Australia

On 2nd March 2011 at 9.15am a meeting was held, organised by Andrew Laming (Liberal Party MP Bowman Qld) at Parliament House Canberra to allow federal parliamentarians who wished to attend, some insights into the matters of Julian Assange facing extradition from the UK to Sweden, and facing (subject to that extradition process) a possible trial in Sweden and another possible extradition to the USA thereafter.

Among others, MPs Andrew Laming, Malcolm Turnbull, Doug Cameron and Sarah Hanson-Young were in attendance, along with parliamentary staff members.

Three speakers made themselves available for oral presentations and questions: Greg Barns, barrister from Tasmania; former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin and Peter Kemp, solicitor from NSW. The latter two made written material available for the parliamentarians, reprinted below with their permission. Written material was also provided by Jennifer Robinson, UK counsel for the Julian Assange. That material is reprinted with permission here.

After short addresses by each of the three speakers, the meeting was opened for questions and summaries of each speaker in the proceedings appears below, after biographies.

Today Julian Assange faced his last extraditon hearing (apparently). We will be updating Court´s events in Belmarsh here. If you have related live information and audio or video feeds, please send to @wikileaks_world on Twitter.

After 1 hour and 45 minutes, the hearing is over. Judge orders Assange be extradited in Sweden. Assange has 7 days to appeal. For now, he will remain on bail. Lawyer Mark Stephens says they will appeal.

Full judgement is up here.

Relevant Twitter feed from Belmarsh, based on @federicacocco, @estheraddley, @c4marcus and @ravisomaiya:

c4marcus (12.13 GMT)
#Assange bailed until 2pm while issues around sureties are sorted out.
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federicacocco (12.12 GMT)
Judge: Assange will remain on bail
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federicacocco (12.10 GMT)
Robertson: To save time, we have 2 alternative sureties. One of the original sureties was Lord Evans but he couldn't be here today
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estheraddley (12.10 GMT)
Decision postponed on costs. On bail, defence offering two alternative suretors. Judge 'I'm afraid I don't know who these people are'
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(12.08 GMT)
Judge: I can't rule on costs today as Crown hasn't provided me with their total. #Assange
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federicacocco (12.05 GMT)
Judge: A schedule has not been made. For these purposes, the court has no longer jurisdiction after today.
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federicacocco (12.05 GMT)
Judge: In principle I would today make an order for costs in the amount I consider Judge. Today I'm not in a position to assess costs
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c4marcus (12.00 GMT)
Appears Crown aren't actually sure what their costs are, which is making dealing with that issue today a bit tricky. #Assange
.
federicacocco (11.58 GMT)
Judge to prosecution: If the appeal in successful you have a right to apply for the reimbursement of legal costs
.
federicacocco (11.56 GMT)

Paul Stephens, Australian ambassador to Sweden, last week formally requested assurances from Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask concerning the treatment of Julian Assange under Swedish law.

In a letter written on the day of final arguments in Assange's extradition hearing last Friday,

Stephens explained that Assange "has been detained in his absence" by a Swedish court on suspicions of having committed "a criminal offence".

"I wish to convey the Australian Government's expectation that, should Mr. Assange be brought into Swedish jurisdiction, his case would proceed in accordance with due process and the provisions prescribed under Swedish law," the Australian ambassador.

He emphasised as well that he expected Assange's case to adhere to "applicable European and international laws, including relevant human rights norms."

Ya no queda ninguna duda de que Wikileaks está siendo atacada: amenazas directas desde el Pentágono; llamamientos al ataque militar por parte de la vieja derecha neo-conservadora, – que incluye un intento de juzgarla como espía usando una vieja ley de 1917 ; los sonados boicots de Paypal, Moneybookers, Amazon y ahora incluso Apple; la reticencia del gobierno Australiano para defender a su ciudadano (Julian Assange), el rechazo de su residencia en Suecia sin explicación alguna por parte de las autoridades, y la lista crece.

The Australian attorney general's response to an open letter to the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard re Julian Assange

Julian Assange appears tomorrow, 7 February, at Westminster Magistrates Court for what has been announced as a two-day hearing, but judging from past extradition hearings in the UK, it is likely (with appeals) to take much longer, even a year or more, with the second-last word being that of the Supreme Court (formerly House of Lords) and then, under certain circumstances, the last word from the Home Secretary.

Readers should note that the procedure is not to judge the actual case on its merits as a criminal procedure but to judge it according to relevant sections of the UK Extradition Act. Such evidence of the alleged offences that has surfaced is only relevant indirectly, such as to prosecutorial abuses, not to the arguable merits of that evidence and a future case in Sweden if extradition occurs.

The Skeleton Argumentbegins with a challenge to prosecutor Ms Ny’s authority to issue an European Arrest Warrant (EAW). The case of Enander v. The Swedish National Police Board [2005] EWHC 3036 (Admin) is cited; it states that only the Swedish National Police Board is the authorised authority.

Julian Assange spoke today to a gathering in Melbourne organized by the WikiLeaks Defence Committee and the Australian Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, who presented Assange (via his lawyer) with his membership card in the union as a journalist.

His filmed address, played to a free-speech forum at Federation Square in Melbourne, touched on a number of WikiLeaks' guiding principles as well as on immediate political pressures on the organization and on Assange himself. Repeatedly, he united those two concerns, principled and practical:

We at WikiLeaks recognize the difference between secrecy and privacy. ... We believe in transparent power, not in transparent people.

Video of the address

Via @Asher_Wolf and @joycelowenstein on Twitter, and Greg Mitchell at The Nation

The Sydney Peace Foundation has announced that it will award a rare gold medal to WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange for his work on behalf of peace and justice worldwide. The Peace Medal, distinct from the foundation's annual Peace Prize, has been awarded to only three other individuals: the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and Japanese lay Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda.

Foundation director Stuart Rees said today:

"Peace from our point of view is really about justice, fairness and the attainment of human rights. ... Assange has championed people's right to know and has challenged the centuries-old tradition that governments are entitled to keep the public in a state of ignorance."

Prof Rees said Mr Assange's work was in the tradition of Tom Paine's Rights of Man and Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers - "challenging the old order of power in politics and in journalism".

"In the Paine, Ellsberg and Assange cases, those in power moved quickly to silence their critics even by perverting the course of justice."

While accepting an award for distinction in international law and affairs from the NY Bar Association, Geoffrey Robertson, who will defend Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at his extradition hearings in London in February, warned that the United States "risked irrevocable damage to its reputation if it pursued Assange" by "aiming the blunderbuss of its 1917 Espionage Act, death penalty and all, at a publisher who is a citizen of a friendly nation," according to the The Age: US told to drop Assange pursuit.

The Sydney Morning Herald writes:

Photos of the rally here.

The mood on the day was convivial, despite the heavy police presence and the memory of the December 14th's rally looming large, which saw some clashes between protesters and police as a result of the NSW police's refusal to issue a demonstration permit.

The thousand-strong crowd began their march from Town Hall, stopping by the headquarters of the U.S Consulate General at the MLC Centre for some civilized but impassioned shouting, before descending upon Hyde Park.

Speakers at the event included David Shoebridge, the NSW Greens MP; Wendy Bacon, Director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism; Marcus Strom, reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald and member of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance; and Antony Loewenstein, independent journalist.

Unfortunately I didn't take notes of the speeches as I was too busy taking pictures, but some of my recollections are as follows:

Bacon spoke of the need to place increased and continual emphasis on the contents of the cable leaks. Although the legal quandaries of Assange and Manning are of serious and global importance, she said , we should not let our focus slip from the scrutiny of those in power that Cablgegate allow us.

Antony Loewenstein pointed out that the hounding and prosecution of whistleblowers in the United States and Australia has increased exponentially during the Obama and Rudd administrations. Loewenstein also remarked on the hostile reaction to Wikileaks from traditional media quarters, noting that many in established media roles see themselves as 'players' and merely cosy up to power when they could be preventing unjust wars from gaining support instead.

The next rally is scheduled for 1pm Sunday February 6th, at Town Hall. Please see our Global Rallies page for upcoming event details.

Common law conspiracy is an agreement by two or more to do an unlawful act, or to do a lawful act by unlawful means. The actus reus (guilty act) is the agreement itself. The mens rea (guilty mind) is the intention to carry out the unlawful act. Another way of putting it is that there must be a "meeting of the minds" to commit the unlawful act.

It does not matter that the conspiracy was not carried out, liability for common law conspiracy arises simply from the the agreement.

It goes almost without saying, that to avoid First Amendment protection of a hypothetical Espionage case (and I will leave those arguments to US constitutional lawyers), conspiracy appears to have a much greater prospect of success for the DOJ, provided evidence is forthcoming that can satisfy all the required elements of conspiracy.

Extradition 3

Backtracking a little from the UK’s Extradition Act (in the Extradition 1 post) it is necessary to understand that the origin of that legislation comes from the European Arrest Warrant (“EAW”) regime in turn based on the Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States.(Pdf)

It is also necessary to understand that where interpreting legislation like the UK’s Extradition Act (that will be applied in Assange's hearing) and if finding ambiguity or uncertainty, resort can be made--ordinarily to parliamentry second reading speeches in countries like Australia for example
—to examining, in this case, that very document of the Council Framework Decision.

The Preamble to the Council Framework Decision states in part:

The Age reports that the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance in Australia have waived Julian Assnge's fees for a year.

Australia's media union has waived Julian Assange's fees for a year after MasterCard cancelled his credit card. ...

Louise Connor, the union's Victorian secretary, said Assange had been a union member since 1997. She said Assange had not breached the journalists' code of ethics and that he continued to protect his sources and publish in the public interest.

Agence France-Presse announced that Le Monde will name Assange "Man of the Year" in a weekly supplement on Friday.

Visitors to the newspaper's website voted in favor of Assange with 56 percent backing him for the honor, compared to 22 percent for jailed Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and 6.9 percent for American Facebook President Mark Zuckerberg.

Crikey readers have also chosen Assange for Person of the Year with a 56.4% vote, 38.6% more than the second-placed Bob Brown, whose Greens party also had a big 2010.

"WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange is set to become a member in good standing of the Australian journalists' union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA).

"ACTU president Ged Kearney will present a membership card to Mr Assange's Australian lawyer, Rob Stary, at a ceremony in Melbourne this morning.

...

'Julian Assange has been a member of the Media Alliance for several years. Clearly, with banking corporations freezing his accounts, his situation is quite extraordinary,' [Victorian MEAA branch secretary Louise Connor] said in a statement.

'We've drawn up a new union card for him and offer him the full support of his union and professional association.'"

Read more:

The Juice Media Rap News team has released Episode 6, Cablegate: The Truth is Out There, their third news satire episode focusing on the Wikileaks debate. Featuring portrayals of Hilary Clinton and Alex Jones and an increasing sophistication, this is a highly entertaining and thoughtful six minutes which Wikileaks has posted on their site as well.

As the Australian Federal Police inquiry announced its finding that neither Julian Assange nor Wikileaks have broken any Australian laws, the Australian Labor Party finds its public support slipping. According to an article in The Age, the opposition has overtaken the government for the first time since the federal election in August. Support for the coalition is up four per cent since the start of December, and support for the government is down four per cent. According to The Age:

The poll was conducted at the height of the WikiLeaks controversy, fuelled by Prime Minister Julia Gillard's assertion that the actions of Australian Julian Assange, the web site's founder, were illegal.

In another article today The Age answers Prime Minister Julia Gillard attacks on Wikileaks by stating:

Ms Gillard cannot credibly claim that the Australian people did not need to know the contents of these cables. And she should be assured that The Age will keep publishing them.

It's taken a while before some detailed information has come to light on the arguments presented by prosecutor and defence at the bail hearing yesterday.

The Telegraph reports:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8202524/WikiLeaks-Ju...

Earlier, during the two hour long hearing, the court was told that the “strength” of the evidence was poor.

His legal team argued that particularly the rape allegation was wrong and if the case was tried in Britain the case would not be classified as such a crime.

This refers or alludes to, apparently, the rape allegation being in the nature of a relatively minor sexual molestation in which case it seems to me, it then doesn't fit within the 12 month European Arrest Warrant system requirement of an offence where the maximum sentence must be 12 months or more for extradition to be valid. If in the UK such an alleged rape evidence was prima facie (on the face of it) low category molestation, per UK law, attracting less than 12 months custodial sentence, then it would not appear to qualify as an extraditable offence.

New rallies in support of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have been announced as follows. For the full list of current rallies, please see our Events and protests page.

UNITED STATES

San Francisco: Thursday, December 16th, 4pm - 6pm (updated time)
Location: British Consulate (1 Sansome St at Market)
Event page: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/13/18666433.php
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=110765495662010

GERMANY

Hamburg: Sunday, December 19, time TBA
Location: To be announced
Organizer website: http://wirsindwl.wordpress.com
Event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=13524947986567

AUSTRALIA

Hobart: Saturday, January 8, 12pm
Location: To be announced

Sydney: Saturday, January 15, 1pm
Location: Sydney Town Hall
Contact: Patrick on 0422 028 113
Event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163029660407190

CANADA

Calgary: Saturday, January 15, 2pm-5pm
Location: University of Calgary, outside the social sciences building
Organizer: Pirate Party of Canada
Organizer website: http://www.pirateparty.ca/
Event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=174214409267004

There may be many unintended consequences of the race to prosecute Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. But as he faces extradition to Sweden, where he is accused of rape, one of the more eccentric side effects has already become clear: the rise to prominence of the European arrest warrant.

This legal instrument has been controversial since it was introduced in 2003, creating everyday injustices; but rarely has anyone outside the small group of lawyers that handles cases really cared. Now followers of the WikiLeaks story wonder how Assange could be extradited with so few questions asked. Why, for example, can our prisons detain someone (Assange is currently on remand in Wandsworth prison) for an offence under Swedish law that does not exist in British law? And how can a judge agree to an extradition without having seen enough evidence to make out a prima facie case?

The 2003 Extradition Act originated in an EU decision agreed just one week after 9/11. It was sold to voters as a way of ensuring cross-border cohesion in prosecuting suspects wanted across Europe for terrorism and serious crime. The level of cohesion in criminal justice systems across Europe, the argument went, and their common obligations under the European convention on human rights, provided a sufficient basis of trust that an arrest warrant by an EU country could be agreed by the UK with little scrutiny.

It's been downhill from there. Around three people per day are now extradited from the UK, and there is little to suggest that the majority are terrorists or serious criminals. In fact those involved in the process agree that many of the cases are "trivial".