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The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Army Sergeant Travis Decker Murdered His Three Children After Being Denied Mental Health Care at JBL... Sat Jun 07, 2025 04:52 | JBLM Whistleblowers
A corrupt military police force and incompetent Commander who denied emergency mental health care and crisis counseling to an American service member resulted in the murder of the sergeant's three young daughters

offsite link Gaza doctor grieves her nine children killed in Israeli strike Sun May 25, 2025 20:00 | imc
Israeli regime continues it's slaughter
'The children were completely charred'

Paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar was treating victims of Israeli attacks when her children were killed by an Israeli strike on their home

offsite link British doctors working in Gaza describe territory as a ?slaughterhouse? Sat May 24, 2025 00:23 | imc
There?s no food getting in so people are starving,? surgeon Tom Potokar says
British doctors working in Gaza have described the territory as a ?slaughterhouse,? where the patients they are treating are severely malnourished.

Plastic surgeons and orthopedic specialists from the UK are based at the Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis in the south of the territory.

Dr. Tom Potokar, a plastic surgeon specializing in burn injuries, has worked in Gaza 16 times but said this mission had revealed a level of destruction far greater than his last visit in 2023,

offsite link It is time to talk about the Out of Control Immigration. Mon Mar 31, 2025 22:12 | imc
For the last few years since the CV19 scamdemic undocumented immigration into Ireland has surged. No one is allowed discuss it because they do not want any rational debate about it. If you do you are labelled an extremist. However this out of control immigration is fully facilitated by the Irish government and the EU and the shady figure behind the Neo Con movement pushing for endless war, wokeism and globalist agenda.

offsite link [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End Israeli Apartheid & Genocide Thu Mar 06, 2025 22:35 | ipsc
Sat, 22 March 2025, 13:00 Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin 1
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, supported by over 150 Irish civil society organisations, has called another National Demonstration for Palestine on Saturday 22nd March.

The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm and finish outside the D?il on Molesworth Street/Kildare Street to bring our demands to the Irish government?s doorstep.

The Saker >>

Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Human Rights in Ireland
Promoting Human Rights in Ireland

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link A School Excluding a 12 Year-Old Girl for Wearing a Union Jack Dress Must be a Wake-Up Call Tue Jul 15, 2025 13:19 | C.J. Strachan
A school excluding a 12 year-old girl for wearing a Union Jack dress must be a wake-up call over the untrammelled influence of divisive far-Left politics in our schools and institutions, says C.J. Strachan.
The post A School Excluding a 12 Year-Old Girl for Wearing a Union Jack Dress Must be a Wake-Up Call appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link University Staff Face Punishment if They Breach Labour?s Islamophobia Definition Tue Jul 15, 2025 11:00 | Will Jones
University staff and students will face disciplinary action if they breach Labour?s new definition of Islamophobia, a cross-party group of peers has warned in a letter to Dominic Grieve.
The post University Staff Face Punishment if They Breach Labour’s Islamophobia Definition appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The Deadline for Countries to Exempt Themselves From the New Pandemic International Health Regulatio... Tue Jul 15, 2025 09:00 | Dr David Bell
The deadline for countries to exempt themselves from the new pandemic International Health Regulations is next week, July 19th, says Dr David Bell. Nations should get out of this corrupt regime while they still can.
The post The Deadline for Countries to Exempt Themselves From the New Pandemic International Health Regulations is Next Week appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Emmanuel Macron Tells Bereaved Parents to Stop Dwelling on Their Stabbed Children and Focus on Savin... Tue Jul 15, 2025 07:00 | Steven Tucker
Why is Emmanuel Macron advising bereaved parents to stop dwelling on their stabbed children and focus instead on saving the planet? Could it have anything to do with the attackers being Muslim, wonders Steven Tucker.
The post Emmanuel Macron Tells Bereaved Parents to Stop Dwelling on Their Stabbed Children and Focus on Saving the Planet appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link News Round-Up Tue Jul 15, 2025 01:09 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Persecuted journalist Assange handcuffed, stripped naked on first day of extradition trial

category international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press author Sunday March 01, 2020 22:31author by 1 of indy Report this post to the editors

This report from the World Socialist Websites reports on the vindictive and appalling treatment of Julian Assange which has been lost in all the hype about the Corona virus which is blotting out all the other news. Even prior to the virus scare there was little coverage of Julian Assange by the main stream media. Hence the reason we are bringing this to your attention.

Julian Assange was handcuffed 11 times and stripped naked twice by Belmarsh prison guards on the opening day of this week’s extradition trial in London, his lawyers revealed in court yesterday.

The WSWS report says:

Edward Fitzgerald QC told District Judge Vanessa Baraitser that his client’s legal documents were confiscated by prison authorities, who later moved him to five different cells—vindictive measures aimed at intimidating and oppressing the WikiLeaks publisher.

Baraitser made the extraordinary claim that she had “no jurisdiction” over Assange’s treatment in detention, despite it interfering with his right to a fair trial.

Yesterday, she said it was up to his legal team to issue a complaint with Belmarsh. In the lead-up to this week’s hearing, Baraitser repeatedly refused to protect Assange’s due process rights, including access to lawyers and defence evidence.

Meanwhile, Assange’s closest supporters were openly targeted yesterday morning at court. As proceedings were due to begin, a court official told WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson that he was barred from the public gallery.

“I was standing outside the public gallery waiting to go inside when one of the guards called out, ‘Where is the WikiLeaks editor?’ and then declared, ‘I have been informed that you are not allowed into the public gallery’,” Hrafnsson told the World Socialist Web Site.

Unable to obtain an explanation from court authorities for their outrageous action, Hrafnsson addressed an impromptu press conference outside the court building. He was flanked by Assange’s father John Shipton and brother Gabriel Shipton, who had walked out in protest. With news of the ban spreading on social media, and with Assange’s solicitor Gareth Peirce intervening, the court backed down and Hrafnsson was readmitted to the gallery.

The lawless actions of the court make clear that a show trial is underway. Indeed, journalists covering yesterday’s trial in the press annexe told the WSWS that the measures in place for the Assange hearing—including police checkpoints and court vetting of media credentials—were unprecedented.

In court, Mark Summers QC began the day’s arguments for the defence with the ringing condemnation, “One could accurately describe this chapter of the case as lies, lies and more lies.” He delivered a forensic refutation of the three fundamental accusations made in the US extradition request.

The claim that Assange had assisted Manning in cracking a password to facilitate the hacking of sensitive documents was, Summers said, “a false allegation." He continued, "It’s provably wrong from the Manning trial… from the prosecution’s own evidence and unchallenged defence evidence.”

The allegation that he had actively solicited classified material from Manning was likewise, “provably wrong, this time from publicly available information.”

Finally, the accusation that Assange had knowingly put the lives of US informants at risk by dumping unredacted files online was “obviously and provably false, again from publicly available information and information known to the US government.”

Dealing first with the 250,000 US State Department cables released in April 2010, Summers cited evidence from Chelsea Manning’s Court Martial proving that no password hacking was necessary either to access these files or to conceal her identity.

Nor was Assange involved in soliciting the theft of these materials, as the extradition request alleges, through WikiLeaks’s “most wanted list” of government files. His lawyer explained that “no matter how hard you read this list you’re not going to find reference to cables anywhere on it.” Summers said, “the notion that they were uploaded to WikiLeaks as a result of Chelsea Manning having seen them on the ‘most wanted list’… is absolute fantasy.”

Summers then delivered a detailed chronology of the events that led to these documents being posted in bulk in unredacted form. “Neither Mr Assange nor WikiLeaks, when they received these materials… rushed to publish precipitously… Instead, Mr Assange and WikiLeaks entered into a partnership with a series of mainstream media organisations in order to understand and deal responsibly with these materials.”

He cited evidence from key witnesses explaining how WikiLeaks pioneered “utterly innovative” security and “harm minimisation” protocols, which have since been adopted for use in high profile cases like the Panama Papers tax haven exposé.

These procedures were sabotaged not by Assange or WikiLeaks but by David Leigh of the Guardian, who published a password to a secure archive of unredacted documents in his book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy.

The breach was first recognised and reported on by the German newspaper Die Freitag. Assange called the paper and “begged them not to reveal what they had discovered.” He then acted immediately, Summers explained, to control the potential fallout, phoning the White House and US Department of State with WikiLeaks employee Sarah Harrison. In the conversation, says Summers, “they talk in terms of an emergency about to happen.”

Astonishingly, US officials asked them to “call back in a couple of hours.” Assange replied, “I don’t understand why you’re not seeing the urgency in this. Unless we do something then people’s lives are at risk.”

Only when the full unredacted files had been publicly released by other websites—first of all, by US-based site Cryptome.org, which has never faced charges—did WikiLeaks publish the material.

Similar points were made in relation to the Detainee Assessment Briefs, the Rules of Engagement and the Afghanistan and Iraq War Diaries acquired and published by WikiLeaks. None required password hacking to be accessed by Manning from US government databases and all were inconsistent with WikiLeaks’s ‘wanted list’ of documents.”

As for the allegations that Assange encouraged Manning to commit theft, Summers made clear how Manning’s release of the Rules of Engagement flowed from her decision to leak in the public interest the “chilling” Collateral Murder video—described in court as “like 5-year-olds playing computer games with real people being killed, including children being shot at.”

The Rules of Engagement leaked by Manning “came with, and to explain, this horrific war crimes video,” exposing the US Government’s claims that soldiers had acted in accordance with protocol.

The Afghanistan and Iraq War Logs releases, Summers demonstrated with reference to the Manning Court Martial, were known by the US government to present no threat to the lives of US informants. WikiLeaks even worked with US officials to ensure that this was the case, at one point delaying publication of some 15,000 documents at their request. Their security measures were described by one defence witness as “more extreme measures… than I had ever previously observed as a journalist.”

Summers noted throughout his presentation that these details find “no mention at all in the US extradition request,” which had been “completely stripped of relevant context.” He repeatedly challenged whether the request was therefore “fair, proper and accurate.”

Were it proven not to be, Summers argued, Baraitser would be bound to establish the true facts and rule on the extradition on that new evidentiary basis.

He cited the cases of Castillo v Kingdom of Spain and Anor (2005) and Criminal Court at the National High Court, First Division v Murua (2010), and their establishing of the concept of “Zakrzewski abuse,” named after the case Zakrzewski v The Regional Court in Lodz, Poland (2013). This case law holds that although an extradition hearing cannot scrutinise the sufficiency of the evidence presented by the extraditing state, the prosecution’s misrepresenting of the defendant’s alleged conduct can be challenged and corrected.

Referring to the extradition request’s repeated “misrepresentations by omission” of Assange’s conduct, Summers concluded, “strip all those away… and what comes out isn’t criminal.”

James Lewis QC, acting for the US, responded curtly and unconvincingly with the claim that Summers “constantly seeks to put up a straw man” and that “the court should rule out any claim of abuse of process.”

Closing the day’s proceedings, Edward Fitzgerald QC indicated that the defence “have a response to every single one” of the prosecution’s points.

The hearing continues.

Related Link: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/02/26/assa-f26.html
author by crazy catpublication date Mon Oct 05, 2020 09:51author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Interview with John Pilger in Arena https://arena.org.au/eyewitness-to-the-agony-of-julian-assange/

author by Crazy Catpublication date Wed Sep 09, 2020 16:49author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Consortium News and Craig Murray https://consortiumnews.com/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

 
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