WikiLeaks: Julian Assange Hearings - Day 9

[grarpamp]

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-14/
https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/21/trump-schwartz-grenell-wikileaks-extradition-death-penalty/
https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/21/guide-to-journalists-assange-trial-upset-by-media-blackout/
https://web.archive.org/web/20110925132344/http:/nigelparry.com/news/guardian-david-leigh-cablegate.shtml


https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/support-this-website/


Monday was a frustrating day as the Assange Hearing drifted deep into
a fantasy land where nobody knows or is allowed to say that people
were tortured in Guantanamo Bay and under extraordinary rendition. The
willingness of Judge Baraitser to accept American red lines on what
witnesses can and cannot say has combined with a joint and openly
stated desire by both judge and prosecution to close this case down
quickly by limiting the number of witnesses, the length of their
evidence, and the time allowed for closing arguments.

'[Prosecutor] Lewis: You have as a journalist merely been the passive
recipient of official information. Presumably you have never done
anything criminal to obtain government information?
'[Journalist] Hager: You said “passive”. That is not the way we work.
Journalists not only actively work our sources. We go out and find our
sources. The information might come in documents. It might come on a
memory stick. In most cases our sources are breaking the law. Our duty
is to help protect them from being caught. We actively help them cover
their backs sometimes.'


Summers asked whether Cryptome was a minor website. Grothoff replied
not at all, it was a long established platform for leaked or
confidential material and was especially used by journalists.
The document showed this had been via a torrent from Pirate Bay.
Wikileaks had made the unredacted cables available on 2 September,
after they were already widely available. They had already passed the
point where “they could not be stopped”.


Which brings us to a very crucial point. The next witness, Andy
Worthington, was at court and ready to give evidence, but was
prevented from doing so. The United States government objected to his
evidence, about his work on the Guantanamo Detainee files, being heard
because it contained allegations of inmates being tortured at
Guantanamo.



What the defence should have said at this moment is “Madam, the dogs
in the street know that people were tortured in Guantanamo Bay. In the
real world, it is not a disputed fact. If Mr Lewis’s instructions were
to deny that the earth is round, would our witnesses have to
accommodate that? The truth of these matters plainly goes to the
Article 10 Defence, and by pandering to the denial of a notorious and
plain fact, this court will be held up to mockery. We will not discuss
such ludicrous censorship with Mr Lewis. If you wish to rule that
there must be no mention of torture in evidence, then so be it.”

The defence did not say any of that, but as instructed entered a
process with the prosecution lawyers of agreeing the shortening and
editing of evidence, a process which took all day and with which
Julian showed plain signs of being uncomfortable.



I am very concerned about the obvious collusion of the prosecution and
the judge to close this case down. The extraordinary conflation of
“time management” and excluding evidence which the US Government does
not want heard in public is plainly illegitimate. The continual
chivvying and interruption of defence counsel in examination when
prosecution counsel are allowed endless repetition amounting to
harassment and bullying is illegitimate. Some extraordinarily long
prosecution cross-examinations, such as that of Carey Shenkman the
lawyer, have every appearance of deliberate time wasting and
distraction.

Tuesday’s witness is Professor Michael Kopelman, the eminent
psychiatrist, and the prosecution have indicated they wish to
cross-examine him for an extraordinary four hours, which Baraitser
agreed against defence objections. Her obsession with time management
is distinctly subjective.