🚨Julian Assange's final extradition hearing has just opened at the High Court in London.

Declassified is monitoring the hearing, and we'll be posting live updates here👇 A brief recap:

The US seeks the extradition of Julian Assange for 18 alleged offences relating to the obtaining and publication of sensitive information.

If extradited, Assange faces up to 175 years in a US supermax prison.

🚨A senior World Food Programme official has testified to British MPs about how an Israeli tank "opened fire" on civilians in Gaza who were "desperately trying to get their hands" on humanitarian aid.
committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1…
"I do not think I have ever seen the speed at which the situation has deteriorated in the Gaza Strip", the official said.

"There is a smell of death in buildings and from buildings... It is under bombardment every day. You wake up to the sound of drones".

🚨Day X: The final session of Julian Assange's extradition hearing has now opened at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Declassified is monitoring the hearing, and we'll be posting live updates here 👇 The court opens by acknowledging the numerous difficulties that journalists and members of the public had with following the proceedings yesterday, due to technical difficulties in the court.

This has been a common feature of Assange's hearings in the UK.

🚨Day X: Julian Assange's final hearing has now opened at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Declassified is monitoring the hearing, and we'll be posting live updates here👇 Assange is unwell and cannot attend in person or online.

In December, the WikiLeaks founder was so ill that he broke a rib while coughing.

⚠️In Commons debate on #Gaza yesterday, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer failed to condemn Israel for its actions in #Gaza and didn't mention collective punishment, a war crime.

Sunak delivered a series of apologias for current Israeli policies. See 🧵

tinyurl.com/2p8r7s73
Far from highlighting Israeli crimes of collective punishment and mass bombing of #Gaza, Sunak repeatedly said Israel is "of course" acting within international law.

👉NEW -- When I was censored by the British art establishment to appease Pinochet’s regime

By @peterkennardx

50 years on from the coup in Chile, the UK’s most important political artist recounts how the Barbican censored his work for Pinochet officials.
declassifieduk.org/when-i-was-cen… In 1985, Kennard had a retrospective at the Barbican Arts Centre. The day before it opened, management told him he had to remove two images against the 1973 Chile coup.

Kennard refused, but came in the next day to see one covered with a cloth and the other unscrewed from wall.

👉 NEW -- The tiny Irish town that unleashed corporate power around the world

By @kennardmatt and @ClaireProvost

Britain’s new ‘freeports’ are latest extension of a model of corporate utopias which began their life in an unlikely setting in Ireland.
declassifieduk.org/the-tiny-irish… The Shannon Free Zone was established in 1959, and became the inspiration for the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) that have swept the world.

Chinese foreign minister Jiang Zemin (front row, third from right) visited Shannon in 1980, as his country opened its first SEZ in Shenzhen.

NEW -- BP extracted Iraqi oil worth £15bn after British invasion

By @kennardmatt

Despite UK ministers denying the war was about oil, the flagship British company reaped a bonanza upon its return to Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
declassifieduk.org/bp-extracted-i… 🔴 BP returned to Iraq in 2009 after a 35-year absence + was awarded a significant interest in country’s largest oil field near British-occupied Basra
🔴 BP's pumped 262m barrels of Iraqi oil since 2011
🔴 By 2020, BP produced more oil from Iraq than its whole European operation

⚠️The final Manchester bombing inquiry report has just been published.

It is noteworthy for what it fails to address.

The public is not being informed about the bomber's links to UK government policies.

See short 🧵 ⚠️The inquiry report makes no attempt to probe how the British military and security services supported the Islamist militias that the Abedis joined during the Libya war of 2011.

The report doesn't even mention that Britain was fighting there.

See 👇declassifieduk.org/manchester-bom…

👉 NEW -- Imran Khan: ‘West gains from corruption’

by @pmillerinfo

Western nations are benefiting from corruption across Asia, the ousted prime minister of #Pakistan has said in a brave new documentary: Behind Closed Doors

declassifieduk.org/imran-khan-wes… 👉 @ImranKhanPTI says of the UK authorities in the new film:

“They are benefiting from billions of dollars which flow into their properties and their businesses stolen from this country.”

He opens up about trying to stop “this plunder of the poor countries” by corrupt elites.

👀 @DavidLammy's foreign policy speech is traditional Labour, positioning the party in government as the other half of the UK establishment. It offers no clear change to the Tories.

Short 🧵

labourlist.org/2023/01/we-wil… 👀"I will not hide my trans-Atlanticism", Lammy said, also quoting from Biden.

Labour has an "unshakeable commitment to NATO" and "would invest in AUKUS".

Under Labour, the UK would be "NATO’s leading European power".

Lammy is clearly ingratiating himself with Washington.

🇬🇧🇺🇸 NEW: ‘The UK executive is wining and dining with people plotting the assassination of my husband’

@Stella_Assange, wife of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder, sits down with Declassified's @kennardmatt for her most candid interview yet.👇
declassifieduk.org/uk-executive-i… 👉 Stella on British media: “If the UK press had reported fairly and critically about this case, would Julian be in Belmarsh prison today? I don’t believe so.”

👉 Stella on US extradition: "I’m convinced Julian cannot survive under the conditions the US will put him in."

NEW -- Evo Morales: ‘We lament the English were celebrating the sight of dead people’

By @kennardmatt

The President of Bolivia from 2006-19 invites Declassified to his house deep in the Amazon rainforest for a world exclusive interview.
declassifieduk.org/evo-morales-we… .@evoespueblo tells us:

👉 COUP: ‘UK participated in it – all for lithium’
👉 BRITISH: ‘Superiority is so important to them, the ability to dominate’
👉 US: ‘Any relationship with them is always subject to conditions’
👉 BOLIVIA: ‘We are putting anti-imperialism into practice’

How the ‘permanent government’ turned on Boris Johnson

By Richard @NortonTaylor

While many celebrate the PM’s resignation, we cannot ignore role played by unelected officials – often remainers – in bringing down Britain’s democratically elected leader.
declassifieduk.org/how-the-perman… .@NortonTaylor: "The prime minister’s downfall was encouraged, even engineered, by parts of the Whitehall establishment. This included Britain’s top spooks – what I call the ‘permanent government’ and in the US they call the ‘deep state’."

Defence secretary Ben Wallace told parliament today that the UK has given Ukraine:
5,000+ anti-tank missiles,
5 air defence systems with more than 100 missiles,
1,360 anti-structures munitions,
4.5 tonnes of plastic explosives,
Starstreak anti-air missiles,
120 armoured vehicles Wallace added that a small number of Stormer armoured vehicles with launchers for anti-air missiles are being provided, and if possible long range artillery with ammunition, and anti-ship missiles

Parliament's foreign affairs committee is holding an inquiry into mercenaries, focused on Russia's Wagner Group.

Watch the moment when MPs find out Britain hasn't signed a UN ban on mercenaries...

@DrSorcs @aliciakearns @coyleneil The UN Convention against Mercenaries was passed in 1989. Britain, France, the US, Russia and China have never endorsed the international ban.

Throughout the 1980s, UK officials at the UN actually worked to undermine the ban, as we previously revealed declassifieduk.org/exclusive-why-…

Jubilant scenes outside Nanyuki police station today as a group of elderly Kenyans who are suing the British army walk free.

Footage via @ACCPA2020 @ACCPA2020 Nearly 1,500 Kenyans are suing the British army for causing a massive fire last year. The 🇬🇧 military makes secret payments to mostly white landowners to conduct dangerous exercises on colonial-era farms in 🇰🇪, as @JohnLetai revealed for us today
declassifieduk.org/the-sun-never-…

❓ What are the 5 most under-reported key countries in UK foreign policy in the British national media?

It's hard to choose because there are so many, but here's a selection in this short 🧵 What the UK national media don't report --

1. The extent of the UK's military support for Israel

declassifieduk.org/how-the-uk-mil…

🔴🔴 As Johnson visits Saudi Arabia, the UK media is not informing you about the true nature of British support for the Saudi dictatorship.

The extent of Whitehall's special relationship with Riyadh – being promoted in our name - is in effect being covered up.

See 🧵 🔴UK military has senior soldiers embedded in the Saudi armed forces, believed to take their orders from Saudi commanders.

The British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard (BMM SANG) trains the protection force of the House of Saud.

declassifieduk.org/the-uks-secret…

👉 New -- Partygate referees: why are they so spooky?

by @pmillerinfo

Many people running Whitehall watchdogs have spent time in or around UK intelligence & the secret state. Can they be trusted, when their careers are often cloaked in secrecy?

THREAD
declassifieduk.org/partygate-refe… 1. Sue Gray -- #Partygate inquisitor-in-chief.

Even the BBC seems unable to rule out whether Gray was a spy.

Radio 4 said: “More than one person we've spoken to has suggested that Sue Gray might have been involved with the secret services.”

Director of @bellingcat, @EliotHiggins, is spreading misinformation on Declassified's article.

First, he falsely says it didn't say Bellingcat is a Dutch NGO.

The article clearly states it is registered in the Netherlands. (Read our article here -- bit.ly/323X3bI) Second, Higgins claims Bellingcat is "not a UK based organisation". In fact, Bellingcat is also registered at Companies House as a UK-incorporated limited company, with a registered office in Leicester.