Spoke to Julian. A friend of his killed himself in the early hours of this morning. His body is still in the cell on Julian's wing. Julian is devastated.
Manoel Santos was gay. He'd lived in UK for 20 years. The Home Office served him with a deportation notice to Brazil.(Thread)
Julian wants to express his condolences to Manoel's friends and family.
Julian tells me Manoel was an excellent tenor. He helped Julian read letters in Portuguese, and he was a friend.
He feared deportation to Brazil after 20 years, being gay put him at risk where he was from.
Julian hopes there will be an investigation into the deportation decision at @ukhomeoffice. Manoel was at high risk. His suicide was foreseeable. An inquiry into his case might prevent future suicides.
Conditions in UK prisons under COVID also play a role. Prisoners are separated from their support network, children, parents, partners. They have practically no time out of cell. Many are unconvicted, on remand or non-violent. With no end in sight. It's inhuman. People lose hope.
I spoke to Julian today. At any moment we expect that the US will drop its existing extradition request and then re-arrest him on the very same 18 charges, under a different extradition request.
We don't know if this means he'll be brought to court to be 're-arrested'. (Thread)
The DoJ had been given a deadline by Westminster Magistrates Court to finalise any further extradition requests by 14 June 2019.
That makes the latest superseding indictment 14 months late.
It was publicised on the DoJ website on 24 June 2020, over a month ago.
5 weeks have passed since the DoJ publicised its indictment (with no new charges) but the US has so far made no attempt to incorporate it into the UK jurisdiction.
Hence lawyers have been working on arguments & evidence in relation to an effectively defunct extradition request.