The prosecution attorneys within the Excessive Court docket looking for to make sure Julian’s extradition to the U.S. rely virtually completely on the judicial opinions of Gordon Kromberg, a extremely controversial U.S. lawyer.
LONDON — The prosecution for the U.S., which is looking for to disclaim Julian Assange’s enchantment of an extradition order, begun by the Trump administration and embraced by the Biden administration, grounded its arguments on Wednesday within the doubtful affidavits filed by a U.S. federal prosecutor within the Jap District of Virginia, Gordon Kromberg.
The costs articulated by Kromberg — usually false — to make the case for extradition didn’t fly with the 2 Excessive Court docket judges, Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp, who’re overseeing Julian’s closing enchantment within the British courts.
The prosecuting attorneys, underneath questioning from the judges, have been knocked off steadiness when challenged concerning the veracity of a number of of the claims which Kromberg made in help of the indictment in opposition to Julian. This was particularly the case when the attorneys argued that the categorized paperwork Julian launched in 2010 — often called the Iraq and Afghan warfare logs — weren’t redacted. These unredacted paperwork, they advised the court docket, jeopardized the lives of these named within the paperwork and triggered some to “disappear.”
As protection attorneys Edward Fitzgerald KC and Mark Summers KC made clear, and the judges appeared to acknowledge, the paperwork have been certainly redacted by Julian as he labored with media companions, comparable to The Guardian and The New York Occasions, when WikiLeaks revealed categorized army paperwork regarding the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, together with U.S. State Division cables. The unredacted variations have been first revealed by the web site Cryptome after two reporters from The Guardian revealed a ebook with the passcode to the paperwork, resulting in their publication by different on-line organizations.
Julian contacted the US authorities, as Summers advised the court docket, and spoke to them at size, in an try to forestall the unredacted cables from being revealed. Ultimately, the U.S. State Division selected to not act. U.S. officers have sheepishly admitted they haven’t any proof of anybody named within the paperwork being harmed. Different allegations — comparable to that Julian tried to assist Chelsea Manning, who leaked the paperwork, decode a password hash to entry paperwork or shield her identification, or that he sought to conspire with pc hackers — have additionally been debunked.
A report supplied to Choose Baraitser by a U.S. army forensic professional discovered that even when Manning was in a position to decode the password hash (which neither she nor anybody at WikiLeaks ever did) it might not have supplied entry to paperwork, it might not have supplied her with anonymity and it might not have given her entry to paperwork which she didn’t have already got. The professional additionally described that somebody with Manning’s technical information, talent and expertise, in addition to her lawful entry to High Secret supplies, would have recognized this. However these Kromberg-inspired canards are all of the U.S. has, so it makes use of them.
By the top of the day, it appeared seemingly that, most likely by April, since requested written briefs should be was the judges in March, the 2 judges will allow an enchantment on at the very least just a few of the factors. It will, conveniently for the Biden administration — which I anticipate doesn’t need to tackle the contentious situation of extraditing Julian whereas fueling the genocide in Gaza — imply that any extradition would happen after the election.
The 2-day listening to was Julian’s final likelihood to request an enchantment of the extradition choice made in 2022 by the then British dwelling secretary, Priti Patel and of lots of the rulings of District Choose Vanessa Baraitser in 2021. If Julian is denied an enchantment he can request the European Court docket of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a keep of execution underneath Rule 39, which is given in “distinctive circumstances” and “solely the place there may be an imminent danger of irreparable hurt.” However it’s attainable the British court docket may order Julian’s speedy extradition previous to a Rule 39 instruction or determine to disregard a request from the ECtHR to permit Julian to have his case heard by the court docket.
The CIA seeks Julian’s imprisonment within the U.S. due to the discharge of the paperwork often called Vault 7, which uncovered hacking instruments that let the CIA to entry our telephones, computer systems and televisions, turning them — even when switched off — into monitoring and recording gadgets. The formal extradition request doesn’t embrace prices based mostly on the discharge of the Vault 7 information, however the U.S. request additionally solely got here after the discharge of the Vault 7 materials. The CIA normally will get what it needs. However for the close to future I anticipate Julian to proceed to rot in HM Jail Belmarsh, the place he has been imprisoned for almost 5 years as he deteriorates bodily and psychologically. This gradual movement execution is intentional.
It’s exhausting to name any court docket ruling, aside from the dropping of the fees in opposition to him, a victory, however the longer he stays out of U.S. palms, the extra hope he has of regaining his freedom for finishing up an important investigative journalism of our era.
Prosecution lawyer Clair Dobbin KC, her lengthy blonde hair spilling out from underneath her official curled blonde court docket wig, clung to the Kromberg affidavit just like the holy grail, studying sections of it to the court docket.
“It’s not a part of the abnormal obligations of journalists to actively solicit and publish categorized info,” she advised the court docket, in one among her most obtuse statements.
The core prices, she stated, echoing Kromberg, have been “complicity in unlawful acts to acquire or obtain voluminous databases of categorized info;” the try to “acquire categorized info by way of pc hacking” and “publishing sure paperwork that contained the un-redacted names of harmless individuals who risked their security and freedom to offer info to the US and its allies, together with native Afghans and Iraqis, journalists, spiritual leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents from repressive regimes.”
In fact, as Julian’s protection identified, many of those folks have been informants, aiding and abetting U.S. warfare crimes, however the phrase “warfare crimes” was by no means talked about by the prosecution, magically erased from the case.
The prosecution, counting on Kromberg, insisted Julian was not a journalist, that what he revealed was “not within the public curiosity” and that the U.S. was not looking for his extradition on political grounds. They charged that “hostile overseas governments, terrorist teams, and felony organizations have exploited WikiLeaks disclosures in an effort to achieve intelligence for use in opposition to the US and for use in opposition to overseas nationals who supplied help to the US.” They stated that Osama bin Laden had requested the fabric posted by WikiLeaks and that the Taliban used the paperwork to establish informants.
I first encountered Kromberg — a fervent Zionist with ties to Israel’s far-right settler motion within the occupied West Financial institution — when within the wake of the assaults of 9/11, the U.S. authorities started imprisoning main Palestinian activists as “terrorists” and shutting down Palestinian charities comparable to The Holy Land Basis.
Kromberg served because the Grand Inquisitor in these witch hunts, going after quite a few Muslims together with Ahmed Abu Ali, in addition to my good friend, the Palestinian professor and activist Dr. Sami al-Arian.
Al-Arian endured a six-month present trial in Florida – not in contrast to Julian’s – that noticed the federal government’s case collapse in a mass of contradictions and innuendo. Through the trial the federal government referred to as 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to a whole lot of hours of usually inane cellphone transcriptions and recordings, revamped a 10-year interval, which the jury dismissed as “gossip.” Out of the 94 prices made in opposition to the 4 defendants, there have been no convictions. Of the 17 prices in opposition to al-Arian — together with “conspiracy to homicide and maim individuals overseas” — the jury acquitted him of eight and was held on the remaining. The jurors disagreed on the remaining prices by a depend of 10 to 2, favoring his full acquittal.
Following the acquittal, the Palestinian professor, underneath duress, accepted a plea cut price settlement that will spare him a second trial, saying in his settlement that he had helped folks related to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second largest resistance group in Gaza and the West Financial institution, with immigration issues. He was sentenced to 57 months in jail. Al-Arian, whereas imprisoned, was ordered by Kromberg to testify within the grand jury investigation of the Worldwide Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Virginia.
When al-Arian’s attorneys requested Kromberg to delay the switch of the professor to Virginia due to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Kromberg advised them “if they will kill one another throughout Ramadan they will seem earlier than the grand jury.” Kromberg, in line with an affidavit signed by al-Arian’s lawyer, Jack Fernandez, additionally stated: “I’m not going to place off Dr. al-Arian’s grand jury look simply to help in what’s turning into the Islamization of America.”
The federal government wasted $80 million attempting to convict Dr. al-Arian, who refused Kromberg’s demand that he testify and was charged with contempt. He was ultimately deported and lives in Turkey.
“In 2017, Kromberg prosecuted the case of a D.C. police officer accused of shopping for present playing cards in help of terrorism, prices that arose from a controversial sting operation,” The Intercept famous. “In court docket, Kromberg leveled eyebrow-raising allegations that the suspect was each a supporter of the jihadist group Islamic State in addition to the World Warfare II-era German Nazi Occasion on the grounds that he owned historic paraphernalia. Referring to an nameless on-line commenter who had referred to as the defendant “Muslim-Nazi scum,” Kromberg argued in court docket, “Whether or not or not that’s true, I don’t know the reply to that. However the level is that the Nazi stuff on this case may be very a lot associated to the, to the ISIS stuff.”
Kromberg has as deep an animus for Julian — and one suspects journalists — as he does for Muslims.
He raises the likelihood, a chance relatively foolishly repeated by the prosecution’s representatives in London, that Julian, as a overseas nationwide, may very well be denied First Modification protections if tried within the U.S. This prompted the judges to ask if that they had “any proof {that a} overseas nationwide is entitled to the identical rights [under the First Amendment] as a U.S. citizen,” a query Dobbin, fumbling, was unable to reply.
On the identical time, Kromberg has provided quite a few assurances, repeated by the prosecution on Wednesday, that Julian won’t be subjected to harsh jail circumstances. He referred to as the likelihood that Julian will probably be housed in a extremely restrictive supermax jail “purely speculative.”
Kromberg subpoenaed Manning in 2019 to testify earlier than a grand jury in an effort to get her to implicate Julian in “one depend of conspiracy to commit pc intrusion,” a cost which was totally debunked by professional testimony in 2020. Manning appeared earlier than the grand jury however refused to reply questions posed to her. She was held in civil contempt and incarcerated. She was launched after the grand jury expired. Kromberg then served her with a second subpoena to seem earlier than one other grand jury. Once more she refused to testify, main to a different spherical of incarceration and fines of $500 a day that have been raised to $1,000 a day after 60 days of noncompliance. In March of 2020 whereas being housed in a detention middle in Alexandria, Virginia, she was hospitalized after she tried to commit suicide.
The hassle to drive Manning to implicate Assange is central to the U.S. case. If they will persuade the court docket that Julian agreed to help Manning in cracking a passcode to entry a Division of Protection pc related to the Secret Web Protocol Community, used for categorized paperwork and communications, it might permit the federal government to cost Julian with an precise crime.
The deadly flaw within the case in opposition to Julian is that he didn’t commit against the law. He uncovered the crimes of others. Those that ordered and carried out these crimes are decided, irrespective of how they should deform the British and U.S. authorized methods, to make him pay.
