There may be other reasons why people are not following this: > Due to Covid distancing measures, the court made five spaces available to members of the public

There may be other reasons why people are not following this: > Due to Covid distancing measures, the court made five spaces available to members of the public, in a gallery with a total of 36 seats. Communications from the court repeatedly stated that these would be allocated on a first come, first serve basis - however this was not respected in practice. For nearly three weeks of proceedings, three seats were held back for unspecified “VIPs” for the first hour and a half each morning, and the first half an hour each afternoon, meaning that often only two members of the public (including NGO observers) were present in the courtroom. After RSF learned that the VIPs were in fact diplomats who were unaware these seats were being held for them, diplomatic intervention with the court finally resulted in all five seats being made fully available to the public from 24 September. One of the few organisations that might have sought to report on this – the Guardian – published the book which allegedly first released the encryption key to the underacted diplomatic cables. [0] https://rsf.org/en/news/usuk-julian-assanges-extradition-hearing-marred-barriers-open-justice https://rsf.org/en/news/usuk-julian-assanges-extradition-hea...