Part 9: GaslightingAssange, Straightjackets and Equality Before the Law
Handicapping Assange’s Legal Defence. This is not fair.
Let’s Talk Straightjackets:
Straightjackets are a piece of wardrobe that were once used in insane asylums to bundle a human, thereby handicapping that person into a double arm amputee. They were designed to prevent a psychiatric patient from using their arms or hands to either prevent self harm or escape. Later straightjackets became a novel wardrobe item in magicians’ bag of tricks, (think Houdini). My thesis: The Assange case is a perfect example of legal straightjacketing. The primary agent of this is Britain, who is colluding with the US, Sweden, Ecuador and Australia to handicap Assange and his legal team in a GaslightingAssange + Team effort to make it near impossible to mount an effective defence against US extradition and prosecution.
Assange is in a straightjacket, unable to defend himself against a superpower with millions of dollars and an army of employees who work full-time to destroy him and his legacy. He is disconnected from the internet and at the mercy of Belmarsh prison for access to persons, tools, documents, video conferencing and phone calls. Consequently, his lawyers are also in straightjackets unable to call, text, email or meet with him on an as-needed basis to advance his defence. They too are at the mercy of Belmarsh, judges, supervising judge Arbuthnot (with a public conflict of interest bias) and the UK government.
This analogy is apt on a few levels. The GaslightingAssange efforts aim to make Assange look insane or paranoid when he is actually quite sane. It is also reminiscent of Punitive Psychiatry methods used by Russia to crush political dissidents. China is a hallmark of human rights abuses and knows well the efficacy of intimidating, harassing and even murdering human rights lawyers who express dissent against its leadership.
Methods:
Lack of Access to Lawyers
Assange’s restricted access to his lawyers and documents started when he was in the Ecuadorean embassy when new protocols for his asylum were implemented. The protocols not only punished Assange for being a refugee/ asylee, they punished his lawyers, family, colleagues and friends. For example, after the protocols were imposed, all visitors surrendered personal devices and documents (phones, dictaphones, mini recorders, cameras, passports, memory sticks and legal documents) which were then harvested for data, metadata, ID numbers, passwords and private information. Each visitor’s phone was confiscated, copied and an extensive violation of privacy (“privacyraid” or privacy raid) was completed. Therefore visitors, including Pamela Anderson, Glenn Greenwald, lawyers, doctors, philosophers and journalists could launch a could make a legal case collectively against Ecuador, the firms Ecuador hired for security and even the U.S. for unlawful search and seizure of their private information. A class action lawsuit for this blatant Privacy Raid (PrivacyRaid) would draw attention to the brazen breach of their human and civil rights as well as Assange’s, in order to hold Ecuador, Spain, David Morales and the USA accountable.
Another aspect to legal interference is the psychological turmoil it puts Assange into. He has had ample time to prepare his defence against US charges, but the UK has actively interfered with his access to basic tools and persons to do so. If he were released on bail, he would have access to what he entitled to: computer, documents, relative quiet, free access to his lawyers and some privacy for meetings w lawyers. The primary purpose of keeping Assange in a COVID infested prison is to severely limit his ability to defend himself, break him down psychologically and cut him off from supports and family.
Theft and Probable Tampering of Devices
It’s important to note that all of Assange’s belongings within the embassy were surrendered to the United States following his expulsion about a year ago. The US is in possession of material including manuscripts, legal papers, medical records and electronic equipment.
His camera(s) with videos of his children’s birth along with laptops, memory sticks, paperwork, legal notes, books and personal effects are in US custody. It was a heist of a treasure trove of intelligence information for the US intelligence apparatus (Dep’t of Justice, Defence, CIA etc.). The US has stolen the playbook of Assange’s legal defence and can now blackmail anyone who is viewed on his camera. It’s a nightmare. There is no means by which to remedy this seizure and use of legal and personal information to thereby return power to Assange or his legal team to make it a fair dual before the US courts. A fair trial in the US has been preempted. Ecuador handed over his entire legal defence to the US which it knew was pursuing him. This happened prior to the 17 additional charges being added to the original US computer intrusion charge.
According to the Defend Wikileaks site, run by his lawyers, 20 May 2019 (in part):
Three weeks before the U.S. deadline to file its final extradition request for Assange, Ecuadorian officials are travelling to London to allow U.S. prosecutors to help themselves to Assange’s belongings.
[Neither Assange, nor his lawyers, nor U.N. officials have been permitted to be present […]during the illegal seizure of his property which has been “requested by the authorities of the United States of America”.. The chain of custody has already been broken.] sic
The seizure is formally listed as “International Assistance in Criminal matters 376–2018-WTT requested by the authorities of the United States of America”. The reference number indicates […] Ecuador’s formal cooperation with the United States was initiated in 2018.The material includes two manuscripts, as well as his legal papers, medical records and electronic equipment. The seizure of his belongings violates laws that protect medical and legal confidentiality and press protections.
[T]he UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy, [Joe Cannataci…] asked to be present to monitor Ecuador’s seizure of Assange’s property. Ecuador refused the request, despite the fact that since 2003, Ecuador has explicitly committed itself to granting unimpeded open invitations for UN [officials] to investigate any aspect of their mandate in Ecuadorian jurisdiction.
The seizure and transfer of Mr. Assange’s property to the U.S. is the second phase of a bilateral cooperation that in January and February saw Ecuador arranging U.S. interrogations of past and present Ecuadorian diplomats posted to the embassy of Ecuador in London while Mr. Assange was receiving asylum. The questioning related to the U.S. grand jury investigation against Assange and WikiLeaks. As part of phase one of the cooperation, the United States also asked Ecuador to provide documents and audiovisual material of Assange and his guests, which had been gathered during an extensive spying operation against Assange inside the embassy.
On Friday, President Lenin Moreno initiated a state of emergency that suspends the rights of prisoners to “inviolability of correspondence, freedom of association and assembly and freedom of information” through Executive Decree 741.
Baltasar Garzon, international legal coordinator for the defence of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, said:
“It is extremely worrying that Ecuador has proceeded with the search and seizure of property, documents, information and other material belonging to the defence of Julian Assange, which Ecuador arbitrarily confiscated, so that these can be handed over to the the agent of political persecution against him, the United States. It is an unprecedented attack on the rights of the defence, freedom of expression and access to information exposing massive human rights abuses and corruption. We call on international protection institutions to intervene to put a stop to this persecution.”
Lawyer Aitor Martinez, whose confidential legal papers were [copied] by embassy workers as part of the spy operation against Mr. Assange said:
“Ecuador is committing a flagrant violation of the most basic norms of the institution of asylum by handing over all the asylee’s personal belongings indiscriminately to the country that he was being protected from–the United States. This is completely unprecedented in the history of asylum. The protecting country cannot cooperate with the agent of persecution against the person to whom it was providing protection.
Ecuador has now also refused a request by the UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy, , to monitor and inspect the cooperation measure. Ecuador’s refusal to cooperate with the UN Special Rapporteur defies the entire international human rights protection system of the United Nations. Ecuador will from now on be seen as a country that operates outside of the system of safeguards of rights that defines democratic countries.”
Ecuadorian defence lawyer, Carlos Poveda, said:
“… the defence has challenged the execution of this measure. All applications have been rejected. …Without justification, and absent of all legal criteria, the measure shows the interest in obtaining information that the United States can use to proceed with its flagrant persecution. Ecuador has hinted that it too intends to proceed with investigations. To date our criminal complaints of espionage against Julian Assange remain unprocessed, despite the gravity of the facts reported.”
It is certain that a group of Western democratic countries have been denying Assange due process while simultaneously bragging about their country’s stellar reputation for justice, due process and legal rigor. Professor Nils Melzer, UN Rapporteur on Torture has spoken about this numerous times with respect to the Assange case.
Specific Legal Handicaps and Interference
- Extreme interference in the legal confidentiality between a client and his/her lawyers. There is an ongoing investigation into the highly invasive surveillance of Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy under the President Moreno, who ultimately extracted as much information from him and about him as possible before betraying him to the US. Britain has conducted this interference despite condemnation from legal bodies, human rights organizations and the United Nations. The investigation into the spying and extortion case is ongoing in Spain. Ecuador should also be investigated for it role in this operation, which I called “coercive surrender”.
I wrote about the coercive surrender techniques deployed by Ecuador against Assange effective October 2018 which transformed his refuge residence at the embassy into prison conditions. Since then, he has effectively been imprisoned, not simply arbitrarily detained. When a person is in a prison, it is the prison guards / warden that command all aspects of a prisoner’s living conditions: food, water, visits, internet access, sleep, noise and physical environment (heat, cold, air quality). At that moment, the prisoner is at the mercy of the guards and warden. S/he is cut off from society. Their movements are restricted and closely surveilled and monitored. Monitoring involves verbal and non-verbal measures including speech, gestures and mood assessments. I likened Assange’s stay in the embassy to being admitted into a Russian psych ward where political dissidents were housed for disrupting a dictator’s agenda.
2. Extreme interference in the scheduling and actual face time, phone time and computer communications between a client and his/her lawyers. Prisoners don’t call the shots when it comes to daily routines, communications or access to the outside world. Assange has been in isolation for the better part of 2 years, including isolation in the embassy and solitary confinement at Belmarsh maximum security jail.
3. Any face time, phone time, written (paper and email) communications are intercepted or blocked by Belmarsh and likely British and US intelligence agencies. Mail is intercepted. Assange’s legal documents were confiscated after the first day of the US extradition hearing Feb. 24, 2020. Appointments with lawyers are scheduled then cancelled. Assange was placed in a cry-room-fish-tank unable to confidentially communicate with his legal team during the 4 day extradition hearing Feb. 24 to 26th, 2020. Notes that Assange wanted to pass to his lawyers during the hearing were intercepted by security guards. Any meeting room where Assange conferred with his legal team was bugged. It has been impossible for his lawyers to establish effective, confidential or reliable communications with Assange for almost 2 years.
4. Deadlines for the next stage of legal proceedings are ossified, require lengthy debate in court hearings, put Assange’s legal team in a begging posture and increase the ambient and tangible stress level of the legal team. I have likened it to a freight train running constantly in the mind of Assange and I presume it has the same effect on his legal team. The lack of flexibility in the legal proceedings seems to have been dictated by the US prosecution team rather than the UK, a supposed sovereign state exercising its best version of justice. There has been a constant pressure on the defence team to prepare a complex case with very little time and lots of unforeseen, tangential legal arm wrestles. The burden of defending Assange is compounded by the burden to repair the inequalities and obstacles that arise during the normal course of any other case.
This week, there was a hopeful exception to a strict schedule of extraditing Assange (ie. predetermined delivery of Assange) in a reverse of the policy “Keep calm and COVID on,” which brought some relief to an impossible scheduling of the US extradition hearing. It is good to know that the UK could show some flexibility and sanity amid the global pandemic.
5. Legal improvisations whereby laws are used to establish the basis of a US extradition case, but then the UK and US prosecutors exclude the defence team from referencing clauses contained therein which would collapse the case. Also, the European extradition process was improvised to exclude Assange from benefitting when it was revised for proportionality balances.
6. International coordination among Western nations intentionally grinding down Assange’s legal budget, the energies of his legal team and forwarding the invoices to the US (likely but unverified) who was/is picking up the tab for Sweden, Ecuador (Moreno government), Britain (UK) and Australia. Money is no object. There is no credit limit on the credit card called the Assange case. The price tag on strategically incapacitating Assange is limitless in the eyes of the United States.
How do these fall under my term “GaslightingAssange”? Whenever a judge or UK Minister of Parliament speaks about the Assange case, s/he always references how fair, just, rigorous and world-class the UK justice system is and guaranteeing rhetorically that all of Assange’s rights to due process, equality before the law, medical needs and human rights will be respected once he surrendered, and then was abducted, into UK police custody. In fact the opposite has happened. The UK has attempted to use its judicial reputation as an invisibility cloak to cover up its corruption, human rights abuse and perversion of legal process in the Assange case. Britain actually stacked the deck against him and his lawyers in an awe inspiring legal manoevre that almost went undetected. I’ve also overlaid the schema of the British caste system onto the Assange case in so far as Assange has become an “untouchable” and “fair game” for public abuse, humiliation, deviation from due process and judicial prejudice.
To put Assange and his legal team in a figurative set of straightjackets is to
- frustrate them
- humiliate them in public, undermine their professional confidence
- undermine their reputations
- squander their time
- subjugate them by denying them the ability to fulfil their professional obligation to defend Assange
- subjugate and handicap them in future UK cases, essentially for defending a person they don’t like and want to continue abusing with impunity
- gaslight them and other lawyers to deter them from defending people like Assange in the future
It is imperative to focus attention on the legal handicapping of Assange, his lawyers and even the legal colleagues who are watching this train wreck of a case roll off the rails. The ancilliary effect for legal observers, the United Nations and human rights organizations is to deter them from defending an Assange-esque figure in the future. Their ability to flex their influence or legal muscle becomes flaccid in the context of this case. It is therefore urgent to put laser-acuity and attention onto the Gaslighting of Assange, of his legal team, the United Nations, the public and human rights organizations in order to protect human rights into the future.
Let’s get Assange out of this straightjacket stat! Ditto for his legal team. It’s possible. Just watch Houdini do it here.