Update from #Assange hearings: after District Judge Vanessa Baraitser asked Assange’s lawyers to check on him as her seemed tired. He then stood up to address the court: “I’m as much a participant in these proceedings as I am a spectator in Wimbledon.
“I’m having enough difficulty concentrating as it is. I can’t speak to my lawyers with any confidentiality. There is no point in participating in these proceedings if I can’t communicate with my lawyers without any privacy.
“The other side must have something like 100 contact hours. There is already enough spying on my lawyers as it is. There are a number of unnamed embassy officials here. There are two microphones in here. What’s the point of asking if I can concentrate if I can’t participate?”
Assange’s lawyers will make an application for him to sit alongside them on the benches tomorrow. Edward Fitzgerald QC said: “He is a gentle man of an intellectual nature. There’s no reason for him not to sit with us.”
