Assange Extradition Hearing - Witness statements + Court papers

• Witness statements - schedule doc
  
• Previewing witnesses scheduled to testify: https://dissenter.substack.com/p/julian-assanges-extradition-case

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Statement 1 Statement 2 Statement 3 Statement 4 Statement 5 Statement 7

Gareth Peirce (born Jean Webb, March 1940) is a British solicitor and human rights activist. She has worked on a number of high-profile cases involving allegations of human rights injustices.Her work with Gerry Conlon and the Guildford Four – wrongly convicted of bombings carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army – was chronicled in the film In the Name of the Father (1993), in which she was portrayed by Emma Thompson. [M]ore recently, Guantanamo Bay detainees and the family of Jean Charles de Menezes. She has also represented the editor-in-chief of the WikiLeaks portal, Julian Assange. In 2012, Gareth released a book Dispatches from the Dark Side: on Torture and the Death of Justice, in which she shares her views on the criminal justice system in the UK.

More info: Wikipedia Birnber Pierce IW Law

- (full statement currently unavailable)

Michael E. Tigar is Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Law at Duke University School of Law, and Professor Emeritus of Law at Washington College of Law, American University,Washington, D.C. He has held full-time positions at UCLA and The University of Texas. He has been a lecturer at dozens of law schools and bar associations in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America, including service as Professeur Invité at the Faculty of Law of Université Paul-Cezanne, Aix-en-Provence. He is a 1966 graduate of Boalt Hall, University of California, Berkeley, where he was first in his class, Editor-in-Chief of the law review and Order of the Coif. He has authored or co-authored twelve books, three plays, and scores of articles and essays. He has argued seven cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, about 100 federal appeals, and has tried cases in all parts of the country in state and federal courts.

More info: Duke University School of Law The Federalist Society

WikiLeaks showed the realities of war Full Statement

Patrick Oliver Cockburn (born 5 March 1950) is a journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times since 1979 and, from 1990, The Independent. He has also worked as a correspondent in Moscow and Washington and is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books. He has written three books on Iraq's recent history. In 2014 he forecast the rise of Isis. He also did graduate work at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queens University Belfast and has written about the effects of the Troubles on Irish and British policy in light of his experience.

More info: Wikipedia The Independent

Only leaked docs confirm what governments cover up Full statement

Ian Cobain (born 1960) is a British journalist, best known for his investigation into torture perpetrated by agents of the United Kingdom government, and for his reporting on the culture of secrecy[1][2] surrounding the British state. A journalist since the early 1980s, Cobain was the senior investigative reporter for The Guardian until August 2018.

More info: Wikipedia The Guardian

WikiLeaks’ unprecedented document security Full statement

I am an investigative journalist currently contributing to the major Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, after working for the last 14 years for la Repubblica, consistently rated among the top two Italian newspapers, and for l’Espresso, the most important Italian newsmagazine. I have worked with Julian Assange and his organisation “WikiLeaks” since 2009, teaming up with large teams of international media to cover and investigate all WikiLeaks' secret documents: from the secret files on the war in Afghanistan (Afghan War Logs) to the US diplomacy cables (Cablegate), from the files on the Guantanamo detainees (Gitmo Files) on up to the most recent revelations about the European military mission against boats travelling from Libya to Italy smuggling migrants and refugees and the espionage activities against French and the European leaders by the National Security Agency (Nsa).

More info: Personal website

Spied on in the Embassy Opinion in the matter of Julian Assange and certain issues arising in an Application for Extradition

Guy S. Goodwin-Gill is a Professor of Law at the University of New South Wales and the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW. He is Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Emeritus Professor of International Refugee Law, and an Honorary Associate of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre. He practised as a Barrister at Blackstone Chambers, London, from 2002-18, specialising in public international law, human rights, citizenship, and refugee and asylum law. He represented pro bono the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as ‘Intervener’ in a number of appeals in the United Kingdom House of Lords and Court of Appeal, was counsel for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, and he has acted also in the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. He visited Julian Assange at The Ecuadorian embassy with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

More info: University of Oxford

Chelsea Manning was punished by grand jury Statement only Statement and exhibits Bundle B (reduced)

Criminal Defense attorney specializing in criminal appeals, post-conviction, habeas corpus as well as civil rights litigation. Member of the Executive Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, New York City Chapter. My notable cases include: People v. Dhoruba Bin Wahad: former Black Panther freed after 19 years imprisonment United States v. Mohammed Al-Moayad: conviction for material support overturned, client freed and repatriated to home country; Boyett v. LeFevre: successful federal habeas corpus wherein client freed after 16 years imprisonment Brinson v. Walker: successful federal habeas corpus; client freed after 11 years imprisonment.

More info: Avvo

Full statement

Bridget Prince is executive director of One World Research. Bridget has worked as an investigator and researcher for over a decade during which time she has travelled all over the world gathering information for a variety of public interest and human rights causes.

More info: One World Research

Morales had “real obsession” in “recording lawyers” for “American friends”
Full statement

Instructed to place stickers on windows of Ecuador embassy indicating CCTV was in operation
Full statement

Lawyer in Corporate Defense. He is a regular lecturer at various universities and institutions. He holds an International Doctorate in Law from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and European Doctorate in Criminal Sciences from the Université Paris Nanterre.

Statement 1 Statement 2 Statement 3

Full statement

Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called “the father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and is one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

More info: Personal website Wikipedia

Full statement

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).

More info: Wikipedia Personal website

Full statement

Jameel Jaffer is a human rights and civil liberties attorney and the inaugural director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which was created to defend the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age.[He] is particularly notable for the role he played in litigating Freedom of Information Act requests that led to the release of documents concerning the torture of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and in CIA black sites.

More info: Wikipedia Columbia Law School

Full Statement

Maureen’s experience in federal corrections began in 1989 as a case manager with the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons. Through her 28 years with the Agency, she continued to acquire positions of increasing responsibility. In 2009, Maureen was appointed to the position of Warden at the Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury, Connecticut, and was later promoted to Warden at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. There, she was appointed to Senior Executive Staff by the United States Attorney General and within two years, she was transferred to a position of greater responsibility as the Warden of the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.

More info: Allan Ellis law offices

Full Statement

Lindsay A. Lewis practices in federal and state court on both the trial and appellate level. She has successfully defended a wide range of matters, from extradition cases to high-profile cyber, terrorism, drug trafficking and fraud cases, to minor cases with potentially serious collateral consequences, such as limiting a client's capacity to pursue advanced educational and career goals, or threatening their ability to maintain a professional license, work for the government, or serve in the military.

More info: Joshua L. Dratel law offices

Statement 1 Statement 2

Yancey Ellis is a partner at Carmichael Ellis & Brock, PLLC (Virginia), and the lead attorney on cases assisting military service members and veterans with their special legal needs. Prior to joining the Public Defender's Office, Yancey was an attorney in the U.S. Marine Corps. He worked as a prosecutor and a law of war advisor, but spent most of his time as a military public defender. Yancey defended hundreds of Marines and Sailors accused of crimes. He was named the U.S. Marine Corps Defense Counsel of the Year for the Western United States in 2009. Yancey left active duty service in 2010, but he is still currently a member of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.

More info: Carmichael Legal

Statement 1 Statement 2 (redacted)

Joel Sickler has worked in the field of sentencing and corrections for more than 30 years and currently heads the Justice Advocacy Group, LLC. He is one of the country’s premier post-conviction specialists.

More info:Justice Advocacy Group LLC

Debunks Manning/Assange “conspiracy” Full statement

Patrick Eller is the CEO of Metadata Forensics, LLC which is a full service digital forensic company located in Richmond, VA. He has 20 years of military experience and a master’s degree in Digital Forensics and Cyber Investigations. He is a subject matter expert in the field of digital forensics and has run a global digital forensics program for the US Army. He currently teaches digital forensics at the undergraduate and graduate levels for multiple Institutions.

More info: Digital Forensic Community Metadata Forensics

Assange “feared for the safety of informants” Full statement

Jakob Augstein (born 28 July 1967) is a German heir, journalist and publisher. Augstein was born in Hamburg. He grew up as the son of Maria Carlsson, translator, and Rudolf Augstein, publisher of Germany's leading news magazine Der Spiegel. After 2005, he also worked for the parliamentary office of Die Zeit, a weekly German newspaper. On 26 May 2008 Augstein bought, and became editor of, the minor weekly newspaper Der Freitag. Between January 2011 and October 2018, he also wrote a weekly column for Spiegel Online. Also since early 2011, he is the counterpart of Nikolaus Blome, a journalist for BILD newspaper, in a weekly debate on controversial issues of German politics, on German public television channel Phoenix (“Augstein und Blome”).

More info: Wikipedia Der Freitag

Statement regarding the meeting that took place between Assange and Dana Rohrabacher on August 15, 2017 Full statement

Jen specialises in media law, public law and international law and has long represented Assange in this and other legal proceedings since 2010.

More info: Doughty Street Chambers

Full statement

The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of “universal access to all knowledge.”It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. The Internet Archive currently holds over 20 million books and texts, 3 million movies and videos, 400,000 software programs, 7 million audio files, and 463 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine.

More info: Wikipedia Internet Archive (Chris Butler)

- (full statement currently unavailable)

I studied at Cambridge and UCL before coming to the Maudsley Hospital for my general and forensic psychiatric training. I am interested in all things antisocial, and work in my clinical sessions at HMP Wandsworth.

More info: King's College Declassified UK article exposing conflict of interest

- (full statement currently unavailable)

Sondra Crosby, MD is a medical doctor and Professor of Medicine at Boston University, specializing in internal medicine. She is also a faculty member of the Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights department at the Boston University School of Public Health. Dr. Crosby is notable for being one of the first doctors allowed to travel to Guantanamo to independently examine Guantanamo captives. She is also notable for serving as the director of medical care at the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights. She examined over 300 torture victims at the Center.

She visited and assessed Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in Oct. 2017, and in Belmarsh in Oct. 2019 and January 2020.

More info: Boston University The Intercept article

Cryptome published unredacted cables first Full statement

John Young was born in 1935. He grew up in West Texas where his father worked on a decommissioned Texas POW, and John later served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers in Germany (1953–56) and earned degrees in philosophy and architecture from Rice University (1957–63). He went on to receive his graduate degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1969. A self-identified radical, he became an activist and helped create community service group Urban Deadline, where his fellow student-activists initially suspected him of being a police spy. Urban Deadline went on to receive citations from the Citizens Union of the City of New York and the New York City Council, and which later evolved into Cryptome. His work earned him a position on the nominating committee for the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design in 1998.

More info: Wikipedia Cryptome

- (full statement currently unavailable)

Dr Deeley is an honorary consultant psychiatrist in the National Autism Unit, Adult ADHD Service, and Behavioural Genetics and Autism Assessment Clinic. He is also senior lecturer in social behaviour and neurodevelopment at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London.

More info: Personal website King's College

High risk of suicide if Assange is extradited- (full statement currently unavailable)

Michael Kopelman has acted as an expert witness in cases involving neuropsychiatric or memory disorders, including amnesia for an offence, false confessions, civil liberties (detainees, control orders, Guantanamo returnees), death row, or extradition proceedings and some civil cases mainly involving head injury. He has been involved in criminal, Appeal Court, House of Lords/Supreme Court, Privy Council, and United Nations-sponsored cases.

More info: Forensic Psychiatry Chambers King's College London

- (full statement currently unavailable)

Professor Fazel’s research focuses on the relationship between mental illness and violent crime, the mental health of prisoners, and violence risk assessment. University of Oxford & Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science; Honorary Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust.

More info: Personal website University of Oxford

- (full statement currently unavailable)

Dr Kate Humphreys has been employed as a Clinical Neuropsychologist and Clinical Psychologist in the NHS since 2009. She has experience of assessing and intervening in a wide range of acquired disorders including the dementias, traumatic brain injury, stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease and Multiple Sclerosis. She also has an interest in neurodevelopmental disorders in adults. She has experience of working with clients from diverse cultural backgrounds and of working with interpreters. Areas of Expertise: Clinical Neuropsychology. Assessment of cognitive and emotional functioning using standardised objective tests, questionnaires and interview methods.

More info: Expert witness Hugh Koch Associates

WikiLeaks did not publish unredacted cables first Statement 1 Statement 2

at the time when the Wikileaks site republished the unredacted cables, the information was already easily available to any technically competent person, for example from the cryptome.org site” (“technically competent” in this case involves being able to open a browser and entering the URL “cryptome.org” in to the URL bar and to unpack a compressed archive)

I am Professor of Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences in Bern. My main area of research is network security, including peer-to-peer networks and applied cryptography. I have a PhD from UCLA, was Assistant Professor at the University of Denver, and lead research groups in the area of network security at the Technical University of Munich and INRIA.

More info: personal website

High-level plan to revoke Assange’s asylum Full statement

I noted in our conversation that it had been reported that Grenell only got a verbal agreement that there would be no death penalty, nothing in writing. Schwartz’s response to this was to send me a shrug emoji and he continued his tirade about how Assange deserved to die,”

I am a working journalist in Washington DC; my areas of work involve online commentary on current affairs, with particular focus on politics and social issues. Throughout the time period to which this statement relates I was employed by the “Gateway Pundit”, a news organisation based in Washington D.C.

More info: Wikipedia Gateway Pundit

Assange’s redactions protected informants Statement 1 Statement 2

Nicky Hager (born 1958) is a New Zealand investigative journalist. He has produced seven books since 1996, covering topics such as intelligence networks, environmental issues and politics. He is one of two New Zealand members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

More info: Personal website Wikipedia

Trump offered pardon for Assange in exchange for sources Full statement

Jen specialises in media law, public law and international law and has long represented Assange in this and other legal proceedings since 2010.

More info: Doughty Street Chambers

Assange told us what US wouldn’t Full statement

I came to blame Namir, thinking that the helicopter fired because he had made himself look suspicious and it just erased from my memory the fact that the order to open fire had already been given. The one person who picked this up was Assange. On the day he released the tape he said the helicopter opened fire because it sought permission and was given permission. He said something like “if that's based on the Rules of Engagement then the Rules of Engagement are wrong”.

I know Namir and Saeed would have remained forgotten statistics in a war that killed countless human beings, possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians. Had it not been for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange the truth of what happened to Namir and Saeed, the truth of what happened on that street in Baghdad on July 12, 2007, would not have been brought to the World. What Assange did was 100% an act of truth-telling, exposing to the world what the war in Iraq was and how the US military behaved and lied.

Former Reuters journalist Dean Yates was in charge of the bureau in Baghdad when his Iraqi colleagues Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were killed. A WikiLeaks video called Collateral Murder later revealed details of their death.

More info: Guardian article Reuters

WikiLeaks’ Iraq War Logs exposed 15,000 civilian casualties Full statement

John Anthony Sloboda OBE FBA (born 13 June 1950) is Research Professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where he currently leads research on the Social Impact of Making Music. He is also Co-Director of Every Casualty Worldwide, which works towards the aim of ensuring that all lives lost to armed violence, anywhere in the world, are properly recorded. He is also one of the founders of the Iraq Body Count Project

More info: Wikipedia WikiLeaks: The Iraq War Logs (video)

Full statement

At each stage of [my] raising my predicament, governements, both my own and those who played a direct part, have sought to discredit my account and in a number of different ways attempted to silence me. But, at each juncture it has been journalists and investigators informed by WikiLeaks documents that have been able, through their painstaking and diligent work, to corroborate my story and restore credibility to my account.

Khaled El-Masri (born 29 June 1963) is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed over to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was held at a black site and routinely interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other cruel forms of inhumane and degrading treatment and torture. After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the “Salt Pit”, the CIA finally admitted his arrest and torture were a mistake and released him. He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees whom the CIA abducted from 2001–2005.

More info: Wikipedia

Espionage Act is an “extraordinarily broad” political offense Full statement

The indictment of a publisher for the publication of secrets under the Espionage Act has no precedent in U.S. history. Neither does the indictment of a publisher under the Act for conspiracy to disseminate secrets. Furthermore the closest attempts at prosecution have always been of U.S. publishers subject to U.S. jurisdiction. There has been no known prior attempt to bring an Espionage Act prosecution against a non-U.S. publisher. Although successive administrations considered the prosecution of publishers, in each instance that consideration has been abandoned either as a result of political considerations and / or the ramifications for the question of press freedom generally.

I am an attorney, author, and litigator specializing in Constitutional law, international human rights, and non-profit law serving social movements, with a practice based in New York. My particular areas of focus include: freedom of expression, religious liberty, civil rights litigation, prisoner rights, non-profit matters, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and litigation, and regional and international human rights mechanisms.

More info: Personal website

On WikiLeaks’ “very rigorous redaction process” Statement 1 Statement 2

Amongst other effects of its publications a number of cables published by WikiLeaks threw light on the pressures and bullying techniques brought by the US in more than one country to prevent the prosecution of CIA agents invoved (in the el-Masri case). These detailed revelations threw light on otherwise inexplicable actions by the countries involved. Together with other information re the Afghan/Iraq wars and Guantanamo Bay and in relation to other renditions and rendition flights, the full picture could finally be seend and understood.

On the basis of my conversations and dealings with Mr Assange I regard his thoughts, ideas and actions to have been consistent with an overall political philosophy of seeking to bring to light the hidden criminal actions of states and n particular (and central to the publications with which he is charged) by the exposure of criminal conduct in war, to persuade the government concerned to alter the policies and bring war and those particular wars in question, and their consequences, to an end. My view is that the way in which he and WikiLeaks elected to make public the Manning data was in order to achieve the maximum effect to produce maximum impact in order to inform the public in turn to bring about change of US policies and practices.

John Goetz is an investigative journalist at ARD-Hauptstadtstudio in Berlin. He worked with Der Spiegel in collaboration with WikiLeaks in 2010 – 2011

More info: https://www.journalismfestival.com/speaker/john-goetz

“I totally disagree with the ‘good Ellsberg / bad Assange’ theory” Full statement

Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is an American economist, activist and former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of the U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers.

More info: personal website Wikipedia CP profile page

Assange would not get a fair trial in the United States Statement 1 Statement 2

Thomas Anthony Durkin is a criminal defense attorney in Chicago. He specializes in civil rights and domestic terrorism cases.

Durkin was selected in 2008 to be a participant in the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to provide civilian defense counsel to assist the military lawyers in the trial of the five High Value Detainees charged in U.S. v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, et al., in the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba with conspiring to orchestrate the September 11th attacks of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Durkin was civilian counsel for defendant Ramzi bin Alshibh.

More info: Wikipedia

*Julian Assange shouldn’t be extradited, would face solitary confinement in the United States
*Under Trump, Justice Dept. is Prosecutorial Hand of the President
Statement 1 Statement 2 Statement 3 Statement 4 Statement 5

Eric Lewis is a leading international attorney and a partner at Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss PLLC, based in Washington D.C. Mr. Lewis practices in the areas of international insolvency, cross border disputes and serious fraud cases. An expert in offshore asset tracing and trusts, he serves as a Director of the Jersey International Business School in the Channel Islands. Mr. Lewis also represents Guantanamo and Afghan detainees in litigation, seeking redress and accountability for torture and religious abuse while in US custody. He was selected by Washington DC Super Lawyers (2007-2013) and by Super Lawyers Corporate Counsel Edition (2009) as one of “The Top Attorneys” in Business Litigation in the Washington, D.C., area. He is also featured in Who’s Who as an expert in international insolvency.

More info: Reprieve

These charges would ‘radically rewrite’ the First Amendment Full statement

Requesting more documents from a source, posting online about documents which are in the public interest, using an encrypted chat messenger, or trying to keep a source’s identity anonymous are not crimes; they are vital to the journalistic process.

Trump’s Justice Department is attempting to use Assange as a precedent setting case, since it is considerably easier to first prosecute a foreign publisher who is unpopular with US political classes. It is my view that if Julian Assange is extradited, this precedent will be used against other journalists and publishers because prosecutors will be able to say that their similar journalistic activities equally did not have First Amendment protection.

Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. He is a journalist, activist, and legal analyst whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, USA Today, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy Review, and Politico. He also writes a column on press freedom for Columbia Journalism Review.

Trevor formerly worked as an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before that, he helped the longtime General Counsel of The New York Times, James Goodale, write a book on the Pentagon Papers and the First Amendment. He received his J.D. from New York Law School.

In 2013, he received the Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award for journalism.

More info: Freedom of the Press Foundation

On Trump’s politically motivated prosecution Full statement

Paul Rogers (born 10 February 1943) is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and Global Security Consultant with Oxford Research Group (ORG). He has worked in the field of international security, arms control and political violence for over 30 years. He lectures at universities and defence colleges in several countries and has written or edited 26 books, including Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Power and the Illusion of Control (Routledge, 2008) and Why We're Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2008). Since October 2001 he has written monthly Briefing Papers on international security and the “war on terror” for ORG. He is also a regular commentator on global security issues in both the national and international media, and is OpenDemocracy’s International Security Editor.

In the 1960s he worked with the Haslemere Group, an early pressure group on trade and development issues before embarking on an academic career first at Huddersfield and then at Bradford.

He holds a BSc and PhD from Imperial College London.

More info: Wikipedia Bradford university website

Explains using WikiLeaks docs in legal cases Full statement

The various high profile examples of U.S. government attacks on journalists, leakers and those journalists who worked with them, has since the earliest days of the Afghan conflict, appeared to have had a strong chilling effect, with one key effect being that there has always been a dearth of individuals from inside government, willing to go “on the record” to evidence U.S. violations. For this reason, documentary evidence such as the Wikileaks disclosures, have become of key importance in our work to evidence war crimes and human rights violations by the US and its allies.

WikiLeaks cables have contributed to court findings that US drone strikes are criminal offences and that criminal proceedings should be initiated against senior US officials involved in such strikes.

Importantly, WikiLeaks cables released in November 2010 had revealed the Pakistani Government’s support for the drones even when they were making public protests for the sake of domestic appearances. Clive Adrian Stafford Smith OBE (born 9 July 1959) is a British attorney who specialises in the areas of civil rights and working against the death penalty in the United States of America.He worked to overturn death sentences for convicts, and helped found the not-for-profit Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans. By 2002 this was the “largest capital defence organisation in the South.”He was a founding board member of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, based in Houston, Texas.

In addition, he has represented more than 100 of the detainees held as enemy combatants since 2002 at the US Guantanamo Bay detention camp. As of February 2018, a total of 40 men are still held there.

In August 2004, Stafford Smith returned from the US to live and work in the United Kingdom. He is the co-founder of Reprieve, a human rights not-for-profit organisation. In 2005 he received the Gandhi International Peace Award.

More info: Wikipedia Reprieve

Gives historical context for WikiLeaks’ journalism Statement 1 Statement 2

Activist publications have been a staple of American journalism ever since, championing radical causes such as the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, labor unions, pacifism, socialism and other unpopular movements. Like WikiLeaks, America’s editorial activists published unfiltered documents with minimal contextualizing and rarely bothered to interview both sides. Then and now, alternative news outlets exposed and opposed government authorities. Then and now, they were scorned and vilified as threats to the established order. But they were often ahead of their time; for just as yesterday’s heresy is tomorrow’s orthodoxy, yesterday’s radical journalist is tomorrow’s distinguished publisher.

Mark Feldstein spent 20 years as an award-winning on-air investigative correspondent at CNN, ABC News and various local television stations. On assignment, he was beaten up, subpoenaed and sued in the U.S.; detained and censored by government authorities in Egypt; and escorted out of the country under armed guard in Haiti.

More info: University of Maryland website