(London, U.K.) Glaring irregularities in the application of justice were on display yet again as Julian Assange’s extradition proceedings moved to London’s Central Criminal Court on Monday (7 September).
Lawyers for the WikiLeaks publisher argued that the U.S. Department of Justice’s filing of an updated and superseding indictment on July 29 — which came two days after the lawyers’ deadline to submit skeleton arguments — constituted an unfair abuse of process that had not given them or their client sufficient time to prepare. They formally asked for the new matters to be withheld.
Mark Summers QC, representing Assange, told the court that introducing a new indictment at “the eleventh hour” was both “extraordinary” and “abnormal,” but District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled in favour of the prosecution, allowing the superseding indictment to stand as is.
Following the ruling, Summers made a further application to delay the hearings until January 2021 — telling the court: “It would be an impossible task for the defence to deal with these fresh allegations in any meaningful way,” without the delay — but Baraitser, again, sided with prosecution lawyers, insisting that proceedings go ahead as scheduled for the coming three to four weeks.
The ruling came although Assange himself was yet to see the new allegations levelled against him, and had only seen his lawyers for the first time in six months earlier in the day. Edward Fitzgerald QC, also representing Assange, told the court how access to their client was limited to whenever the publisher could access the payphone in H.M.P. Belmarsh, with lawyers scrambling around a mobile phone to try and hear the conversation.
Baraitser’s rulings stood in firm contrast to her handling of the new U.S. indictment — a new 49-page document that radically alters the timeframes of the alleged wrongdoing and that had introduced previously unmentioned conduct that Assange is alleged to have perpetrated. The indictment was accepted without challenge or condemnation — and Assange himself was discharged and rearrested earlier in the morning’s proceedings so that the new U.S. extradition request could immediately take effect.
That followed previous accusations of impropriety and partiality after Baraitser was seen to be reading off a pre-prepared statement on a ruling that also went against Assange, although lawyers had only just finished deliberating the point in question.
It also followed Baraitser’s refusal to address a number of other “abuse of process” violations, such as the ongoing spying on Assange’s meetings with his legal team while in the Ecuadorean embassy in London — a fact in itself that would be sufficient to throw out any other legal proceedings.
Nonetheless, the hearings continue. Assange will be presented at the Old Bailey again on Tuesday, remaining as a silent observer in the glass dock of court room ten.