Consortium News will be inside the Royal Courts of Justice this week for what could be Julian Assange’s last hearing in Britain. Journalists overseas have been barred from remote coverage.
Consortium News will provide wall-to-wall coverage of Julian Assange’s hearing Tuesday and Wednesday at the High Court of England and Wales in London.
Consortium News Editor-in-Chief Joe Lauria and CN Live! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan have been granted access to the hearing inside the Royal Courts of Justice. Lauria will provide daily written reports as well as nightly video recaps of the day’s events in court. Vogan will be live-tweeting as the case unfolds and producing video reports.
CN Live! will also provide a live feed of events outside the courthouse on The Strand, where Assange supporters have been asked to gather. Consortium News will have video coverage of several related events, including the London premiere on Sunday of the film The Trust Fall, at which Stella Assange, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson and director Kym Statton spoke; a panel discussion on Monday night at the Frontline Club moderated by Chris Hedges, with Stella Assange, Hrafnsson and lawyer Jennifer Robinson; and panel discussions of journalists covering the hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
Assange is appealing the ruling last June by High Court Justice Jonathan Swift to deny him leave to appeal the home secretary’s decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face espionage and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charges, as well as eight points of law after a magistrate’s decision in January 2021 blocked extradition on health grounds but sided with the U.S. on every other point.
Consortium News was able to get access to the courtroom only because it is present in England for the hearing. Journalists outside the High Court’s jurisdiction in England and Wales have been denied remote access online, even though journalists around the world were able to view the proceedings live online during Assange’s hearing before Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser in September 2020 and then in the High Court in October 2021, which reversed the magistrate’s decision based on U.S. assurances that it would not harm Assange.
Among those being denied access to cover the hearing because they are not physically in England or Wales are Fox News correspondent Landon Mion; veteran Australian journalists Mary Kostakidis and Peter Cronau; and Americans journalists Kevin Gosztola and Marjorie Cohn.
Rally at Trafalgar Square on Saturday for Assange. (Orlando Harrison for CN)
Video by Orlando Harrison and Cathy Vogan for Consortium News
Even before it starts, the UK is trying to silence global reporting on the case. What does that say about its intentions?
I fear the worst.
Thank you, Consortium News, for your diligent work and reporting on Julian Assange all of these years. It is only journalists like you and Julian Assange hat stand between us and Fascist Planet.
Thank You CN
To the extent that much of the legacy media will deign to cover these proceedings and their outcome even in the capacity of “outsiders looking in,” it will very likely be to reduce the narrative solely to the status of Julian Assange as an individual (e.g., whether or not he “deserves” what is happening to him).
To be sure, the treatment that has been meted out to him personally is absolutely appalling in and of itself, and that would be true even if he was an actual mass murderer, rather than a publisher who informed the public of all manner of wrongdoing and did so in a far more judicious manner than those who either disingenuously or ignorantly castigate him will ever give him credit for. However, what is truly at stake is not simply Assange’s well-being, but whether or not fundamental legal, constitutional, and philosophical principles that are considered to be foundational to the “free world” are allowed to be violated in perpetuity and quite probably shattered beyond repair for at least several generations hence.
Thank you to CN for making sure your readers will have access to reporting from inside the courtroom. The Western Power structure knows WikiLeaks has the potential to bring it down. They have flagrantly broken their own laws to prevent that outcome. It’s up to us to protect Assange and the truth from being disappeared.
I agree. Denying reporting of a judicial process in the UK in 2024? Unbelievable. Thanks CN. FREE JULIAN ASSANGE.