Back in court, the lawyers are present, we are waiting for the Judge, and still 40 political observers like @amnesty are banned from being able to monitor the case via a video link that was provided to them and access removed on the first day of proceedings.
Thread: #AssangeCase
Judge comes in and John Sloboda is saying the oath via video link. #AssangeCase
Sloboda is the co-founder of Iraq Body Count, recognized as an authority in civilian deaths by Governments and international organizations. #AssangeCase
Sloboda: The reason of monitoring of civilian deaths is important, it gives dignity for those who are killed and gives information that may reveal patterns is trends that may help in investigations as well as being a fundamental human need to know how deaths have taken place.
Sloboda: Before the Iraq Logs, it was possible to harvest all public domain information of civilian deaths in Iraq. But the Iraq Logs was the largest single contribution of the Iraq war which helped us discover about 15 thousand previously unknown civilian deaths.
Sloboda: The Iraq Logs gave us far more detail that was previously known about the instances and situations about civilian deaths in Iraq. #AssangeCase
Sloboda: We suggested to #JulianAssange that we joined the partnership of media consortium that had access full access to the dataset.
Defence: Was there redactions?
Sloboda: Mr. Assange was very careful to make sure that redactions would be done for risk minimization.
Sloboda There was a technical process in the redactions. They took a simple English dictionary and then redact everything that wasn't in this. This caused over-redactions and acronyms and other information had to be put back in and make sure things like occupations were taken out
Sloboda: Assange had the position that the documents could not be published until everybody was satisfied about the redaction process was complete and safe. #AssangeCase
Sloboda: The extent of redaction was that they were over-redacted when published. #AssangeCase
Media partners put significant pressure on #JulianAssange to publish, but he held strong and refused to publish until the full redaction process had been done. #AssangeCase
Sloboda: There was a huge public interest in these documents, in fact there have been around 40 thousand articles written about the civilian deaths discovered by the War Logs. #AssangeCase
Lewis starts cross-examination. He starts by discrediting the witness as usual.
Prosecution: Is he an actual expert? What was the vetting process from WikiLeaks? And nonsensical questions that are unrelated to the actual case. #AssangeCase
Camera focuses on Julian, he seems to be following proceedings and is wearing a mask. #AssangeCase
Sloboda is being led into saying that it is irresponsible to publish names, and is being asked about the Afghan logs even though he did not participate in the Afghan Logs publication. #AssangeCase
Prosecution argues that a human would have to go back to the logs to check if the redacting software actually worked. Did this happen.
Sloboda: I cannot answer this as I'm not an expert in the software.
The Court will hear arguments against bail first.
Clair Dobbin: The high court can overturn the conviction, the court must be careful not to render the result academic. #AssangeCase
Day 17 of the #AssangeHearing, with three days left, open justice has not been done in these proceedings. The Judge blocked 40 political and NGO observers (including @amensty & @RSF_inter) from monitoring the most important #FreeSpeech trial of the century.
Thread:
Defence is reading from/summarizing a witness statement from war reporter Patrick Cockburn. He was in Kabul when the war logs were released, and he says they confirmed civilian casualties he and other journalists suspected. #AssangeCase
Cockburn's statement includes the importance of the war logs and Collateral Murder video to prove these incidents in the face of official denial.
Day 16 of the #AssangeCase proceedings. By this stage it is very likely that the 40 political observers that the judge arbitrarily banned from the observing proceedings virtually will not be allowed to do so. 4 left & I feel the decision was made before we started.
Thread:
We have Maureen Baird on the stand: 28 years experience with the Bureau of Prisons in various capacities, with her final positions as Warden and Senior Executive Service Warden at three various Federal Prisons. #AssangeCase
September 28th, day 15 of the #AssangeCase extradition proceedings. 40 political and #FreeSpeech advocate observers including @RSF_inter and @amnesty are still banned from observing the most important trial of our lifetime by Judge Baraitser without any explanation.
Thread:
Sorry for being a bit late, this morning the court heard from Yancey Ellis, US attorney, with experience of the federal prison system. He talked about how #Assange would be placed under a strict solitary confinement regime.
As a pre-trial defendant, Assange would be detained in the ADC for months or potentially years. Ellis: "I believe it's most likely" #Assange would be held in administrative segregation (ad-seg). #AssangeCase