Assange in UK Court Fighting Extradition, Judge Sides With US
With his extradition hearing commencing today at London’s Central Criminal Court, lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, fighting attempts by the United States to extradite him to face espionage charges for revealing classified information, lost their their attempt to delay the hearing to January 2021.
His team argued the US expanded the case in a new indictment in June without adding charges, with defense attorney Mark Summers contending it was “an impossible task” for them to deal with, especially being unable to meet with him in jail for six months.
Summers said the defense had never been informed by the US government or the Crown Prosecution Service, but instead had learned about the new charges via a press release and argued points of the new indictment did not involve “dual criminality.”
That is the the legal doctrine allowing extradition for an offense only if it's a recognized crime in both countries, Bridges for Media Freedom reported, with the US' attorney, Joel Smith, countering that even if only part of a conduct was covered by “dual criminality,” it was enough for extradition and the court couldn't pick apart charges.
Summers said, “Mr. Smith’s argument is ‘ha, ha ha, we can do what we want and you can’t do anything about it,’ that is wrong,” and asked for the new evidence to be excluded but Judge Vanessa Baraitser said the defense had ample time to consider the new indictment and rejected the request for a further delay.
Assange, an Australian national, has gone unsupported by his own country, and, until recent months, by journalists who've now rallied around him as he argued his prosecution would let governments come after them next.
U.S. prosecutors have indicted the 49-year-old Australian on 18 espionage and computer misuse charges that carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison but his lawyers said he's the victim of a political witch hunt for embarrassing the government in a case that will put all journalists at risk for doing their jobs.
US authorities allege Assange conspired with former 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 on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The new June indictment accuses Assange of recruiting hackers at conferences in Europe and Asia, and of conspiring with members of hacking groups, which Summers dismissed as showing prosecutors were acting “in desperation” because “they knew that they would lose” with their existing case.
Hundreds of protesters, even during the COVID-19 pandemic that's hit the UK hard, gathered outside London’s Central Criminal Court to show their support as he said he's being persecuted for releasing a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by US forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
Assange’s lawyers argue that he is a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection and say the leaked documents exposed U.S. military wrongdoing, while noted MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky is expected to testify Assange is being prosecuted for journalism and that the charges are politically motivated.
The hearing is expected to last up to a month and the much-anticipated start drew attention around the world as a test case for media freedom as the defense will present witnesses arguing Assange is being singled out while newspapers which also published the reports were let alone.
The first witness, former investigative reporter and University of Maryland Journalism Professor Mark Feldstein, said that the US government leaks information to its advantage and said leaks expose corruption and misuse of power and “go back to the time of George Washington,” and publishers had not faced charges as is Assange.
Journalism organizations and human rights groups urged Britain to refuse the extradition request. Amnesty International said Assange was “the target of a negative public campaign by U.S. officials at the highest levels.”