Arbuthnots role also includes supporting and guiding district judges such as Baraitser and liaising with the senior judiciary and presiding judges on the cases they are ruling on.

But Arbuthnots role in the Assange case is mired in controversy and conflicts of interest due to her familys connections to the British military and intelligence establishment, as Declassified has previously revealed. Arbuthnot has personally received financial benefits from partner organisations of the UK Foreign Office, which in 2018 called Assange a miserable little worm.

Arbuthnot directly ruled on the Assange case in 2018-19 and has never formally recused herself from it. According to a statement given to Private Eye, she stepped aside because of a perception of bias, but it was not elucidated what this related to.

Since Arbuthnot has not formally recused herself, Assanges defence team cannot revisit her rulings while it also could have left open the possibility of her choosing which of her junior judges was to preside over the Assange case.

In a key judgment in February 2018, Arbuthnot rejected the findings of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention a body composed of international legal experts that Assange was being arbitrarily detained, characterised Assanges stay in the embassy as voluntary and concluded Assanges health and mental state was of minor importance.

In a second ruling a week later, Arbuthnot dismissed Assanges fears of US extradition. I accept that Mr Assange had expressed fears of being returned to the United States from a very early stage in the Swedish extradition proceedings but I do not find that Mr Assanges fears were reasonable, she said.

In May 2019, soon after Assange was seized from his asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy by British police, the US government requested his extradition on charges that could see him imprisoned for 175 years.

More silence

Declassified also made a request under the Freedom of Information Act for a list of all the cases heard at Woolwich Crown Court, near Belmarsh, for 2019. Baraitser had controversially moved Assanges hearing to Woolwich which is often used for terrorism cases before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. It has now been moved back to the Old Bailey, the central criminal court of England and Wales.

This request, sent on 31 March 2020, was again rejected. The MOJ officer stated: I can confirm that the MOJ holds the information that you have requested. All of the information is exempt from disclosure under section 32 of the FOIA because it is held in a court record.

It added that: Section 32 is an absolute exemption and there is no duty to consider the public interest in disclosure.

Despite daily lists of the cases heard at Woolwich being freely available online, including names of defendants, an internal review conducted at Declassifieds request reached the same conclusion.

On 15 May 2020, Declassified sent a further FOI request, this time to the Home Office, asking for information on any phone calls or emails made or received by the current Home Secretary Priti Patel concerning the Assange case.

The Home Office replied: We neither confirm nor deny whether we hold any information, within the scope of your request. It added that the reason was to protect personal data.

But, in January 2020, Declassified had requested the same information for the period when Sajid Javid was home secretary, April 2018 July 2019. In this case, the Home Office responded: We have carried out a thorough search and we have established that the Home Office does not hold the information that you have requested.

The responses from the Home Office appear to indicate that Patel has had communications regarding Assange during her tenure as home secretary, but that the government is reluctant to disclose this information. The Assange case continues to set a legal precedent in being mired in opacity and conflicts of interest.

Patel who is also linked to Arbuthnots husband, Lord Arbuthnot will sign off Assanges extradition to the US if it is ordered by Baraitser. DM

Matt Kennard is head of investigations, and Mark Curtis is editor, at Declassified UK. They tweet at @kennardmatt and @markcurtis30. Follow Declassified on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up to receive Declassifieds monthly newsletter here.

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UK government refuses to release information about Assange judge who has 96% extradition record - Daily Maverick

By Oscar Grenfell 31 July 2020

Last Saturday marked ten years since WikiLeaks published the Afghan war logs, a vast trove of leaked US military documents, which provided an unprecedented insight into the criminality of a war that has become the longest in American history.

The documents were released, with commentary, analysis and contextual material, in partnership with the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, some three months after WikiLeaks published Collateral Murder, the infamous video showing a 2007 US army massacre of civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in Iraq.

Taken together, the exposures had an immense impact on popular consciousness, fortifying and deepening the mass anti-war sentiment first revealed in the huge international protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Significantly, the 2010 releases by WikiLeaks followed the suppression of that movement by upper middle-class pseudo-left groups. They had increasingly dispensed with opposition to imperialist war as they supported the 2008 election of Barack Obama, and aligned with other militarist parties of the ruling elite, such as the Labor Party in Australia.

The Afghan logs particularly exposed the claims of innumerable liberal pundits that the occupation of that country was the good war, supposedly waged to defeat terrorism, extend democracy and protect womens rights. This they contrasted with the failed operation in Iraq.

This dovetailed with the agenda of the new US administration. Obamas phony anti-war posturing during the 2008 election had been accompanied by plans for a massive surge in Afghanistan.

The mythmaking was facilitated by the suppression of any information about the real situation on the ground by the US, its allies and a pliant corporate media. WikiLeaks lifted the veil on the lies, revealing a neo-colonial occupation aimed at looting natural resources and securing control of the geo-strategically critical Central Asian region.

Mass civilian killings, widespread popular opposition and demoralisation within US army ranks all came to the surface, more fully than they had in the nine years since the US invasion.

The publication was based on 91,000 US army logs covering the period of January 2004 to December 2009, provided to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, who had access to the material as a military intelligence analyst.

Indicating the extent of corporate media integration into the military, Manning only turned the material over to WikiLeaks after her attempts to contact the New York Times and the Washington Post were ignored.

In releasing the material, WikiLeaks publisher and then editor-in-chief Julian Assange described it as the most comprehensive history of a war ever to be published, during the course of the war.

Unlike the corporate hacks, who seek to hide their alignment with imperialist war behind a mask of impartiality, Assange was unapologetically partisan. The documents suggested thousands of war crimes, he stated, and their release would serve to shift public opinion. The most dangerous men are those who are in charge of war. And they need to be stopped, he said.

Some 20,000 deaths are recorded in the logs. They include at least 195 civilian casualties at the hands of NATO troops, which had previously been hidden from the public.

Most explosively, the documents cut through the presentation of fatalities as being the inevitable product of the fog of war, supposed mishaps and errors. Mass murder was not an accidental by-product of the conflict, but an essential component of its character as a neo-colonial occupation of a hostile population.

The release confirmed, for the first time, the existence of a secretive black unit, within the US military, whose explicit task was to extrajudicially murder prominent insurgents, i.e., those Afghans thought to be playing a leading role in the fight to liberate their country.

Incidents detailed in the logs provided a picture of imperialist lawlessness that had perhaps not been seen since the horrors of the Vietnam war several decades earlier.

The Guardian noted at least 21 occasions when British troops opened fire on civilians, commenting: Some casualties were accidentally caused by air strikes, but many also are said to involve British troops firing on unarmed drivers or motorcyclists who come too close to convoys or patrols.

Citing just some of the previously unknown events contained in the records, the British paper wrote: Bloody errors at civilians expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.

Attacks on civilians were frequently presented as targeted strikes on Taliban militants. To again cite the Guardian:

A Harrier bombing is listed as killing eight people. In another an F16 jet called in by a Rifles squad radioed afterwards that it could see bodies being picked up in the target area. Seven civilians were wounded and one killed in that attack.

A further Apache helicopter strike outside Kandahar was claimed to have killed three Taliban: but it proved later that two women and two children had died.

A Hellfire missile blast from an unmanned drone over Helmand was also claimed to have killed six Taliban. It later transpired it had wounded two children.

British troops at a checkpoint in Sangin killed four and wounded three civilians in July. In August a 2 Para squad rocketed what it thought were insurgents, killing three civilians and wounding four. And in September an unarmed motorcyclist was shot dead by a British patrol.

The documents consistently indicated that Coalition commanders were aware that the majority of the Afghan population favoured their expulsion from the country. They detailed the fraught relations between the US-led forces and their Afghan army allies. The latter were mistreated. The former lived in constant fear that, such was the popular opposition, one of their Afghan allies would go rogue and turn their guns on the occupiers.

The innumerable contradictions of US imperialist foreign policy were laid bare. The Allied commanders knew that the Pakistani intelligence services, with whom they were formally allied, were collaborating closely with Islamist militants.

Taken together, the revelations gave the worlds population a greater understanding of the first imperialist war crime of the century than any other publication. Their release was an historic event that will be analysed and commented on for decades to come.

But the Afghan war logs have not yet passed into history. The brutal occupation, which has resulted in the deaths of as many as half a million Afghans, continues. The war criminals have not only escaped any punishment. They sit at the helm of the US, Australian and British militaries and plot new crimes, including catastrophic conflicts with nuclear-armed powers such as China and Russia.

The only individuals who have faced criminal repercussions over the publication are Chelsea Manning, who has endured a decade of persecution, and Julian Assange, who is imprisoned in Britains maximum-security Belmarsh Prison awaiting court hearings for his extradition to the US.

There he faces 175 years of imprisonment, in the first attempted prosecution of a publisher and journalist under the Espionage Act. The exposures of the horrors of the Afghan war feature in Assanges charge sheet, where they are perversely presented as evidence of a conspiracy with Manning that threatened US national security. The offence of pure publication, i.e., journalism, is among Assanges supposed crimes.

The US indictment incorporates some of the most persistent government-media lies related to the Afghan war logs. It again asserts that their publication placed the lives of US military personnel and their Afghan informants at risk, a claim that was debunked at Mannings 2013 court martial.

The alleged presence of the documents in Osama Bin Ladens Abbottabad compound, where he lived for years as a ward of the US-aligned Pakistani military, is cited. Journals published by CIA-connected think tanks were also found at the compound, but there have been no calls for the prosecution of their authors.

Moreover, the assertion that Assange displayed recklessness has been thoroughly debunked. Australian journalist Mark Davis explained last year, based on his own personal observations, that it was Assange, not his media partners at the New York Times or the Guardian, who personally redacted thousands of pages before their release. Some 16,000 documents were held back, to prevent anyone from coming to harm.

Despite this, the claim that Assange displayed a cavalier attitude towards the safety of Afghan informants became one of the key justifications for betraying him provided by WikiLeaks erstwhile media partners at the Guardian and the New York Times. The Times had consulted extensively with the Obama administration, as it reported on only a handful of the revelations contained in the logs.

Very rapidly thereafter, however, as the US escalated its pursuit of Assange, even minimal collaboration with WikiLeaks became too much for these publications.

As cynical and false as their assertions were, it is not insignificant that the rallying cry of the corporate hacks in their rush to align with the Obama administration and the CIA, was the defence of US military informants. Nothing about the Afghan conflict, it seemed, had excited the passions of these reporters, so much as the prospect of turncoats suffering retribution.

The journalists instinctively identified with the informants, none of whom were killed or injured as a result of WikiLeaks publication. One can surmise that they shared a willingness to sell principles for money, an eagerness to align with the powerful and a contempt for anyone who would get in the way. Afghan informants, it must be said, were in some cases saving their own necks. The same dangers did not confront the reporters in their plush London and Washington homes.

A decade on, and the slanders have been discredited. Assange has courageously maintained his opposition to imperialism and war, in the face of an almost unprecedented state vendetta. The struggle for his freedom is at the cutting-edge of the fight against militarism and for democratic rights.

Continue reading here:

Ten years since WikiLeaks published the Afghan war logs - WSWS

As the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 rapidly approached 150,000, President Trump declared Tuesday that much of the United States is COVID-free. Speaking from the White House press room, Trump lamented polls showing his approval rating lagging far behind top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.

President Donald Trump: So, it sort of is curious. A man works for us, with us, very closely, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, also highly thought of and yet theyre highly thought of, but nobody likes me. It can only be my personality. Thats all.

Trump walked out of Tuesdays press briefing after a CNN reporter asked him about his retweeting of a video featuring Stella Immanuel, an evangelical Christian doctor who has urged people not to wear masks and embraced the drug hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 despite studies showing it offers no benefit and can cause deadly side effects. Immanuel has previously suggested alien DNA was used in pharmaceuticals and that gynecological problems are caused by sexual visitations by demons.

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Trump Retweets Doctor Who Warned of Sex with Demons and Alien DNA - Democracy Now!

WASHINGTON (AP) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sought to recruit hackers at conferences in Europe and Asia who could provide his anti-secrecy website with classified information, and conspired with members of hacking organizations, according to a new Justice Department indictment announced Wednesday.

The superseding indictment does not contain additional charges beyond the 18 counts the Justice Department unsealed last year. But prosecutors say it underscores Assanges efforts to procure and release classified information, allegations that form the basis of criminal charges he already faces.

Beyond recruiting hackers at conferences, the indictment accuses Assange of conspiring with members of hacking groups known as LulzSec and Anonymous. He also worked with a 17-year-old hacker who gave him information stolen from a bank and directed the teenager to steal additional material, including audio recordings of high-ranking government officials, prosecutors say.

Assanges lawyer, Barry Pollack, said in a statement that the governments relentless pursuit of Julian Assange poses a grave threat to journalists everywhere and to the publics right to know.

While todays superseding indictment is yet another chapter in the U.S. Governments effort to persuade the public that its pursuit of Julian Assange is based on something other than his publication of newsworthy truthful information, he added, the indictment continues to charge him with violating the Espionage Act based on WikiLeaks publications exposing war crimes committed by the U.S. Government.

Assange was arrested last year after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had sought refuge to avoid being sent to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault, and is at the center of an extradition tussle over whether he should be sent to the United States.

The Justice Department has already charged him with conspiring with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history by working together to crack a password to a government computer.

Prosecutors say the WikiLeaks founder damaged national security by publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.

Assange maintains he was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection. His lawyers have argued the U.S. charges of espionage and computer misuse were politically motivated and an abuse of power.

Assange generated substantial attention during the 2016 presidential election, and in investigations that followed, after WikiLeaks published stolen Democratic emails that U.S. authorities say were hacked by Russian military intelligence officials. An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller revealed how Trump campaign associates eagerly anticipated the email disclosures. One Trump ally, Roger Stone, was found guilty last year of lying about his efforts to gain inside information about the emails. Assange, however, was never charged in Muellers Russia investigation.

The allegations in the new indictment center on conferences, in locations including the Netherlands and Malaysia in 2009, at which prosecutors say he and a WikiLeaks associate sought to recruit hackers who could locate classified information, including material on a Most Wanted Leaks list posted on WikiLeaks website.

According to the new indictment, he told would-be recruits that unless they were a member of the U.S. military, they faced no legal liability for stealing classified information and giving it to WikiLeaks because TOP SECRET meant nothing as a matter of law.

At one conference in Malaysia, called the Hack in the Box Security Conference, Assange told the audience, I was a famous teenage hacker in Australia, and Ive been reading generals emails since I was 17.

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WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Faces New Indictment In U ...

Associated Press Published 6:51 p.m. ET June 24, 2020 | Updated 8:42 p.m. ET June 24, 2020

Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange arrives at Southwark Crown Court in London, on May 1, 2019.(Photo: EPA-EFE)

WASHINGTON WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sought to recruit hackers at conferences in Europe and Asia to provide his anti-secrecy website with classified information and conspired with members of hacking organizations to obtain government secrets, according to a new Justice Department indictment announced Wednesday.

The superseding indictment does not contain additional charges beyond the 18 counts the Justice Department unsealed last year. But prosecutors say it underscores Assanges efforts to procure and release classified information, allegations that form the basis of criminal charges he already faces.

Beyond recruiting hackers at conference, the indictment accuses Assange of conspiring with the leader of LulzSec, a hacking group, and asking to be provided with documents and databases. Prosecutors say Assange also published on WikiLeaks emails from a data breach of an American intelligence community consulting company by a hacker affiliated with LulzSec and Anonymous, another hacking group.

Assanges lawyer, Barry Pollack, said in a statement that the governments relentless pursuit of Julian Assange poses a grave threat to journalists everywhere and to the publics right to know.

Julian Assange: He infuriated Washington. Now he's facing life in prison

While todays superseding indictment is yet another chapter in the U.S. Governments effort to persuade the public that its pursuit of Julian Assange is based on something other than his publication of newsworthy truthful information, he added, the indictment continues to charge him with violating the Espionage Act based on WikiLeaks publications exposing war crimes committed by the U.S. Government.

Assange was arrested last year after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and is at the center of an ongoing extradition tussle over whether he should be sent to the United States.

The Justice Department has already charged him with conspiring with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history. Prosecutors say the WikiLeaks founder damaged national security by publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.

Assange maintains he was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection. His lawyers have argued the U.S. charges of espionage and computer misuse were politically motivated and an abuse of power.

Assange generated substantial attention during the 2016 presidential election, and in investigations that followed, after WikiLeaks published stolen Democratic emails that U.S. authorities say were hacked by Russian military intelligence officials. An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller revealed how Trump campaign associates eagerly anticipated the email disclosures, and one Trump ally, Roger Stone, was found guilty last year of lying about his efforts to gain inside information about the emails. Assange, however, was never charged in Muellers Russia investigation.

The allegations in the new indictment center on conferences as far back as 2009, in locations including the Netherlands and Malaysia, at which prosecutors say he and a WikiLeaks associate sought to recruit hackers who could locate classified information, including material on a Most Wanted Leaks list posted on WikiLeaks website.

According to the new indictment, he told would-be recruits that unless they were a member of the U.S. military, they faced no legal liability for their actions.

At one conference in Malaysia, called the Hack in the Box Security Conference, Assange told the audience, I was a famous teenage hacker in Australia, and Ive been reading generals emails since I was 17.

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Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder faces new indictment in US

On 27 July two court hearings took place one in the UK, the other in Spain. Both concerned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. From their proceedings, it became clear that its not Assange who should be facing prosecution, but the current office holder of the US presidency and his associates.

At the 27 July administrative hearing at Westminster magistrates court, Judge Vanessa Baraitser stated that the prosecution had failed to present its latest superseding indictment. That superseding indictment was first made public on 24 June, just prior to the last court hearing, though the prosecution failed to submit the document to that hearing too.

Defence lawyer Edward Fitzgerald made it clear to the court that he was concerned the prosecution might still try to present the superseding indictment later, so as to delay the extradition hearings. He argued:

We are concerned about a fresh request being made at this stage with the potential consequence of derailing proceedings and that the US attorney-general is doing this for political reasons.

Indeed, prosecution barrister Joel Smith refused to comply with any timeline to serve the superseding indictment. However, Baraitser told Smith that the deadline to submit the superseding indictment had passed.

Controversially, the superseding indictment provided testimony from known (but unnamed) FBI informants, both of whom have criminal convictions and were engaged in entrapment operations. So perhaps its not surprising that the prosecution did not formally present a copy of the superseding indictment to the court. What the judge did not address, however, is that by publishing the superseding indictment on the internet, the US department of justice may have prejudiced the case against Assange and that could be grounds for dismissal of all charges.

Meanwhile in Spain, the prosecution of David Morales, who is charged with organising the surveillance of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, proceeds, with testimony from former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzn, who is representing Assange.

Morales, via his company UC Global, is also accused of providing that surveillance to US intelligence services. This video includes examples of the alleged surveillance in the embassy:

Assange lawyer Geoffrey Robertson commented that the surveillance constituted a serious crime in European law.

Also monitored were meetings between Assange and some of his other lawyers, including Melinda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson, and Garzn. Surveillance also included logging of visitors, such as Gareth Peirce, another of Assanges lawyers, as well as a seven-hour session between Assange and his legal team on 19 June 2016.

Robinson subsequently commented that the surveillance was: a huge and a serious breach of [Assanges] right to a defence and a serious breach of [Assanges] fair trial rights. Indeed, client-lawyer confidentiality remains a cornerstone of the English legal system.

In this respect, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson commented:

The case should be thrown out immediately. Not only is it illegal on the face of the [extradition] treaty, the U.S. has conducted illegal operations against Assange and his lawyers, which are the subject of a major investigation in Spain.

At the Monday hearing in Spain, the court noted allegations that the intelligence gathered by UC Global was provided to Zohar Lahav, described as a security officer at Las Vegas Sands Corp. A Grayzone article by Max Blumenthal reveals that witnesses alleged Morales had proposed kidnapping or poisoning Assange and breaking into the office of Garzn.

The Grayzone has seen court documents claiming that Lahav, who is described as Adelsons bodyguard and vice president for executive protection at Las Vegas Sands, worked with Morales for three years.

Lahav reported to Sands director of global security Brian Nagel, of whom Blumenthal states:

During his lengthy career in the US Secret Service, Nagel worked at the nexus of federal law enforcement and US intelligence. In the 1990s, Nagel not only served on the personal protection detail of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; he was assigned to work with two foreign protective services after the assassination and attempted assassination of their respective heads of state, he said in sworn testimony in a US District Court in 2011.

As the deputy director of the Secret Service, he [Nagel] appeared alongside then-US Attorney General John Ashcroft at a November 2003 press conference on combating cybercrime, and testified before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee in March 2007.

Nagels boss, Sheldon Adelson was a top donor to Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign. Its also understood that Adelson will contribute $100m to the 2020 election campaign for Trump and republicans.

Meanwhile, lawyers acting for Assange have requested that Adelson and Nagel be summoned as witnesses. But that request was denied.

At Mondays court hearing in London, defence lawyer Fitzgerald commented that the delays relating to the superseding indictment may have something to do with the upcoming US presidential elections. He added: Im not sure if theres been some manipulation there. Moreover, its been shown how Trump is financially close to the head of the very corporation thats allegedly implicated in the surveillance on Assange.

Indeed, at the heart of the Assange extradition process is Trump and perhaps it is he and his associates, not Assange, who should be placed under the spotlight.

The full extradition hearing is now scheduled for the Old Bailey for three weeks, commencing 7 September. And it would be most surprising if during the extradition hearings there arent plenty more revelations.

Featured image via YouTube Channel 4 News

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A UK hearing and a trial in Spain suggest its not Assange who should be facing prosecution - The Canary

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was hit with a new federal indictment on Wednesday accusing him of conspiring with hackers, including the group Anonymous.

The superseding indictment doesnt add new charges beyond the 18 counts the Department of Justice unsealed last year but broadens the scope of the conspiracy that Assange is accused in, prosecutors said.

Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks, the DOJ said in a press release.

Prosecutors said that Assange and a WikiLeaks did their recruiting during conferences in the Netherlands and Malaysia in 2009.

Since the early days of WikiLeaks, Assange has spoken at hacking conferences to tout his own history as a famous teenage hacker in Australia and to encourage others to hack to obtain information for WikiLeaks, the DOJ said.

In 2010, Assange allegedly gained access to a NATO countrys government computer system, prosecutors said.

Two years later, he allegedly communicated directly with the leader of the hacking group LulzSec who was by the cooperating with the FBI and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack.

In another communication, Assange told the LulzSec leader that the most impactful release of hacked materials would be from the CIA, NSA, or The New York Times, the DOJ said.

WikiLeaks allegedly obtained and published information it got as part of a hack into an American intelligence consulting company by an Anonymous and LulzSec-affiliated hacker, prosecutors said.

Assange was charged last year with allegedly violating the Espionage Act by conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to illegally obtain and disclose classified information.

He was arrested after being booted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and is now at the center of an ongoing extradition battle over whether he should be sent to the United States. He is currently locked up in a UK jail on other charges.

His alleged publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents could see him sentenced to 175 years in prison, his legal team has said.

Assanges lawyers claim he was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protections and that the US charges against him are politically motivated.

With Post wires

Originally posted here:

Julian Assange charged with conspiring with 'Anonymous'

The US attorney general, William Barr, may be using Julian Assanges extradition case in the UK for political ends, the WikiLeaks founders defence team alleged during a court hearing at which he appeared by video link from prison for the first time in months.

It was a fact that Donald Trump had described the defence case as a plot by the Democrats, Edward Fitzgerald QC told the hearing at Westminster magistrates court.

Fitzgerald said a new superseding US indictment, produced months after the start of attempts in the UK to secure his extradition, had been sprung on his defence team.

The indictment, which had not yet been formally laid before the court, supersedes previous indictments brought in February and which related to 2010 and 2011.

A US grand jury had previously indicted Assange on 18 charges 17 of which fall under the Espionage Act around conspiracy to receive, obtaining and disclosing classified diplomatic and military documents.

The details in the new indictment publicised last month by the US Department of Justice focus on conferences in 2009 in the Netherlands and Malaysia at which US prosecutors say Assange tried to recruit hackers who could find classified information, including in relation to a most wanted leaks list posted on the WikiLeaks website.

The hearing on Monday was the latest in a series of administrative hearings. Chaotic arrangements meant journalists, legal observers and some lawyers had difficulty accessing it remotely to listen in. The full hearing of the extradition case has been postponed until September due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Wearing a beige sweater and a pink shirt, Assange eventually appeared from Belmarsh prison after an earlier attempt was aborted.

Fitzgerald told the hearing it would be improper if the new indictment led to the postponement of the hearing until after the November presidential election in the US.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser told the hearing that the deadline had arrived for any further evidence before the extradition hearing, aside from psychiatric reports. She said she expected all parties to attend the hearing in September in person.

Outside the court, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said: The new superseding indictment actually contains nothing new. All the alleged events have been known to the prosecution for years.

It contains no new charges. Whats really happening here is that despite its decade-long head-start, the prosecution are still unable to build a coherent and credible case. So theyve scrapped their previous two indictments and gone for a third try.

US Department of Justice authorities have said: The new indictment does not add additional counts to the prior 18-count superseding indictment returned against Assange in May 2019. It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged.

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US attorney general may be using Assange case for political ends, court told - The Guardian

JULIAN Assange is set to appear in court by video today after campaigners claimed his defence against extradition to the USA is being hampered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Wikileaks founder Assange is wanted by the USA to face 17 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act. He is alleged to have conspired to commit computer intrusion after the publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011.

Assange faces up to 175 years in jail if extradited and found guilty. The admitted source of the leaks, former US soldier Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in military jail after the 2013 court martial and has subsequently been jailed for a year for refusing to testify to a Grand Jury about Assange.

Despite the Obama regimes decision not to prosecute Assange because of its implications for press freedom, the Trump administration decided to institute extradition proceedings.

Assange will not be able to rely on US constitutional free press protections because he is not

a US citizen.

A three-week hearing has been set for September but lawyers for Assange will tell Westminster Magistrates Court today that Assange has not been able to meet with his lawyers to prepare his extradition case due to the pandemic.

WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said Julian has not been able to see his lawyers for 17 weeks. The computer supplied to him after over a year of asking has its keys glued down and the typing function is disabled.

The case material consists of tens of thousands of pages, and Julian cannot even type up notes or instructions for his lawyers. Each and every step of the way, the tools Julian should have to be able to put up a fight are being taken away

from him.

I call on UK prisons minister Robert Buckland to take every step necessary to reverse restrictions that are preventing Julian from being able to take part in and prepare his legal defence.

Excerpt from:

Bid to delay hearing on Julian Assange extradition case - The National

Off-White is all set to launch a Singapore-exclusive capsule.

It is aptly titled "Paragon" as the five-piece collection will be available only at the boutique located within Paragon mall, Singapore. Think classic tees, denim shorts, and a flap bag in a palette of pinks, as inspired by the store's blush-tinged interiors. Grab 'em all beginning 31 July.

Keanu, who? The director, writer, actor, artist is the star of Saint Laurent's 2020 menswear ad campaign. The fifteen-second clip features Waters donning a pair of black frames and dressed to the nines in a sleek suit all while exhorting the importance of breaking the rules because, well, John Waters. We didn't expect anything less.

Dressed fetchingly (and fittingly) in a canary-yellow suit, the 79-year-old designer was suspended ten feet in the air inside a massive cage. "I am the canary in the cage," she declared. "If I die down the coal mine from poisonous gas, that's the signal." This, supposedly, is a metaphor where Westwood was meant to represent Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who faces various charges for allegedly conspiring to hack government computers.

For those unaware, Hearst Corporation is one of the biggest magazine publishers on a global scale, being the owners of many fashion, female-focused publications such as Harper's Bazaar and Marie Claire. Troy Young joined the company in 2013 and resigned just a few days back after the New York Times released their expos detailing several instances of sexual harassment on his part. Hearst President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Swartz then announced his departure on Hearst's website. "Troy Young and I have agreed that it is in the best interest of all of us that he resign his position as president of Hearst Magazines, effective immediately," Swartz wrote.

According to several sources, the Olsen's fashion label is weathering financial difficulties. They have since laid off half their staff, including head of women's design, Anna Sophia Hvener, and founding head men's wear designer, Paul Helbers. A slew of other design, sales and development positions were eliminated. When asked to confirm or deny the news, The Row issued a statement reiterating their commitment to maintaining a "diverse and inclusive workspace" and their stance on keeping mum as to "inaccurate gossip."

Enter Gianfranco Gianangeli. Prior to this, he was global retail director at Givenchy and an associate international director at Prada. It has been confirmed that he will be leading one of the key growth engines at OTB the Italian fashion group controlled by Renzo Rosso alongside its core Diesel brand. Congratulations are in order.

Drawing inspiration from Wu's love of speed racing, the pop-up has been coined 'The Roller'; a spacious and futuristic parking lot comprising Gentle Monster's Shanghai-exclusive eyewear models and fashion accessories. Expect abundant symbolic details, art installations, and an all-around immersive experience.

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Off-White will be launching a Singapore-exclusive capsule, the new face of Saint Laurent, and more - Buro 24/7 Singapore