*RC3-Music*
Herald: So here with us, Stefania Maurizi from Il Fatto Quotidian, she's an
investigative journalist, and Nils Melzer, who's the UN special rapporteur on
torture, and they are here tonight to dissect the Julian Assange and WikiLeaks
case. And so, the stage is yours.
Nils Melzer: Yes, thank you. Stefania Maurizi: Absolutely, we are very
lucky to have the UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer tonight, so we have
many questions that I expect. Question for you, and I hope you will have many
questions for us as well. So let's start Nils, about this case because I suppose
you have hundreds of cases every year. And why do you focus on these with many cases
dealt with serious torture and all sorts of serious human rights violations?
Nils: Well, thanks Stefania, for the question because I think that's what many
people ask themselves. You know, how are you focusing on a person who's locked up
or was locked up at the time in an embassy with a cat and a skateboard? How can it be
torture, right? And to be honest with you, that's what I thought, in the beginning
because you're right, I received 10 to 15 requests of individuals, either by the
victims themselves, that have been tortured, or are exposed to the risk of
torture, or their lawyers or family members or NGOs. So, I get about 15 cases
per day on my desk and I can do maybe one. So, I really have to choose quite quickly.
And I remember I was writing up a report for the United Nations in December 2018,
so that I would have been actually three years ago, and I had this little message
coming up on my screen saying Julian Assange's lawyers are asking for your
protection. And I immediately have this emotional reaction of, Oh no, not this
one. Isn't this, this hacker and rapist and, you know, traitor? And I'm not going
to be manipulated by this guy. And so, I swept it off my screen and I continued
working on my report, and it took me three months until I, actually ... I got
contacted again by his lawyers in March 2019, about the month before he was
expelled from the embassy. And they sent me some medical reports from an
independent doctor, a US doctor, who was specialized in examining torture victims,
who had visited Guantánamo and so on, and she had visited him in the embassy, not as
an Assange activist at all. And she and she came to the conclusion, in that
medical opinion, that the Convention against Torture was being violated, that
his living conditions were inhumane. And I thought that if a person like this comes
to that conclusion, I probably better have a look at this case and feel
Stefania: sorry for you. Let's name her because she's very authoritative.
Nils: Yeah, it is Dr. Sandra Crosby is her name. So, she's one of the first doctors
... independent doctors ... who visited Guantánamo and really someone who is very
highly regarded, and impartial. So, I looked at this, but I also received some
other evidence. And you know, Stefania, you have a very important role in making
that available through your Freedom of Information litigation, where you received
the release of some of the email correspondence between the Swedish
Prosecution Service and the UK Prosecution Service. Because at the base of the
Assange case in the beginning was these allegations of rape in Sweden and so on.
And this correspondence really cast some doubt on the legitimacy of this
prosecution, which I had never doubted before. And so, I started realizing
that I had a lot of prejudice against Assange, but I didn't really know what the
evidence was. And the more I looked into this case, the more I saw that it doesn't
hold up. There is really no evidence for this narrative. And I decided, well, I
think there's something wrong here. I can't rely on the governments. I can't
rely on what I find on the internet, just like this. And so, I really have to go and
look at this case myself and have decided to visit Julian Assange in London. I asked
for permission to visit him in the embassy. And as soon as I asked for
permission three days later they expel him, I might have sped it up. Also, I
fear, although we know today that this expulsion had been planned for months
before, but all of a sudden, everything went really, really fast. They expelled
him, and he was arrested by the British and put in a high security prison in
Belmarsh in London, where I visited him about three weeks ... four weeks later on
the 9th of May 2019 with two specialized doctors. I didn't expect to find torture,
to be quite honest with you. I expected to find a man who is, you know, a bit
stressed, who is in bad health because he's been in a room in the embassy for six
years and more. And that, he needed some medical treatments. I would make some
recommendations, and I was sure we are in Britain now. You know, he's in British
hands. This is a rule of law country. There's going to be due-process. They're
not going to extradite him to the US, and it's fine. But then what I realized is how
the authorities reacted to my comments and to my requests is that they didn't want to
engage in a discussion on this case. They didn't want to listen to my assessment.
And both of the doctors that I took with me are very specialized people. One is the
psychiatrist, the other is the former president of the World Forensic Society. I
mean, he is a very established forensic doctor. They've been examining torture
victims for 30 years, and both of them, independently from each other, came to the
conclusion that Julian Assange showed all the symptoms that are typical for a victim
of psychological torture and psychological torture is not some kind of a light form
of torture. It is really extremely grave destabilization of the identity through
isolation, constant threat, constant stress, constant also confusion through
arbitrariness and the defamation, humiliation. All these elements together
are deliberately employed to destroy a person's stability and identity, and we
could actually measure neurological damage on Julian Assange already and cognitive
impairments that would, due to that constant stress and harassment that he was
exposed to in the embassy already and has been exposed to since then. So, we came to
a clear assessment. This person has been tortured, and when I confronted the
authorities with this, they basically shut down. They didn't want to engage with me
in a discussion. And the same happened with Sweden because Sweden had contributed
to this, and Ecuador and the US, all of these countries basically refused to
engage in a dialog with me on this. And now I have to point out I'm mandated by
states. I mean, I am the UN special rapporteur on torture. I'm not an NGO
person. I'm not an activist, I am not a journalist, and I am not belittling that.
I think that all of this is very important. But when you talk to states, as
someone who's been appointed by states to do exactly that, to transmit allegations
of torture to them, you would expect them to at least engage in a dialog. But they
refused. And when I saw that, I was sure now something's wrong here, and I started
really investigating this case. I looked deeply into the Swedish case. I looked
into the US case, where we saw that the US is accusing Assange of espionage. And
I really started digging into this case. And the more I did, the more dirt came
out, and not on the side of Assange, but on the side of the governments. And that's
really a long answer to your first question, why did I take on this case?
Because I felt well, if we have a case of torture in a rule-of-law, western
democracy like Sweden and Britain, and as the United Nations rapporteur, I cannot if
I have evidence for this, and I went there with two specialized doctors to look at
this. I mean, it's consolidated. I, you know, by law they have an obligation now
to investigate this and to, you know, to compensate him and prosecute those who are
culpable and so on. There is no discussion. But if democracies can afford
to simply ignore this, well, what does this mean for our society? And that was
the first thing. And the second thought was, and by the way, what does this mean
for press freedom? You know, what does this mean And I've never been a press
freedom specialist. But, I thought, well, here we have a person who is being
persecuted for the fact that he has disclosed, not even stolen, but he's
received and disclosed, published true information that proved serious crimes for
government officials, torture, murder, I mean, horrible stuff. I mean, very serious
crimes. If this becomes a crime, to bring the evidence for other crimes, and we see
that those criminals are not being prosecuted. But the witness, basically,
who informs the public, is being prosecuted and threatened with one hundred
and seventy-five years in prison. What does this mean for people like you,
Stefania? You know, who are the investigative journalists, and if people
like you no longer can work... What does this mean for all the rest of us in
society? What does it mean? Do we have a right to know what the governments are
doing with the power that we give to them in a democracy, with the tax money we pay
to them? Or does it become a crime if we ask the wrong questions? I mean, this is
really, that's why this is so important. Assange isn't as important as any other
victim of torture. You know, they're all the same. But the case is a precedent case
that is of enormous importance for the functionality of democracy and the rule of
law. Stefania: Absolutely. Absolutely. You have
a book which is coming out in February and during the investigation on the case, I
was really impressed by the chapter on collateral murder, your analysis of the
brutal attack on civilians. And you analyze it from your point of view as an
expert on human rights law. I would like to ask you to do a quick analysis for our
public, to explain where the war crimes are involved. What are your conclusions
and so on. Nils: Right? OK, I'll quickly show the
book just so people can see it. So, it comes out in February, and it's true that,
you know, in the beginning, I explain my own role, obviously the role of WikiLeaks.
But this collateral murder video was a very important publication. The first big
publication of WikiLeaks is this video, that was recorded by an attack helicopter
in Iraq, a US attack helicopter. It's a standard, you know, a tele-lens camera,
and it shows how... How those helicopters are circling over Baghdad, and we see
people walking in the streets, and then you can hear the radio communication, and
the helicopters basically report that we have, you know, several people with
AK-47s, which is a form of an automatic rifle, a Kalashnikov. And they ask for
permission to fire and then put on the image. We cannot see armed people, really.
In the beginning, to admit the truth, we can see two people in a group of about 20
who might be carrying a weapon. But then also, we have to know that at the time, in
2007, when this was recorded in Iraq, in Baghdad, the US occupying forces had
authorized the Iraqi population to own kalashnikovs and to carry them, you know,
to keep them at home, especially to protect themselves from the looting.
Because when after the invasion of the British and the US, the rule of law broke
down in Iraq, and they needed people to be able to defend themselves. So, they were
actually allowed to carry that type of weapon. And so, they (the helicopter gun-
ship) received permission to fire. And then what we can see is that a group of
about 10 people is just being massacred. They are in civilian clothing, they are
walking relaxed on the street. So, they're clearly not preparing any attack or
something. We know that there is some, some US soldiers from the of radio
communication. We can tell that there is some US soldiers on the ground somewhere
close to there, but nobody is preparing an attack. You know, and so we see how these
10 people are being massacred. And then we hear those nasty comments by soldiers
like, you know, "good shooting" and "you see these bloody bastards" and these types
of remarks. But the most troubling thing is that then we have the helicopter makes
a couple of circles, and they report what they see on the ground, all the dead
bodies and then some of the wounded people who are crawling around and from the
conversations, we understand that the soldiers know that it's prohibited to
attack wounded people. And I want to, you know, I've been a law of armed conflict
expert on the use of force for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
I've been teaching this at university level for more than 10 years.I have
analyzed hundreds of combat operations as an expert. So, I can easily see that these
soldiers are aware that they cannot lawfully attack those wounded people and
that also in the law of war, you cannot attack people who rescue the wounded as
long as they're not fighting themselves. And then we see a minibus coming with
civilians trying to rescue this man. And this man we're talking about is a wounded
journalist, is a Reuters journalist, who was wounded in that attack. And the
soldiers, the US soldiers asked for permission to fire on these people, and
they received permission. And then they basically. You know, massacre, the wounded
person and the rescuers with the machine gun and there is even in the minibus, the
two children of the driver that are gravely wounded. So, I mean, all of this,
this is a clear war crime. When you deliberately attack a wounded person who's
no longer participating in fighting or rescue personnel, that's only trying to
rescue someone, that is, without any question, a war crime. In the first scene,
I think we have to be fair that these helicopters are circling at about one and
a half miles distance. The video we see is recorded by a tele-objective lens. So, the
soldiers are not that close. When they look out of the window, they cannot see
any details. It is too far away. So, they have to rely exclusively on that picture.
And you also have to be fair that they can see this picture only once in real time,
and they have to decide immediately. They cannot, like us, rewind it 100 times and
watch it again from the armchair. So, all of this being said, though, you know the
first attack, I think in the best case, it's a very sloppy mistake. And I don't,
you know, I think it's already this crosses the line to a war crime, but this
would be for a court to decide. But the second attack, where they attack a clearly
wounded person and from the conversations we know that the soldiers know that, you
know, they say, OK, he's wounded, and then they're saying, you know, someone is
coming to pick them up and picking up the weapons can we fire? The law of war is
very clear. This is absolutely prohibited and what happened there is a clear war
crime and the scandal is that everybody knows that the soldiers knew that. I mean,
the Department of Defense in the US knew that, the US government knew that, the
public knows it. I mean, it's obvious when you watched the film, but it's, and we
have video evidence, ... but nobody has ever been prosecuted for that. That's the
first scandal. The second scandal.. Stefania: Let me help you. Why no one has
prosecuted. Why there was no International Criminal Court investigation. Nothing.
Nils: Well because, the US is not party to the ICC treaty. Of course, they have not,
.... You know, they have made sure that no one can prosecute them for war crimes. And
also now, legally, any country in the world could, and not even could, but would
have to prosecute these people as soon as they are on their territory because war
crimes are so-called universal jurisdiction crimes, which means if I
commit a war crime anywhere in the world, no matter what nationality I am, no matter
where I am, the country where I am has to arrest me and to prosecute me or to
extradite me to a country that will prosecute me. That's what the Geneva
Conventions say. That's what the International Criminal Law says and not
only the ICC treaty, but actually even the Geneva Conventions that the US has
ratified. So, but what the reason is clear is a political reason because no one dares
to prosecute a US soldier. If the US doesn't do it. Now, to me, the most
troubling thing is that the US doesn't do it because it's in their interest to
prosecute people who violate the law of war. Because we know that the discipline
in an army diminishes very quickly when you tolerate people committing war crimes.
And so, it's very, very important for, and even for just the hygiene of the armed
forces, that they prosecute these things. Now, not to say, you know, that the
humanitarian reasons and the human rights of these people who have been murdered and
their families that don't receive compensation, and then it also means that
these types of operations proliferate. You know, if you don't stop it like this, this
becomes the normal modus operandi. And that's exactly what many veterans of the
Iraq War have said, that this is not collateral. Murder is not an exception.
This was the standard procedure. This happened every day, in that period. And
so, that's really a major scandal. But you know, the second thing I want to say is
the even bigger scandal is some people are being prosecuted. And that's the
whistleblower that actually leaked this information and the journalists who
published it. So, that is really turning the world of justice upside down when
murderers are walking free and the witness, you know, who witnessed the
murder or brings the (...). He would get one hundred and seventy-five years in
prison. That's enormous. That's a bit, ... that's more than any war criminal in The
Hague has ever received. That's what we're looking at, and, you know, when you were
asking, well, you know what, what is Assange actually being accused of? When
you look at the indictment, it's all about receiving this type of information and
publishing this type of information. That's what I mean, you tell me, but
that's what an investigative journalist does. No?
Stefania: Politically, absolutely. This is what we do on a regular, ... on a daily
basis. Nils: Yeah. And so now, if I ask you an
honest question, Stefania, if I gave you today a USB stick with "Collateral Murder
Video #2", and another 250,000 diplomatic cables, would you publish them? I mean, 10
years ago, you probably would have. Because at the time, even the New York
Times, The Guardian and the Spiegel and Le Monde and everybody, you know, wanted to
co-publish this together with Assange. But today? They're not even, they're not even
really reporting on what's happening here. And, you know, if I ask you, do you feel
intimidated by what's happening to Assange? Would you feel comfortable
publishing these things today? Stefania: I do feel really intimidated.
Nils: Yeah, Stefania: I think I would approach this
with serious, serious concern, ... Nils: Yup,
Stefania: of not being protected by anything at the end of the day because I
have seen, in the last 13 years which I have been covering and together in this
case, that Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks journalists have tried
everything. They have tried to use the laws. They have tried to ask for asylum.
They have tried to look for protection by the media community. They have tried
everything. And with the exception of the UN authorities, the U.N. Special
Rapporteur on Torture and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, they have
received no protection whatsoever. So, I would be terrified, honestly.
Nils: Yes. And I think this is the type of question we have to ask ourselves. It's
not about will Assange be extradited or not. Yes, it's important, but it's already
working. You see, the example has already been set for the last 10 years. This man
has not been free. He's been on the run from a country that's accusing him for
telling the truth about its crimes. That's really what's happening here because
nothing else that he's accused of has been proven and that they've tried hard.
They've invested millions in trying to create the narrative. But everything else
from rape to hacking to, you know, treason, all these things. There's not
that there's no proof whatsoever. So, all of this is constructed to push him into a
corner, but also to intimidate people like you. And I think that's that's what we
have to understand. That's the effect of this. Yes, it's on Assange and his health
and his person, and that's important for the individual. But my point of this being
a general, in the case of general importance, is proven by your reaction.
And you, I know, are one of the more courageous investigative journalists, and
you've been fighting, you know, the secrecy for very long through your FOIA
litigation that has been so valuable in producing, you know, evidence. And we know
that, you know, a lot of key evidence is still being kept secret by these states.
And so, that's what we're risking to lose, this access to the truth that is so
essential for democracy. Stefania: Absolutely. Definitely. You
know, we know that is precisely what they want, and that's why we had to fight hard
because it's about the society we want in the free allowed to go out to the .... If
we allowed them to go ahead with this persecution, with this extradition, they
will .... It will be the end of the press freedom ..., it would be the end of
investigative journalism and the right of the public to know. it's not just about
us, it's not just about the investigative journalism. It's about the public's right
to know. I mean, Nils: And I think it's important, you know, I know, that to many
people, this might sound alarmist. You know, oh, this is exaggerated. Oh, come
on, this is just Assange, and he's going to be prosecuted and everything's going to
be fine. No, you know, when you look in history, that's exactly how powerful
states have behaved and dictators, and you know, for creating dictatorships. You
know, you take someone, and you destroy their reputation. You accuse them of, you
know, stupid things and or even serious crimes, you know, but they cannot be
proven. And you destroy their reputation. And then when the whole public is
convinced that, you know, this is a bad guy. Then you set an example with "him".
On press freedom, but nobody cares about "him" because I think it's just him and
nobody likes him because his reputation has been destroyed. But the problem is the
precedent case can be applied to anybody, afterwards. And that's exactly what
they're trying to do. And I think it's very, very important that we are aware of
this. It's not whether you like or dislike Assange, it's whether you like or dislike
the rights that he has and that you have and that everybody else has, which is the
right of freedom of expression. And that's not just the freedom of expression is not
just the right to say anything you want and think anything you want, but also to
receive that information that the public has the rights under the freedom of
expression, to hear and to read, and to see the evidence of government misconduct.
And that's what they're trying to suppress. Now, if you say this is a
conspiracy theory, look, it's very obvious, the torture, the murder of
civilians, of journalists or collateral murder and other documents has been
proven. It's not something that the government has said is not true. No, they
have never, .... They have never claimed that anything is not true that WikiLeaks
has proven. So, actually by law, those officials have to be prosecuted, and they
should spend, you know, many years in prison. Some of them. So, but they will
say, but I received orders from up, and it goes higher up the chain of responsibility
doesn't end in the attack helicopter. It ends somewhere in a government building,
in a nice little office with or a big office, rather with thick carpets. And
that's what they're afraid of because the commander is responsible for this. So,
that's why they cut this, and they intimidate everybody, and they
criminalize. It's basically it's a re- classified information, and if you publish
it, you will be punished and re-classified for reasons of national security. But
that's not true. They're classifying it for their own impunity. That's what they
want to protect. And it's natural. You know, if you accuse someone of murder in
court, and you allow him to classify all the evidence against him and to make it a
crime to disclose it, he will do it, for sure. So let's be realistic, you know,
governments are not good or bad. They're just normal human beings. And if they make
a mistake, they want to cover it up like everybody else. So, that's the natural
behavior. That's why we really have to insist on transparency for the powerful.
You know, we have to insist on oversight on the separation of power. We have to
insist that it be treated as a serious crime to circumvent these checks and
balances because it threatens the very core of our society, of our democracy and
of our civil liberties. And when you look at the legal proceedings that Assange has
been exposed to, I'm not going to bore you with a lot of legal technicalities, but
I've really investigated every single legal proceeding from the Swedish
accusations or, you know, allegations of sexual misconduct where I was able to read
original documents because I do speak Swedish, and you know, luckily I had all
those documents that you also got to hand on it through the FOIA litigation. And I
don't know what happened between Assange and these women. But what I do know is
that the government in Sweden never cared about that. They clearly from the
beginning wanted to create a rape narrative and maintain it and to avoid,
you know, him getting a chance, a fair day in court to actually deal with this. The
narrative that he evaded these accusations that he was hiding in the embassy because
of the sexual allegations is false. He offered to come to Sweden. He wanted to
testify in this case, but he was afraid that the Swedish would send him to the
US without a legal proceeding, as they had done with other people before. And he
just wanted guarantees from them, and the Swedish didn't want to give those
guarantees, which is really something that I can tell from international experience.
That's a warning. If the country doesn't want to give you those guarantees, you
better not go there. Stefania: Yeah,
Nils: He was right not to go. And they really abused those legal institutions to
keep him in limbo, you know, suspected of rape, but unable to defend himself. And
so, his reputation suffered because of that. And then he continued, obviously
with, you know, the economic pressures on Ecuador once they had a new president,
Moreno. The US put Ecuador under pressure, and we have written evidence of Congress
writing to the president of Ecuador, saying, Look, we would be happy to support
you economically and to, you know, to help you bring up a country that the country's
situation, the economic situation to financially support you. But there is one,
not several, there's one problem, and that's the situation of Assange. And we
need him to be handed over, so we can start helping you. So, that, ... we have a
letter of October 2018 of US Congress to President Moreno. And from then on, it was
clear and Moreno was working together with the British and the US to expel him from
the embassy. So, that was done without any rule of law proceeding. You know, he had
official asylum, and it was just taken from him along with his nationality. He
had no right to access a court to have a lawyer defending him. It was just from one
hour to the other. He was expelled, and the UK behaved just the same way. When you
think the UK is the quintessential rule of law country, which I can, you know, this
was my conviction as a professor in the UK university. And then you see that we have
a judge who is insulting him publicly in a court hearing where Assange had said
nothing, except I plead not guilty. And then we have another judge who's in charge
for the first couple of months for the extradition procedure and her husband had
been exposed by WikiLeaks. I mean, it's there's a conflict of interest. It's just,
you know, even it's a perception of bias that you cannot afford in a democracy. And
then we have, you know, him being put in a high security prison. Although he's not
serving a sentence for two years, he's been in Belmarsh. He's not serving a
sentence. He's just being held there in extradition detention. And normally people
should be allowed to work and to be with their family and maybe to have an ankle
bracelet. Or they think Assange's case because he has sought asylum in the
Ecuadorian embassy before, maybe they put him in house arrest like they did with
Pinochet. But you will never. There's no legal basis to put someone in a high
security prison. They do this with him because they want to silence him because
they want to intimidate you, journalists. That's the reason. And you know, when you
see this happening..., Stefania: Let me stop you and ask you
something very, very serious, like the CIA attempt to kidnap or poisoning him, which
is, I mean, this received so little consideration. If we, ... I mean, I was
really upset about realizing how lethal it was, considering the legal process in the
UK. Nils: Absolutely. We've had we've had
indicators before we thought that the security company that was working for the
Ecuadorian Embassy to guard the Ecuadorian Embassy, U.C. Global was actually behind
the back of the Ecuadorian government cooperating with the CIA and, you know,
streaming video feeds from surveillance cameras, from the embassy to the CIA 24-7.
But not only that, we also had indicators before, former employees of that company
testifying in court that, you know, there were assassination plans for, you know,
against Assange by the CIA. And this was then confirmed also by this Yahoo
disclosure in September this year, where more than 30 agents or former agents of
the CIA allegedly confirmed that there were plans to kidnap or Assange to, you
know, disappear him into black sites or even to assassinate him was considered at
least, but then found to be too dangerous. But the plan was to poison him. Now, I
mean, I'll just take another case, Navalny, right, that everybody knows, you
know, and says that, allegedly, the Russian government tried to poison him.
Well, that's what we're talking about. But you know, it's the same thing. It's just
that in Nawalny's case, and rightly so, you know, everybody is is is protesting
and of the western governments are very courageously, you know, imposing sanctions
and so on. But when the same thing is being planned by the CIA against Assange,
nobody speaks out. And that's that's what I found, this kind of hypocrisy that we
have in Western governments is just so disappointing. It's scandalous because it
threatens the foundations of what our societies are. And if someone has
committed a crime, yes, arrest and try him, you know, bring the evidence or
acquit him. But that's that's the end of the story. But they don't know what to
accuse him of because he hasn't committed any crime. So, they invent these stupid
stories. You know, he's not feeding his cat, and he's playing football in the
embassy and all these stupid headlines that you see. I mean, the BBC, you know, I
mean, they're reporting on these types of things, but they're they're not, you know,
considerate enough about their own profession as journalists to report on
what's actually happening here, that this is about criminalizing investigative
journalism. This should be really at the heart of the mission of a BBC or a New
York Times to be very, very outspoken about this. And I'm convinced that if the
mainstream media, the main outlets in the Anglo-Saxon world, let's say the New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and the BBC, if they together deliberately
launched an effort to condemn this persecution on their front pages and the
main news hour, you know, for one week straight. This would be finished because
the government has nothing in their hands in terms of truth. All they can do is
orchestrate a secret trial in Alexandria, an espionage court where they tape the
doors and lock the windows and nobody is allowed to witness what's going on, and
then they condemn him for something and sentence him to 175 years in prison. And
nobody, even the defense counsel, doesn't have access to the evidence. I mean,
that's that's a show trial that's not a rule of law proceeding. And I think the
societies in the West and around the world, but they're talking about Western
democracies now. They deserve, you know, governments and judiciaries that respect
those principles and respect the law. And it's really very worrying. That's why I
put my whole professional weight and personal credibility into this case
because I think this is about our rights, it's about it's about the rights of our
children to know what their governments are doing with the money and the power
that they give to the governments. And if we allow it to become a crime to tell the
truth, we will be living in a tyranny that's not exaggerated.
Stefania: Absolutely. I mean, we read this about something we really care about. We
realized that this case is crucial, and we cannot lose it. We absolutely don't want
to lose it. Nils, let me ask you one last question, then we will ask for the public
asking question to ask. Well, this case is about Julian Assange, of course, and it is
all about the WikiLeaks journalists because they have at least (...), for now,
he's in prison, but they will be the next. Let's mentioned Sarah Harrison, for
example, the former WikiLeaks section editor, who flew to Hong Kong. (...) or
many, many others. Kristie Larson, Joseph Farrell. I have the Freedom of Information
case in the UK, and it is about these three WikiLeaks journalists former and
current WikiLeaks journalists. And Scotland Yard, is doing whatever it can to
deny me access to these documents using anti-terror laws again or for denying me
access to these documents. I have been litigating this case about the WikiLeaks
journalists and Julian Assange for over six years. So, what do you think is going
to happen in this case now? What's next? Nils: Well, I think the first thing I want
is to finish this case. Set a precedent. You know, with this man that most of the
public still somehow despises because they have been deceived and poisoned by this
narrative that has been created about him. But once this is done, clearly they will,
they will continue. This is not the end of it. This is the beginning of a new era
where journalists will be prosecuted for telling the truth about government
misconduct. Because then the precedent has been set. And you know, it's very
important as we speak and as we observe this case, all ready countries are
adapting their laws to this new future. We see that in Australia, we see that in the
UK, where the Official Secrets Act is being tightened. Basically, we see that,
well, the interpretation of the Espionage Act in the US. Sweden has just passed a
law on foreign espionage where it becomes a crime. Sweden used to be the safe haven
of press freedom, which is why Julian Assange was in Sweden in the first place,
In 2010. We wanted to establish WikiLeaks there because it was the safe haven for
press freedom. Sweden has passed a law just two months ago by which from January
2023, it will be a crime in Sweden to disclose classified information that does
not even threaten national security. That's only prejudicial to the relations
of Sweden with a different country or an international organization. I mean, it's
ridiculous. I mean, that's the standard is so low. It's basically, though, the
diplomatic cables, something that's just embarrassing before the relations of
Sweden with Austria, for example. You know, I'm just taking by random example.
It's just embarrassing. That's sufficient. It becomes a crime. So, what we have to
realize is this is, ... Now states are building a system not only in the US, the
UK, the Anglo-Saxon world throughout, but also even now, the allied countries are
building a system where it becomes a crime to tell the truth. It's. Really high time
for us to ring the alarm bell and to stop this, to insist that we have a right to
know. Stefania: Absolutely. What do you expect
from the legal process in the UK? What do you expect the next?
Nils: Well, unfortunately, I cannot expect justice. I was hopeful. I mean, I am
pessimistically hopeful. If I can allow to say that the High Court would refuse
extradition. But I sensed that exactly what happened, was going to happen. I said
it before publicly, and it's happened exactly as I presumed it would. I think
that the UK judiciary, unfortunately, is unable to ensure respect for the law here
and that they will basically wave this extradition through, and they will try
perhaps to extend this proceeding another year or two. Because for the US, it's not
urgent for Assange to be extradited if he dies in prison in the UK, all the better
for the US, so they don't have to deal with it. What they want is to set the
precedent that everybody knows, including yourselves, Stefania, that this is what's
going to happen to you if you ever mess with our secrets, our dirty secrets. And
so, I don't know exactly what's going to play out and how it's going to play out.
But in the big picture, these states have not persecuted Assange for 10 years for
tens of millions of dollars to let him off the hook any time soon. So, the only
chance he has, and that's the very real chance, if public opinion changes and if
the main media organizations change their view. As I said before, this is going to
be over. This is just like waking up from a nightmare. It's going to be over. But if
they don't, we're in for a long nightmare. Stefania: Thank you, Nils, let's open the
question from the public.
Herald: Yeah. There are More and more questions coming up here. And let me start
by, ... one, that's more like the beginning of the whole story as to what
exactly did you expect, or who do you exactly expect to respond in the first
instance, when torture in UK is concerned? Like before you send letters, you would
expect kind of a maybe a police showing up or something like that. What would you
normally expect? Nils: Well, if I receive allegations of
torture, I transmit them, I mean, the first thing that happens, I look whether
they are credible. You know, if they are, if they're not credible, obviously, I
will. I will. I will try to consolidate. Maybe I will. My team will call the person
or organization that submitted the information and try to consolidate it to
make sure that it is credible. It doesn't have to be proven, but it has to be
credible. If that's the case, I will transmit it to the government. And if it's
an urgent case, you know, if it's about preventing torture, it's a historical case
that happened 15 years ago, and we're just investigating it's not very urgent, and we
can take time. I mean, you know, reasonable timeframe. But if it's very
urgent, someone is about to be executed or transferred or extradited. Then within 24
hours, I can write a letter and transmit it to the foreign minister of. And that's
your question. Who will actually will, ... my interlocutor as the UN rapporteur is
always the foreign minister of the country of the UN member state through the
diplomatic mission in Geneva. And so, they will then have to distribute it to the
proper authorities in their country. If it's an allegation about a police station,
that will have to, you know, transmit it to the police and so on. But depending on
the country and the precise allegation, it will be different authorities. It could be
a migration center or something like this. But for me, it's very it's a diplomatic
protocol. I always have to go through the Foreign Ministry and they will then have
to initiate those investigations and inside the country.
Herald: OK, thank you very much. The Next question would be, will Assange be
able to appeal to the European Court of Justice? How long do you estimate Julian
will stay in prison until the highest applicable court would publish a decision?
And are there any moves that can still be made from a lawyer's point of perspective?
Well, I'm clearly not his lawyer. But, you know, and his legal team would have to
speak to the strategy. So, I can't. I'm not representing him, obviously. But
clearly, yes, at some point you will be able, as soon as the last instance
decision has been validated by the last instance of court in the U.K., then this
decision can be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, not the European
Court of Justice, that's an EU court, but the European Court of Human Rights would
be that instance. They can also, already now, appeal to that court for preliminary
protection, for example, to release him from prison and to house arrest or
something like this. But that's a bit technical. But yes, at the end there is an
opportunity to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. And the question of
how long it will last really depends on so many factors. What's the strategy of the
lawyers? What's the strategy of the court? You know, how long does the court take to
decide, after a hearing? Do they take two weeks or do they take four months? It's up
to them. And so, it's, ... I can't, you know, I can't. But it could last anywhere
from at least one year to, you know, another three years or something like
this. Stefania: I just want to add one important
info about this European Court of Human Rights because according to the documents
I was able to get from my Freedom of Information litigation, the UK authorities
were discussing with the Swedish authorities an attempt to extradite Julian
Assange without allowing him to apply to the European Court of Human Rights and
obtaining the protective measure. So, it was an attempt to extradite him before he
could get a protective measure. Do you think that means that they could play the
same game for the extradition to the US? Nils: It's conceivable, yes. The problem
is that normally a judgment of the, ... or an appeal to the European Court of Human
Rights is not, ... does not suspend the validity of the national decision. So if
the Supreme Court of the UK allows the extradition, for example, and Assange
appeals that then he can still be extradited, unless the European Court of
Human Rights orders preliminary measures, you know, that suspend that the validity
of that ruling. So but they still have to decide that. And obviously, between the
decision of the Supreme Court and the issuing of that preliminary protective
measure, there will be a few days. And so in this time, you know, they can try to
send him out. So, it's very important that his lawyers react in time and perhaps even
provisionally ask for measures like this. But again, you know, his legal team would
be better placed to answer those questions.
Herald: OK, thank you very much. I hope you might answer the next question. What
is the government's justification for keeping Assange in Belmarsh? And what
happens to other high, or high risk, persons above who have a flight risk that
are on remand in the UK? Nils: Well, the government doesn't just,
... I mean, they just say he's a flight risk. OK. Well, yes, there is a precedent
that he's basically his, look, ... you know, he's asked for asylum in the
Ecuadorian embassy. So now clearly, you know, in my view, even the whole
extradition proceeding is illegitimate and illegal. You know, for various reasons
because it concerns espionage, which is a political offense and because, you know,
it's protected by press freedom, what he's done and all of these things. But even if,
for the sake of the argument, if we accept that this is a legitimate extradition
proceeding, then if he's a flight risk, then yes, you can. You can secure his
presence, but you have to use the least harmful means to do that. So, you cannot
take measures that are more restrictive than necessary. And so if you put him in
house arrest, a guarded house arrest where he cannot leave because there's a guard in
front of the door, that's sufficient, and it's even cheaper than a high security
prison. And that's what they've done with with with Augusto Pinochet, who was, I
remind you, not accused of journalism. He was accused of having, you know, being
responsible for murder and torture and disappearance of thousands of people as
the dictator of ex-dictator of Chile. And the British, But he was an ally of the
United Kingdom. So, but he was in the legal, legally accepted, (cough) excuse
me, except that he was accused of serious crimes, and Julian Assange is not. He was
in the same extradition kind of situation, and he was allowed to spend one and a half
years in a luxurious villa where he was visited by, you know, ex-Prime Minister
Thatcher. But Julian Assange has been put in a high security prison. That's, ...
he's not a violent person. He's put in the toughest high security prison where, you
know, violent criminals are being held. And so, that's actually that's absolutely
not justifiable. He could be kept in anywhere else, you know where he can be
supervised, and he has a human right to live his family life, to live his
profession. There is, ... he's not serving a sentence. He's not convicted of
anything. And his health is in the dire state. We have examined him two years ago
and warned that he would enter a downward spiral very soon, and it actually
happened. He was not even able to to to attend his, ... to observe his own appeals
hearing at the end of October. He actually had a stroke during that hearing. And it's
absolutely grotesque that the judges in that hearing, you know, decided that his
health was stable enough to be extradited to the US, based on some flimsy assurances
that don't guarantee anything. You know that don't protect him from anything.
Herald: Then this question fits right perfectly to that because it does. Are you
confident that the US government won't harm Assange as they promised?
Nils: To the contrary, I'm confident they will because there's no way he's going to
get a fair trial. The public narrative against Assange is so overwhelming, and
the prejudice is so overwhelming against him. He's going to be tried in Alexandria,
the infamous espionage court where I indicated before it's a secret trial. Very
often, the defense does not even have access to the evidence against the
suspect, and there is no press allowed. There is no trial observation allowed. You
know, there is, ... the jury takes information from the prosecution that the
defense doesn't have access to. No one has ever been acquitted in that court. It's a
national security court. No one has ever been acquitted, and people are being
threatened with enormous prison sentences there, unless they accept some kind of
plea bargain. In his case, it would certainly mean that he would have to spend
decades in prison. So, ... and for this type of suspect, it's always solitary
confinement, which means near complete isolation. No contact with the outside
world, no contact to other inmates, no talking even to the guards. You know, very
often the US authorities then say, Oh, we have to put him on suicide watch, you
know, for his own benefit, which means they wake him up every 15 minutes at
night. He cannot sit down or lie down during the day. And it's really a form of
torture. And I say this as an expert, and I'm not the only one saying this. It's my
predecessors. That's, you know, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch.
Everybody agrees these types of conditions are a violation of the Convention against
Torture and Ill Treatment. Herald: Thank you for that answer. I have
one last question, and that's probably the big one. What can society do, or what
needs to happen, to stop the extradition from happening now? And what would need to
happen to undo the effects of the US government's approach in this case, like
the intimidation of journalists? Nils: Well, I guess, Stephanie, you will
have something to say about this as well. I mean, from my perspective. The US has to
drop this case. They have to, or they have to be pressured by their own media and
their own society to drop this case because, you know, the US society is
really, ... is they have the political influence on their political leadership,
and it's in their own interest that they stop this from happening because otherwise
they will lose, as I said before, the right to know what their government is
doing, the fact already it lost that right, actually, they have to regain it.
And I think, so, civil society is very important, but the media, especially the
mainstream media, that they start picking this up is very, very important. Public
opinion has to turn around and not only in the US, in the UK, in Australia, in Sweden
and anywhere, anywhere. People have to ask their governments, Why are you accepting
that a country that you are allied with, you know, is persecuting journalists, that
expose their war crimes? We have to ask the people, that are elected to
parliament, why they are, accepting this? Why they are keeping silent, you know
because, it will cost it will cost us very dearly. I don't know what you think,
Stefania. Stefania: Yes, I absolutely agree with
you. We absolutely have to win this case, which means we absolutely have to put
pressure, take to the streets, must see press coverage of the situation. It's a
scandal that it took an Italian journalist to litigate a Freedom of Information case
in the UK and the US, Australia and Sweden because no one else did it. It's a scandal
that you took an Italian journalist to try to discover the pressure from the Crown
Prosecution Service on the Swedish authorities and the attempt to bypass the
European Court of Human Rights. Can you believe that the Guardian was not able to
do this, or can you believe that the New York Times could not expose the CIA
attempts to kill him? I mean, it took Yahoo? I mean, can you believe Yahoo had
more sources inside the CIA than The Washington Post or the New York Times that
inside this agency? Can you believe that they were not able to expose before Yahoo
News? So, we absolutely have to call them out and to make, ... to have them on
board. They don't want to be on board. We have seen they don't cover the case
properly. They say they want to be factual, when in fact they have not looked
for the facts. And it took an Italian judicial system, a U.N. special
rapporteur, to investigate the case, which is unbelievable, you know. So, we have to
have them on board, and we absolutely have to win this case. Having the case dropped,
the investigation dropped because it is a scandal. I mean, in 20 years of
journalism, my experience of 20 years as a journalist, 15 in investigative
journalism, I have never heard of a media organization put under investigation for
11 years. I never heard this. I don't know. I don't believe it exists. Not even,
... I mean, just in seriously authoritarian dictatorships. I never heard
of a media organization under investigation for 11 years as WikiLeaks,
... the WikiLeaks journalists have been. So, we absolutely have to win this case,
and we have not to rely on the legal process. The legal process is completely
corrupt, completely corrupt. So, we, it is up to us. It's up to us to take to the
street and to have press coverage or whatever press coverage we can, the
independent media, the citizen journalism for the whatever. We can to mobilize
people to have people taking to the streets and realize this monstrous
injustice. In the preface to my book, Ken Loach, the great film director Ken Loach,
calls it "this monstrous injustice". He's absolutely right.
Nils: And if you allow me to just say one sentence here also, to conclude my own
statement, here is just to say, don't think that this is just the Assange case,
that is the tip of the iceberg. And I wrote the book about this, not because
this is the only case, but this is the case that makes it most visible what's
really going on? It's actually a keyhole through which you can see into a parallel
world that already exists, where democracy and the rule of law is being
systematically undermined. So, don't believe those public narratives, in this
case or in others, you know. Ask questions, ask for evidence and always
ask, you know, who has what kind of interests here? And are we still able to
know what the powerful are doing with the power and the money they have? And that's
really at the core of it. So, I hope this was useful, and clearly I invite people,
you know, read, read, it's the Stefania's book. Read my book, read, read about the
case and make up your own mind, you know because it's about your rights and your
life. Stefania: Absolutely. Let me close this
conversation with reminding people that we will keep this conversation going in the
"after three village" at 10 p.m. We will wait for you. We appreciate more questions
about these important crucial case. Thank you. Herald: Yeah, thank you both very much for
being here and for the very interesting talk, and maybe we see each other later in
the "after three village" and yeah, have a good evening.
*Music*
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