6 ms·

IBAHRI condemned UK treatment of Julian Assange in US extradition trial

140 points by k1m 6y ago

hau 6y ago
What is the significance and implications of such condemnation?
- docdeek 6y ago
  I don’t know them but a quick scan of courses suggests that they are a serious INGO with a sizeable membership of lawyers and law societies worldwide. That said, this is from March and recent condemnations/requests/urging on their part seem to come regularly and with regards to issues of justice globally. In the past ten days there are a couple of “IBA urges” and “IBA calls for” announcments on their site. https://www.ibanet.org/Article/ https://www.ibanet.org/Article/
jstanley 6y ago
Interestingly, this is from March, which means it's not even a response to what happened at this hearing(s?) this week. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-the-assange-hearing-day-6/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-... and https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-7/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-...
- k1m 6y ago
  Latest on the hearing appears to be this (posted yesterday): > Julian Assange's extradition hearing at the Old Bailey today will not be going ahead because the husband of one of the US lawyers has come down with Covid-like symptoms. > Once he gets the result of a test the judge will determine how best to proceed. https://twitter.com/CourtNewsUK/status/1303981123383500801 https://twitter.com/CourtNewsUK/status/1303981123383500801
theobeers 6y ago
It sickens me how little it seems to matter to people in our mainstream discourse whether or not Assange is treated as a human being. After he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy, and officials said he had behaved erratically there and smeared feces on the walls, etc., the public reaction was along the lines of, “Wow, what a weirdo loser”—rather than, “Oh God, what have we done to this person?” It speaks poorly of our society.
- meroes 6y ago
  Why should I care so much more about his physical and mental maltreatment by the legal system over the other millions experiencing the same everyday? If you asked why public discourse ignores this in general I would understand. Making no claims about his guilt or innocence.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    I hate this argument. How can you care about the millions if you literally do not care about the one?
    - mavdi 6y ago
      I don’t care much about Assange but that’s a fair statement.
  - ahelwer 6y ago
    There are, of course, atrocities everywhere all the time. Change generally isn't sparked by routine atrocities rumbling along in the background though, but by people coalescing around specific atrocities that gain high profile for whatever reason (largely random) which serve as an avatar for all the others. So I suspect you have it backwards: the mistreatment of others isn't a reason to dismiss Assange's complaint, but rather to elevate it. Maybe this will be the one that finally catches fire and helps all the others.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
tenbino 6y ago
People don’t care because he’s “a bad guy”. That’s where we’ve got to. Trouble is people aren’t brought up with an understanding of how things should be in a fair and just society. They’re brought up with some mucky mixed up perception that the world is some mashup of Hollywood and what the media says. There’s no moral compass for society any more. My personal take is he’s some sort of weird Russian asset and he’s a net negative for our way of life but I still think he deserves the full protection of the law at every single stage. He shouldn’t be sold out and abandoned by society. It sounds twee but my mother brought me up to care about other people, the less well off and to care about what’s right and justice for all. I think “we’ll theres an awful lot of people in this world who didn’t have my mother. What did they learn?”
- lwkl 6y ago
  Are there people that think he is a bad guy? At least where I live I didn‘t hear anyone say that. Maybe this is different in the US. It‘s more like our government doesn’t say anything because of US imperialism. And most people don‘t know about him or think this outcome is expected if you dare to mess with the US. It looks more like pessimism to me. And it‘s to be expected. The US foreign policy was always inhumane. It knows no moral boundaries as long as it serves the economic interest of their corporations. Not that other countries are better in that regard.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Are there people that think he is a bad guy? Yeah, there are. I know people I generally find reasonable that consider him a traitor, and they're not even American. I think a lot of use have grown up on US culture and propaganda and it permeates our societies to the point of identification with the US, so Assange or Snowden are considered bad guys to a lot of people. It seems to me that it's primarily for pragmatic reasons: "We" profit from crimes, leaking information about those crimes reduces our profit from it, ergo leaking it is treason against us.
- shadowprofile77 6y ago
  >there's no moral compass for society anymore What? And there was more of such a compass a century ago when lynchings were much more common for "racial defilements"? Or two centuries ago when slaves were considered bad by the general public for escaping from the brutality of ownership? Or perhaps 600 years ago when witch burning was remarkably common in much of Europe? Not criticizing your defense of Assange (his treatment really is deplorable, petty and cruel), but This phrase has never been anything less than absurd, and particularly so is to claim it of today's society in comparison to some mythical past morality..
mcherm 6y ago
I can't think of a special reason why the UK would have it in for Julian Assange. I presume they are doing this in order to cow towel to their ally the United States. Do they not realize that the United States is likely to undergo a regime change at the beginning of next year? Do they think the new regime in the US will feel the same way about Julian Assange and will put the same kind of pressure on the UK that the Trump administration presumably has? Do they think that they can reverse course and just apologize for the failure of justice if the US changes administrations? Don't try telling me that the UK government is not a party here and that this is simply a case of a zealous prosecutor and biased judge -- because I'm not fool enough to believe that story.
- dcminter 6y ago
  FYI I think you meant "kowtow" rather than "cow towel."
- delibes 6y ago
  I'm guessing cow towel = kowtow. But... Perhaps you do treat your cows nice n stuff?
  - pseingatl 6y ago
    I think the term "cow towel" should be introduced into common usage. It's much more visual than "kowtow," e.g. "The UK is the US'cow towel."
- ahelwer 6y ago
  Trump has floated the idea of pardoning Assange. A Biden presidency would likely be even more against Assange, because of his actions during the 2016 election which generally harmed Clinton.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Do they think the new regime in the US will feel the same way about Julian Assange and will put the same kind of pressure on the UK that the Trump administration presumably has? The pressure came from the Obama administration, the Trump administration just kept it up. I don't see any reason to believe that Biden would be substantially different.
johnnyfaehell 6y ago
> According to his lawyers, Mr Assange was handcuffed 11 times; stripped naked twice and searched; his case files confiscated after the first day of the hearing; and had his request to sit with his lawyers during the trial, rather than in a dock surrounded by bulletproof glass, denied. Stripped naked and search is standard custody practice. Criminals hide things and are known to smuggle things in and out of court to prison. And remember, he is techincally a criminal. He broke criminal law when he skipped bail. He is being held in custody, it seems fair for standard policies to apply to him. Why would he be any different? It is standard for someone to sit in the dock, why would he deserve special treatment. He is able to confer with his lawyers when he needs to from the dock as many other people have done so in the past and will do so in the future. The only issue I have is them taking his case files, which seems petty. But I suspect there would have been operational reasons, but why those reasons couldn't have been worked around seems odd and again petty. While I think he doesn't deserve to be sent to the US and should not be. The fact, he is a criminal and is in custody because he can't be trusted does mean he should be treated as such a manner.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Seems like nobody should really be treated that way though, so the fact he's being treated in accordance with others to me is more of an indictment of the system than his specific treatment. People seem to have lost sight of the fact that (a) people are innocent until proven guilty in general and (b) criminals are people too, and all people deserve humane treatment. After all, if you can't treat criminals humanely who are you to condemn them for treating others inhumanely? By all means, remove from society, reform, re-educate, etc, but no reason to treat criminals as anything other than your siblings, parents, etc who did something wrong and need some course correction.
  - johnnyfaehell 6y ago
    > Seems like nobody should really be treated that way though, so the fact he's being treated in accordance with others to me is more of an indictment of the system than his specific treatment. Why shouldn't people be stripped searched on the way in and out of prison? How are the prisons meant to ensure the safety of the prisoners? Remember prisoners can and do smuggle weapons and deadly drugs into prisons. One of the best ways of keeping prisons safe is to search prisoners properly upon entry to the prison. Why shouldn't people who have been proven not trustworthy be held in a dock? Remember, he skipped bail. Why shouldn't someone who seems to be at danger be protected with bulletproof glass? > people are innocent until proven guilty in general He has already been proven guilty of a crime. He is a criminal. > criminals are people too, and all people deserve humane treatment. After all, if you can't treat criminals humanely who are you to condemn them for treating others inhumanely? By all means, remove from society, reform, re-educate, etc, but no reason to treat criminals as anything other than your siblings, parents, etc who did something wrong and need some course correction. I personally have been in the UK prison system and have experienced the strip searches and the court handling. Honestly, I never heard a prisoner once complain about strip searches, we understood why they were there. The guards weren't insenstive or treated us inhumanely. We were just told to take our clothes off while they inspected our clothes. And sitting in a dock is not inhumane.
pseingatl 6y ago
You cannot trust the US concerning extraditions. Just ask Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholam_Weiss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholam_Weiss
- Frost1x 6y ago
  Trust is something that in general, seems to be waning across the board, at least here in the US. At the same time, trust provides foundations for a stable society. I believe that for people to interact regularly, they need to trust that the others aren't always out to constantly undermine them in their daily interactions. It could be that their representative government is representing some of their ideas, that their legal system treats them as it says it will, that fellow citizens won't throw them under a bus the second they see opportunity, etc. All of that seems to be on the decline. Instead our society seems to be filled with lies at every front. I hear lies from top government officials, lies from our legal system, lies from businesses, lies from everyone around me--pretty much all in pursuit of personal gain. The less I can trust my government, politicians, authorities in power, and fellow citizens to be reasonable and work collectively, the less I tend to trust our society overall.

140 points by k1m 6y ago

hau 6y ago

What is the significance and implications of such condemnation?

docdeek 6y ago
I don’t know them but a quick scan of courses suggests that they are a serious INGO with a sizeable membership of lawyers and law societies worldwide. That said, this is from March and recent condemnations/requests/urging on their part seem to come regularly and with regards to issues of justice globally. In the past ten days there are a couple of “IBA urges” and “IBA calls for” announcments on their site. https://www.ibanet.org/Article/ https://www.ibanet.org/Article/

jstanley 6y ago

Interestingly, this is from March, which means it's not even a response to what happened at this hearing(s?) this week. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-the-assange-hearing-day-6/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-... and https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-7/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-...

k1m 6y ago
Latest on the hearing appears to be this (posted yesterday): > Julian Assange's extradition hearing at the Old Bailey today will not be going ahead because the husband of one of the US lawyers has come down with Covid-like symptoms. > Once he gets the result of a test the judge will determine how best to proceed. https://twitter.com/CourtNewsUK/status/1303981123383500801 https://twitter.com/CourtNewsUK/status/1303981123383500801

theobeers 6y ago

It sickens me how little it seems to matter to people in our mainstream discourse whether or not Assange is treated as a human being. After he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy, and officials said he had behaved erratically there and smeared feces on the walls, etc., the public reaction was along the lines of, “Wow, what a weirdo loser”—rather than, “Oh God, what have we done to this person?” It speaks poorly of our society.

meroes 6y ago
Why should I care so much more about his physical and mental maltreatment by the legal system over the other millions experiencing the same everyday? If you asked why public discourse ignores this in general I would understand. Making no claims about his guilt or innocence.
- 1_player 6y ago
  I hate this argument. How can you care about the millions if you literally do not care about the one?
  - mavdi 6y ago
    I don’t care much about Assange but that’s a fair statement.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  There are, of course, atrocities everywhere all the time. Change generally isn't sparked by routine atrocities rumbling along in the background though, but by people coalescing around specific atrocities that gain high profile for whatever reason (largely random) which serve as an avatar for all the others. So I suspect you have it backwards: the mistreatment of others isn't a reason to dismiss Assange's complaint, but rather to elevate it. Maybe this will be the one that finally catches fire and helps all the others.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago

tenbino 6y ago

People don’t care because he’s “a bad guy”. That’s where we’ve got to. Trouble is people aren’t brought up with an understanding of how things should be in a fair and just society. They’re brought up with some mucky mixed up perception that the world is some mashup of Hollywood and what the media says. There’s no moral compass for society any more. My personal take is he’s some sort of weird Russian asset and he’s a net negative for our way of life but I still think he deserves the full protection of the law at every single stage. He shouldn’t be sold out and abandoned by society. It sounds twee but my mother brought me up to care about other people, the less well off and to care about what’s right and justice for all. I think “we’ll theres an awful lot of people in this world who didn’t have my mother. What did they learn?”

lwkl 6y ago
Are there people that think he is a bad guy? At least where I live I didn‘t hear anyone say that. Maybe this is different in the US. It‘s more like our government doesn’t say anything because of US imperialism. And most people don‘t know about him or think this outcome is expected if you dare to mess with the US. It looks more like pessimism to me. And it‘s to be expected. The US foreign policy was always inhumane. It knows no moral boundaries as long as it serves the economic interest of their corporations. Not that other countries are better in that regard.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Are there people that think he is a bad guy? Yeah, there are. I know people I generally find reasonable that consider him a traitor, and they're not even American. I think a lot of use have grown up on US culture and propaganda and it permeates our societies to the point of identification with the US, so Assange or Snowden are considered bad guys to a lot of people. It seems to me that it's primarily for pragmatic reasons: "We" profit from crimes, leaking information about those crimes reduces our profit from it, ergo leaking it is treason against us.
shadowprofile77 6y ago
>there's no moral compass for society anymore What? And there was more of such a compass a century ago when lynchings were much more common for "racial defilements"? Or two centuries ago when slaves were considered bad by the general public for escaping from the brutality of ownership? Or perhaps 600 years ago when witch burning was remarkably common in much of Europe? Not criticizing your defense of Assange (his treatment really is deplorable, petty and cruel), but This phrase has never been anything less than absurd, and particularly so is to claim it of today's society in comparison to some mythical past morality..

mcherm 6y ago

I can't think of a special reason why the UK would have it in for Julian Assange. I presume they are doing this in order to cow towel to their ally the United States. Do they not realize that the United States is likely to undergo a regime change at the beginning of next year? Do they think the new regime in the US will feel the same way about Julian Assange and will put the same kind of pressure on the UK that the Trump administration presumably has? Do they think that they can reverse course and just apologize for the failure of justice if the US changes administrations? Don't try telling me that the UK government is not a party here and that this is simply a case of a zealous prosecutor and biased judge -- because I'm not fool enough to believe that story.

dcminter 6y ago
FYI I think you meant "kowtow" rather than "cow towel."
delibes 6y ago
I'm guessing cow towel = kowtow. But... Perhaps you do treat your cows nice n stuff?
- pseingatl 6y ago
  I think the term "cow towel" should be introduced into common usage. It's much more visual than "kowtow," e.g. "The UK is the US'cow towel."
ahelwer 6y ago
Trump has floated the idea of pardoning Assange. A Biden presidency would likely be even more against Assange, because of his actions during the 2016 election which generally harmed Clinton.
luckylion 6y ago
> Do they think the new regime in the US will feel the same way about Julian Assange and will put the same kind of pressure on the UK that the Trump administration presumably has? The pressure came from the Obama administration, the Trump administration just kept it up. I don't see any reason to believe that Biden would be substantially different.

johnnyfaehell 6y ago

> According to his lawyers, Mr Assange was handcuffed 11 times; stripped naked twice and searched; his case files confiscated after the first day of the hearing; and had his request to sit with his lawyers during the trial, rather than in a dock surrounded by bulletproof glass, denied. Stripped naked and search is standard custody practice. Criminals hide things and are known to smuggle things in and out of court to prison. And remember, he is techincally a criminal. He broke criminal law when he skipped bail. He is being held in custody, it seems fair for standard policies to apply to him. Why would he be any different? It is standard for someone to sit in the dock, why would he deserve special treatment. He is able to confer with his lawyers when he needs to from the dock as many other people have done so in the past and will do so in the future. The only issue I have is them taking his case files, which seems petty. But I suspect there would have been operational reasons, but why those reasons couldn't have been worked around seems odd and again petty. While I think he doesn't deserve to be sent to the US and should not be. The fact, he is a criminal and is in custody because he can't be trusted does mean he should be treated as such a manner.

arcticbull 6y ago
Seems like nobody should really be treated that way though, so the fact he's being treated in accordance with others to me is more of an indictment of the system than his specific treatment. People seem to have lost sight of the fact that (a) people are innocent until proven guilty in general and (b) criminals are people too, and all people deserve humane treatment. After all, if you can't treat criminals humanely who are you to condemn them for treating others inhumanely? By all means, remove from society, reform, re-educate, etc, but no reason to treat criminals as anything other than your siblings, parents, etc who did something wrong and need some course correction.
- johnnyfaehell 6y ago
  > Seems like nobody should really be treated that way though, so the fact he's being treated in accordance with others to me is more of an indictment of the system than his specific treatment. Why shouldn't people be stripped searched on the way in and out of prison? How are the prisons meant to ensure the safety of the prisoners? Remember prisoners can and do smuggle weapons and deadly drugs into prisons. One of the best ways of keeping prisons safe is to search prisoners properly upon entry to the prison. Why shouldn't people who have been proven not trustworthy be held in a dock? Remember, he skipped bail. Why shouldn't someone who seems to be at danger be protected with bulletproof glass? > people are innocent until proven guilty in general He has already been proven guilty of a crime. He is a criminal. > criminals are people too, and all people deserve humane treatment. After all, if you can't treat criminals humanely who are you to condemn them for treating others inhumanely? By all means, remove from society, reform, re-educate, etc, but no reason to treat criminals as anything other than your siblings, parents, etc who did something wrong and need some course correction. I personally have been in the UK prison system and have experienced the strip searches and the court handling. Honestly, I never heard a prisoner once complain about strip searches, we understood why they were there. The guards weren't insenstive or treated us inhumanely. We were just told to take our clothes off while they inspected our clothes. And sitting in a dock is not inhumane.

pseingatl 6y ago

You cannot trust the US concerning extraditions. Just ask Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholam_Weiss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholam_Weiss

Frost1x 6y ago
Trust is something that in general, seems to be waning across the board, at least here in the US. At the same time, trust provides foundations for a stable society. I believe that for people to interact regularly, they need to trust that the others aren't always out to constantly undermine them in their daily interactions. It could be that their representative government is representing some of their ideas, that their legal system treats them as it says it will, that fellow citizens won't throw them under a bus the second they see opportunity, etc. All of that seems to be on the decline. Instead our society seems to be filled with lies at every front. I hear lies from top government officials, lies from our legal system, lies from businesses, lies from everyone around me--pretty much all in pursuit of personal gain. The less I can trust my government, politicians, authorities in power, and fellow citizens to be reasonable and work collectively, the less I tend to trust our society overall.