Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/22/24 Mohamed Elmaazi on the Latest Assange Hearing

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

Scott talks with journalist Mohamed Elmaazi about the latest Assange hearing before the UK High Court. The hearing, which took place on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, saw the Assange team requesting the ability to make an appeal on the order extraditing the Wikileaks founder to the United States. Elmaazi, who attended the trial, explains the arguments each side is using at this stage. He and Scott also take a step back and talk about how ridiculous this case against Assange is, bringing up and shooting down all the common myths used to smear this heroic journalist. Discussed on the show: “Assange Is No 'Ordinary Journalist': US Opposes Request For Appeal” (The Dissenter) “UK High Court Finally Hears Assange's Request For An Appeal” (The Dissenter) Mohamed Elmaazi is a journalist who has covered all of Julian Assange's hearings. His work has appeared in The Dissenter, Consortium News, Jacobite and Electronic Intifada. He is the new editor-in-chief of Truth Defence. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show aren't you guys on the line i've got mohammed el mazzi and boy we've been uh email pen pals for a very long time but now i'm finally interviewing the guy he wrote a thing at the dissenter dot org you know where kevin got stole it does all of his great Assange stuff. And then here, Muhammad is also doing great Assange stuff. This one is called

Assange's no ordinary journalist. U.S. opposes request for appeal. Welcome to the show. Muhammad, how you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you for inviting me, Scott. Yeah, yeah. Happy to have you here. Great piece about a horrible subject. I almost can't believe this stuff, but yeah, I can. It's the British High Court of Justice.

I think the last stage of Assange's appeal of his extradition. Can you tell us exactly what is an issue in the court here, what it is the judge is being asked to decide? Sure. So without going to the whole sort of procedural dynamics, because extradition will have different rules than criminal appeals or civil appeals or what have you, an extradition is sort of in the middle of both. It's both criminal in a sense. what they're doing is they're going to the high court and they're asking for permission to appeal. So even though these are, if you like, appeal hearings, are actually permission hearings. And over the two days, most of the first day, so I wrote two pieces for the dissenter.

On the 20th, it was focusing on what the defense are arguing, or Julian Assange's side is arguing. And then on the 21st, it was mostly the U.S. government's response. And your listeners may be aware of the fact that in 2021, the district judge, Vanessa Bratzer, ruled that Julian Assange could not be extradited, right? But she only ruled that on the basis of his substantial risk of suicide. She rejected all of the other arguments that related to politically motivated prosecution and you can't extradite someone for politically motivated prosecutions, that the charges themselves, espionage are political offenses and the UK-US extradition treaty, bars extradition for political offenses, that the extradition and therefore a future trial would represent a breach of Julian's fundamental right to speech and the right to a free press, that he wouldn't get a fair trial

there and a number of other arguments, right? So she rejected all of those except for the argument that the health grounds argument, that he'd be at substantial risk of suicide. When the U.S. government got that reversed on appeal on the basis of various assurances they gave, oh, we promise we won't treat Julian poorly in our prison system, unless he says or does something that would cause us to change our mind. And amazingly, the High Court accepted those flimsy qualified assurances. That then left Julian with the ability or the option to appeal all the grounds that he lost on in 2021. all the ones I've just listed to you.

Now, he tried to do that previously, and a single judge in the high court rejected that permission application. And so then they have tried again. And this time they've got two judges at an oral hearing, two senior judges at an oral hearing still at the high court. And if the judges grant permission to appeal on some, most or all of the grounds, then they'll list a subsequent date and say, okay, now you get to argue. them more fully. You'll get to have an actual appeal hearing. If they refuse, that's the end

of the matter. They will have exhausted older domestic avenues of appeal, and the only option left to them will be to seek interim measures or an emergency appeal at the European Court of Human Rights, which is based in Strasbourg, France. Okay. So, now, I know you live there in England, and I know that there There were, you know, Kevin Gustola was complaining about the video access, at least on the second day, to the hearing. Were you actually able to go to the thing? Yeah, so I've covered every single hearing since 2019 in Julian's case. In fact, I'm the only person to be able to do that.

It helps when you live here and you're self-employed. But some in person and some via video link. Unfortunately, Kevin wasn't able to, he was denied video link access completely. In fact, everyone who lived outside of, who was based outside of England and Wales, were denied, which is the first time that's ever happened. So I was inside. I was able to get inside. I, like everyone else, registered as press. You know, we have press cards here. If you're a member of a union or certain organizations like the BBC, they'll give you a press card, which the government recognizes. It's a bit different than the States. And then I sat down in the press

area because I went early enough to queue up. Unfortunately, on the second day, even though I came even earlier, and this happened to other people as well, even though we had a ticket, because we had to, there's so much interest. So people, they started registering people for seats, if you like. Normally, you just go into court and you sit down with your member of the public or member of the press. You don't have to ask anyone's permission, right? Courts are meant to be open, you know, open to the public unless there's national security or other reasons why they're not. But when this very high media interest, you end up having to email all these different people hoping that you get on a list and then you get a ticket when you come into the court building

and then and then you queue up outside the right courtroom etc and even though we did that we were then a number of us myself i was the first one the clerks the court clerks came to me and asked me to leave the press area and to go to the the public gallery up on the second floor where there's no tables or anything for me to put my computers on to type and uh they're like oh yeah that's where your seat is um i'm like but this says press it's like ah but other the press have a special status, priority status, because they're associated press, which actually just means I realize they're just legacy or establishment press. You know, Guardian, BBC, Daily Mail, you know, New York Times, what have you.

And that, I cannot tell you how much of an issue I made out of that. I said, you're telling me journalists who literally know nothing about this case, who have covered maybe only one or two hearings, get priority because. you know their names versus myself. I've come here. I've registered. I've come early. And people who have come late get to take my seat.

And she's like, oh, well, I'm sorry. That's the way it is. So I ended up going on the second day down to the basement of the court. And luckily, I also had access to a video link. And I was able to get most of it. Although at the beginning, the sound was a bit choppy. But enough people complained that the judges rose told the people to sort out the video link. And then it was mostly sorted.

it's amazing how country that's a supposed first-world country such as Britain how poorly so much of the system is run yeah yeah anyway i don't yeah that is what it is yeah sure okay so let's get to this headline no ordinary journalist what is the difference between julian assange and an ordinary journalist according to british lawyers arguing on the Americans behalf here. Yeah, they're instructed, because barristers, I don't want to, you know, I don't get the whole thing, but barristers are 99% they're self-employed. So I could pay some of them, assuming they're happy to take my case, and they'll represent me on one day in my case, and then tomorrow.

So they're not representing the British state. They truly are representing America. Their clients, or I'm pretty sure it's the Department of Justice. I see. I mean, the case actually says Julian Assange versus the United States of America. Okay. Or the United States government. I'd have to look at the, I think it's the USA.

Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's, in a way, seems like it could be beneficial compared to having the British state argue the case. But I don't know. Yeah, but bear in mind that their clients are all like US. Oh, yeah, British state. Yeah, but the British state, they're like, oh, but we're neutral, right? We're just here to facilitate the rule of law.

We have a treaty with the Americans. The Americans say they want him. And so our Crown Prosecution Service will advise American prosecutors what they have to do to go about. They'll be like the go-betweens. They'll say these are good extradition experts. You can instruct them. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. All right. So now, what about this argument about who's an ordinary journalist or who's not one? Apparently, you're so ordinary. You've got to go sit in the basement. But this guy is so extraordinary. They get to lock him in prison. Yes, exactly.

It's just two ends of two ends of the spectrum. So I know this has been argued before in this case by the US government, but the feel was, certainly my feel, was that previously they were saying that he had passed the threshold of acceptable journalism when he had said to Chelsea Manning allegedly, because we don't even know that he's the one who said it. Someone from WikiLeaks said, curious eyes never run dry, right? When whoever it was was encouraging Chelsea Manning to look for more documents and they're saying, oh, this is now solicitation, right? What they've done yesterday when they present their argument was Julian is not akin to an ordinary journalist, WikiLeaks is not akin to an ordinary publisher. In fact, even before Chelsea Manning came to the picture, they're basically operating as illegal individuals and organizations. I mean, they hammered this very hard. They said that he was soliciting and conspiring with individuals in order to get them to

commit to steal documents, right? So it was the solicitation of criminal acts and hacking in order for people to steal documents so that they might be illegally published. This is how they were pushing it. They didn't even use the word leaking anymore, what happened. you completely protected the idea, any idea that Chelsea Manning was a whistleblower. And this idea that, I mean, they almost seem to be presenting the argument that you need to be a passive recipient of information in order to be an ordinary journalist. Of course, the lower court, when the substantive hearings were happening at Westminster Magistrate's court, she heard plenty of expert testimony, which went unchallenged, basically.

there was no other expert who argued differently from experts in the united states uh basically saying you know we're not journalism and journalists aren't just recipients a passive recipients of information we seek out we encourage cajole invigal i mean there's a quotes that we're all being used um entice people to provide us with information and yes they may be violating their confidentiality agreements but we're not breaking the law by doing this, by encouraging them to do this, they can always say no. And that's because if you say that's breaking the law, then basically, that's the death of investigative journalism.

That means journalists can only publish information that arrives anonymously in the post, and that's it. And they even tried to say statements that Julian had made previously, just generally, such as we are interested in documentation that people might have on this subject matter, such as the U.S. rules of engagement in Iraq, the U.S. military's rules of engagement, right? That kind of thing. Oh, that's enticing people to commit criminal offenses and to steal information and then send it to him. So it's, they're basically just trying to paint a picture that he's not a legitimate journalist, so you don't have to worry about extraditing him. And, oh, this is a matter

if he wants to raise it. He can raise it at trial in the Eastern District of Virginia. It's not for us to, you know, this isn't meant to be a trial here, it's just a matter of whether or not it's legitimate for him to be extradited. Of course, as your other guests may have already told your audience, most of these issues can't be argued under Espionage Act cases anyway, because they're not relevant. It's just about the documents. Hey, you guys, did you know that I don't just write books? I publish them. Well, the Institute does, and I'm the director, so yeah. 13 of them now, including my four. We published five more in 2020. Lorry Calhoun and Tom Woods books about the COVID regime, Joe Solis Mullin on the fake

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A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. But even besides that, well, and that's, yeah, and we know all that about the espionage, how narrow the defense is ever allowed to be on that. But on just this question, though, does the court? have the power, it's, you know, officially here to take all this into account to decide that, look, that on the face of it, they've got a very weak argument here. This is the best that they can come up with is that this one guy, when he does journalism, it's different. And we all know it's different because he's publishing documents in bulk on the website. But they're not charging them with that because there's no difference in the law that they can point at there.

Right? So, but that's what they're really trying to nail him for is posting the raw data from these mass leaks and sort of changing the nature of journalism in that way. And the size of the leaks being posted at once and the ease, the secure drop mechanism for uploading documents anonymously and all of this kind of thing. That's why they're trying to make an example out of them. But as we've talked about this for years and as you just. described it. The U.S. government is all wet here. They've got nothing. Oh, he enticed somebody. Man, the U.S. Constitutional Republic, such as it is, has been around for 200-something years, and the courts have already decided about all this. There's no such thing as the crime of enticing somebody. You know, what the hell is that? He's a journalist, as you said, every other journalists and every other mainstream and alternative journalistic outfit.

You know, acts this way and reserves the right to act this way. I'll say it right now. Hey, government employees. Steal documents. Break the law, violate your contract, and upload that stuff to WikiLeaks or

somebody, not the Washington Post. By the way, that's why Manning uploaded this stuff to WikiLeaks, because try to give it to the Washington Post in the New York Times and they wouldn't pay any attention. So he went ahead and gave to Assange. And that is a very interesting, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. No, I was going to say, that is a very interesting point because, yeah, so there's two elements to it. They're using loads of arguments to try to try to create the context, the environment where a judge feels

comfortable or makes it easy, things that, yeah, this is clearly about criminal behavior to extradite, Even though most of the things they raise, like they heavily hammered the the fact that he published the unredacted cables, right? But of course, the charges themselves, that's irrelevant, right? There is no difference if the cables, if the documents are redacted versus unredacted under the Espionage Act. They talked about he created grave likelihood of serious harm or high likelihood of grave harm falling to U.S. source. Because their names would then appear in the unredacted documents that ended up being published. But of course, it's not a crime in the U.S. to reveal the sources, the identity of sources of U.S. government institutions. And it won't make a difference, right?

It doesn't matter. It's not like they'll have to argue that in court. And also it's important that it ain't true. You know, when all this came out, they said over and over again, like hypnosis, like they always do with these slogans. blood on his hands Julian Assange has blood on his hands Bradley now Chelsea Manning has blood on his hands

blood on his hands blood on his hands blood on his hands hey everybody you get the email go on TV today and say blood on his hands blood on his hands blood on his hands and then it turned out they had no evidence of that whatsoever and they were forced by the courts to admit it yeah that's true

although the point is here while they did raise that and they even said crypto and public first. And one of the judges amazingly actually raised this is, well, what do you say to this point that like when Julian or WikiLeaks published the unredacted cables, it had already been published by a different outlet first. And the America, the lawyer representing the United States, they're all British lawyers, but she's, they're instructed by the, the US government to represent them here. Claire Dobbin had said, well, we say that it doesn't matter, well, which institution published, whether it was WikiLeaks or not WikiLeaks, it is because of Julian Assange,

the responsibility falls on him. Had he not incited, uh, I love the term they use incited as well, like incitement to riot. If he had not incited Chelsea Manning to leak the documents, they would not have been leaked, which is of course completely false based on Chelsea Manning's own, uh, statement, uh, during her like previous statements and also what was said at her trial, right? That it's not that, you know, she was just going about her business and then Julian Assange came out of nowhere and encouraged her to leak. Not that that should matter, even if he had. In fact, there's a small parenthesis. What actually happened was Manning was ordered to help process

the arrest and imprisonment of a guy who had written an article critical of Prime Minister Nuri Almoliki and calling him a thief. It was called Where Did the Money Go? And he was sure to be tortured and may be killed. And Manning said to his then, Bradley Manning said to his superior officer, hey, what is this? I don't want to do this. This is wrong, what the hell, and was told, get back to work. And that was the motive. And Manning explained that to the rat in the private messages when, you know, assuming no one else was looking and that it was a private message because the guy had said I'm a priest and a journalist or a reverend and a journalist so I can

doubly keep your secrets. Don't worry, you can trust me. And he explained she, Chelsea, Manning explained the purpose of the whole thing. So sorry to go on like that, but that was what it was. It wasn't Julian Assange came from somehow just picked a random army specialist and twist his arm behind his back. Yeah, that's a very important point. So they, I mean, the arguments that they're trying to make to the judge is like, look, you have, there is jurisprudence, right, precedent from the European Court of Human Rights, which is supposed to be the highest court. on human rights issues. And they're very clear that when it comes to publication, there's a balancing test that must be done. And they say that the judge at first instance, District Judge Vanessa Braitzer,

when she ruled against all the defense arguments, and she said these are matters that can be raised at trial, but they can't be because there's no public interest defense under the Espionage Act, right? They said that she failed in her responsibilities, right? Because this is an appellate court. So you're having to make, grounds of law, right? Those where your main arguments are. So their main arguments were,

if you like, almost a fact. The U.S. government saying harm has occurred, et cetera. And they're saying, look, the European court would say balance on the one hand, potential alleged unproven harm, on the one hand, versus verifiable fact of torture, rape, assassinations, drone strikes, right? Like, we know for a fact that courts, including the European court itself, has found that as a result of WikiLeaks disclosures, you know, cases succeeded, including the case of Khalid al-Masri, who testified on behalf of Julian Assange about how he was kidnapped by the CIA, rendered, tortured, because they mistook him for someone else for months. And even when they realized he was the wrong person, they kept him for, I think, a couple more months. and then dumped him out of a van in some random country and he had to find his way home and his family he was on holiday

his family were back in Lebanon because they're like our dad and husband has disappeared and this poor guy this poor German is the German Lebanese I think German Lebanese citizen and having to bring this case and it's only because of WikiLeaks disclosures that that

came to light and he was able to win a judgment of the European court and I'm sorry Mohamed we're so short on time but just on that point there are at least 10,000 news stories, certainly high thousands and thousands of news stories that at least in part cite the WikiLeaks cables, the State Department cables, the Iraq-Afghan War logs, the Guantanamo files. There's no question about the newsworthy public interest data in this stuff. And it's actually a perfect leak because it's all secret and confidential level stuff. So it didn't cause any spies to get rolled up behind Russian lines

or anything like that, just told the truth that people deserve to know. And then, but on the last thing here before we go, and I'm really late, so if you can as fast as you can, can you talk about this argument by these barristers, again, representing the United States, that the First Amendment doesn't apply here. Their power to prosecute Assange applies. But for whatever reason, and it sounds like the way you covered it here, doesn't sound like the defense attorney didn't have a straight argument either about, look, If they're putting their hands on him, that makes him a U.S. person.

And then you're damn right, he's got the First Amendment, which is the correct argument. Well, yeah, so the defense are saying, look, Mike Pompeo, when he was CIA, said, CIA director, said that the First Amendment does not apply to him because he's not a U.S. person. He's not a U.S. citizen, even though they are seeking to apply domestic criminal law against him for actions that he took outside, while based outside of the United States. And bear in mind, Chelsea Manning, as you said, was based in Iraq. So they're applying domestic criminal, you know, over a hundred year old espionage law against a non-U.S. person while saying that the First Amendment protections do not apply to him. And so therefore, they're saying that this would breach his rights under freedom of speech and press that he has here. He'd get discrimp, this would be discrimination according to nationality, which is in violation of the extradition treaty, right, which bars extradition to a place with someone would face discrimination, disfavorable treatment as a result. of race, religion, et cetera, political opinion and nationality. And they also say that this would violate his rights under the Human Rights Act and the European Convention of Human Rights, which afford protections of freedom of speech and the

press. And when one of the judges asked one of the American lawyers, or the lawyers representing the United States, do we have any evidence before us that a foreign citizen like Assange would have protections under the First Amendment? that would have to be taken into consideration. And actually, the barrister representing the United States, or one of them, said, in short, no, right? So in short, they accepted that position. But it wasn't completely clear.

And they said, OK, we want you to go and find out, go through all the documents that have been submitted in this case and come back to us with an answer if there's like a concrete answer. Because Cromberg, Gordon Cromberg, the U.S. prosecutor, had also said in his statements, which have made their way into the court because he's the lead one of the lead u.s prosecutors in this case that if julian tries to raise a first amendment argument in the united states they would then or they would have the ability to raise the argument that uh first amendment doesn't apply to him because he's not based he's not a u.s person right and not a u.s resident so it is it is fascinating that's a rule of law there they just have to have it both ways right they can prosecute them but they don't have to abide by the restrictions on the limitations of their power to

To persecute him at all. It's completely crazy. All right, listen, I'm sorry. I'm overdue. I've got to go to my next guest here. But thank you so much for your time, Muhammad. Really great stuff. No worries. Thank you very much for inviting me. Okay, you guys, go check out Muhammad El Mazi. He is at the DeCenter.org.

Righting over there with Kevin Gotzola. UK High Court, finally here is Assange's request for appeal. And Assange's no ordinary journalist. U.S. opposes request for appeal. last shot for the great hero Julian Assange before extradition The Scott Horton show Anti-War Radio can be heard on KPFK

90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com anti-war.com Scotthorton.org and Libertarian Institute.org