All decent Israelis must ask themselves the following questions: Is their country committing war crimes in Gaza? If so, how should they be stopped?
How should the culprits be punished? Who can punish them? Is it reasonable for crimes to go unprosecuted and criminals to be exculpated?
One may, of course, reply in the negative to the first question – Israel is not committing any war crimes in Gaza – thereby rendering the rest of the questions superfluous.
But how can one answer in the negative in the face of the facts and the situation in Gaza:
about 35,000 people killed and another 10,000 missing, about two-thirds of them innocent civilians, according to the Israel Defense Forces;
among the dead are around 13,000 children, nearly 400 medical workers and more than 200 journalists; 70 percent of homes have been destroyed or damaged;
30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition;
two people in 10,000 die each day from starvation and disease. (All figures are from the United Nations and international organizations.)
Is it possible that these horrific figures came to be without the commission of war crimes?
There are wars whose cause is just and whose means are criminal; the justice of the war does not justify its crimes. Killing and destruction, starvation and displacement on this scale could not have occurred without the commission of war crimes. Individuals are responsible for them, and they must be brought to justice.
Israeli hasbara, or public diplomacy, does not try to deny the reality in Gaza. It only makes the claim of antisemitism: Why pick on us? What about Sudan and Yemen?
The logic doesn’t hold: A driver who is stopped for speeding won’t get off by arguing that he’s not the only one. The crimes and the criminals remain. Israel will never prosecute anyone for these offenses. It never has, neither for its wars nor its occupation. On a good day, it will prosecute a soldier who stole some Palestinian’s credit card.
But the human sense of justice wants to see criminals brought to justice and prevented from committing crimes in the future. By this logic, we can only hope that the International Criminal Court in The Hague will do its job.
Every Israeli patriot and everyone who cares about the good of the state should wish for this. This is the only way that Israel’s moral standard, according to which it is permitted everything, will change. It is not easy to hope for the arrest of the heads of your state and your army, and even more difficult to admit it publicly, but is there any other way to stop them?
The killing and destruction in Gaza has gotten Israel in way over its head. It is the worst catastrophe the state has ever faced. Someone led it there – no, not antisemitism, but rather its leaders and military officers. If not for them, it wouldn’t have turned so quickly after October 7 from a cherished country that inspired compassion into a pariah state.
Someone must stand trial for this.
Just as many Israelis want Benjamin Netanyahu to be punished for the corruption of which he is accused, so should they wish for him and the perpetrators subordinate to him to be punished for much more serious crimes, the crimes of Gaza.
They cannot be allowed to go unpunished.
Nor is it possible to blame only Hamas, even if it has a part in the crimes.
We are the ones who killed, starved, displaced, and destroyed on such a massive scale. Someone must be brought to justice for this.
Netanyahu is the head, of course. The picture of him imprisoned in The Hague together with the defense minister and the IDF chief of staff is the stuff of nightmares to every Israeli.
And yet, it is probably warranted.
It is highly unlikely, however. The pressure being exerted on the court by Israel and the United States are enormous (and wrong). But scare tactics can be important.
If the officials actually refrain from traveling abroad in the next few years, if they actually live in fear of what may come, we can be sure that in the next war, they’ll think twice before sending the military on campaigns of death and destruction of such insane proportions. We can find a little comfort in that, at least.
INTERNATIONAL DARK SKY ASSOCIATION vs. FCC AND SPACEXOn December 29, 2022, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) sued the U.S. Federal Communications Commission over its decision to approve SpaceX’s application for up to 30,000 more low-orbit satellites, in addition to the 12,000 already approved and in process of filling our skies. This is Case No. 22-1337 before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and has not yet been decided by the court.
American plasma physicist Sierra Solter implored the FCC to “please save our night sky… Please, please, don’t take away my stars. To feel that my place of comfort and calm — a starry sky — is being taken away and given to billionaires is suffocating.”
On December 18, 2023, Ms. Solter published a scientific article detailing her fear for our planet. Each of the 42,000 planned Starlink satellites, she wrote, has a design lifespan of only 5 years, after which it will be de-orbited, burned up in the atmosphere, and replaced. She calculated that this will require 23 satellites per day — each the size of an SUV or truck — to be burned up in the atmosphere forever into the future, leaving an enormous amount of toxic chemicals and metallic dust to accumulate in the air we breathe and in the ionosphere.
This is already happening, she wrote, and should be stopped if we value our lives. “Since the beginning of the space industry, approximately 20,000 tons of material have been demolished during reentry… This is over 100 billion times greater than [the mass of] the Van Allen Belts.” She estimated that if 42,000 Starlink satellites are deployed and regularly demolished — let alone the 1,000,000 satellites planned by other companies and governments — “every second the space industry is adding approximately 2,000 times more conductive material than mass of the Van Allen Belts into the ionosphere.”
“Unlike meteorites, which are small and only contain trace amounts of aluminum, these wrecked spacecraft are huge and consist entirely of aluminum and other exotic, highly conductive materials,” she explained in an April 16, 2024 article in The Guardian.
Much of the metallic dust will settle into the ionosphere where, she says, it could act as a magnetic shield, reducing the magnitude of the Earth’s magnetic field in space. If that happens, the atmosphere itself could eventually be destroyed, because the Earth’s magnetic field — the magnetosphere — is what deflects the solar wind and prevents it from stripping away Earth’s atmosphere, as she told Teresa Pulterova in an interview on Space.com.
Other astronomers involved in the litigation before the FCC and now the Court of Appeals include Meredith Rawls with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile; Gary Hunt with Action Against Satellite Light Pollution in the UK; Samantha Lawler at the University of Regina in Canada; Graeme Cuffy of Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Mark Phillips, President of the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh; Roberto Trotta of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology in London; Carrie Nugent, Associate Professor of Computational Physics and Planetary Science at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts; and Cameron Nelson of Tenzing Startup Consultants in Virginia.
Other issues are also mentioned in the appeal. For example, the burned up aluminum produces aluminum oxide, which destroys ozone and contributes to climate change. So does the water vapor, soot, and nitrogen oxides in rocket exhaust.
Cameron Nelson told the FCC that “Humans, not to mention all other animal and plant life, have not given our consent for SpaceX to send the signals it is proposing into our bodies and irrevocably alter us.”
The BroadBand International Legal Action Network (BBILAN) mentioned “RF/EMF radiation from linked base and earth stations” in comments sent to the FCC. Starlink earth stations, also called Gateways, are far more powerful than the Starlink dishes that people are putting on their homes. The (as of March 2024) 2.6 million Starlink dishes each send one signal up to the moving network of satellites above them. All of this traffic is coordinated in space by thousands of lasers linking the satellites to one another, and on the ground by Gateways, which relay the thousands of signals in a large geographic area to and from the satellites. This is what a Gateway with 5 antennas (“radomes”) looks like:
Some Gateways have up to 40 radomes. Each of those domes weighs 1750 kilograms. Each aims a narrow beam at moving satellites. According to FCC filings by SpaceX, each beam can have an effective radiated power of more than 1,000,000 watts, which it can aim as low as 25 degrees above the horizon. If you are a bird you do not want to fly anywhere near a Starlink Gateway. And if you are a human you do not want to live near one either. When a satellite aims its beam containing thousands of signals at a Gateway, that beam is about 10 miles in diameter by the time it reaches the Earth.
At last count there were 277 Starlink Gateways in operation or under construction in the world: 181 in North America and the Caribbean, 26 in South America, 2 in Africa, 26 in Europe, and 42 in Asia and the Pacific.
The FCC maintains a webpage listing thousands of licenses that it has handed out to hundreds of companies to operate both fixed and mobile satellite earth stations in the United States. Some of these stations are far more powerful than the Starlink Gateways. SES’s earth station at Bristol, Virginia emits up to 1,900,000,000 watts of effective radiated power, and it is allowed to aim it as low as 5 degrees above the horizon. SES’s earth station at Brewster, Washington is allowed to emit almost 1,000,000 watts in the actual direction of the horizon! SES owns O3b mPOWER, which is the satellite system that had its first radomes on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, the ship that had the famous outbreak of disease blamed on COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic.
The International Criminal Court is a dusty jewel, a creation of heat, tension and manufacture in the international community. Various elements have gone into its creation. As with any international institution which draws its legitimacy from nation states and the like, its detractors are many, the invective against it frequent. Some 124 countries have signed the Rome Charter of 1998 that gives the body its authority and jurisdictional force, but no one is foolish enough to think that its reach can ever be anything but tempered by political consideration and self-interest.
Be it issuing a problematic arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, attempting to investigate alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan, or busying itself with some nasty examples of African despotism, the scope of the body is potentially extensive. At present, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan is sniffing out the prospect of issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials in the context of the war in Gaza. The sniff, however, has come with a rebuking blast from Israel, joined by various politicians in the United States champing at the bit to take a swipe at the body.
Such attacks have only been emboldened by the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, an instrument from 2002 that prohibits federal, state and local governments from furnishing the ICC with assistance in any way while authorising the US president “to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release” of any “US person” or “allied persons” detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request,” of the ICC.
In what is expedient and legally anomalous, Washington has chosen not only to avoid signing the Rome Statute but reject ICC jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories. The ICC begs to differ, noting the acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction on the part of “the Government of Palestine” and its accession to the Rome Statute in January 2015.
In late October 2023, Israel announced that it would not be permitting Khan to enter Israel, signalling its intention to frustrate, as far as possible, his investigative functions. In April this year, Axios revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had requested US President Joe Biden to prevent the ICC from issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials. A broader lobbying effort of the US Congress by the Netanyahu government is also taking place.
On May 1, a bipartisan group of US senators held a virtual meeting with members of seniority from the ICC, worried about the prospect that arrest warrants for top Israel might issue from the prosecutorial pipeline. In a threatening letter to Khan from a dozen Republican senators led by Tom Cotton, the promise for retaliation was unequivocal: “Target Israel, and we will target you.” Issuing such warrants would be “illegitimate and lack legal basis, and, if carried out, will result in severe actions against you and your institution.” They would “not only be a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.”
This was hardly novel and was unlikely to have phased Khan or his staff. In June 2020, President Donald Trump implemented an executive orderdirected at the ICC. The order authorised the blocking of assets and imposed family entry bans into the US in response to the court’s efforts to investigate the alleged commission of war crimes in Afghanistan by US personnel. In September that year, pursuant to the executive order, targeted sanctions were imposed on then ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and senior prosecution official Phakiso Mochochoko.
Since 2021, the ICC has been vested in examining alleged war crimes committed by both the Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian militants stretching back to the 2014 Israel-Hamas war. “Upon the commencement of my mandate in June 2021,” Khan states, “I put in place for the first time a dedicated team to advance the investigation in relation to the Situation in the State of Palestine.” Its mission is to collect, preserve and analyse “information and communications from key stakeholders in relation to relevant incidents.”
-ADVERTISEMENT-
In November 2023, the office of the prosecutor received a referral from South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti to investigate “the Situation in the State of Palestine.” The referral requests the prosecutor “to vigorously investigate crimes under the jurisdiction of the Court allegedly committed” on various grounds, including, among others, the unlawful appropriation and destruction of private and public properties, the forcible transfer of Palestinians, the unlawful transfer of Israel’s population into Occupied Palestinian Territory and a discriminatory system amounting to apartheid.
The spectacularly brutal Israeli campaign in Gaza following the October 7 attacks by Hamas also enlivened interest in using the ICC’s jurisdiction to investigate allegations of genocide, crimes against humanity and relevant war crimes. But the notable catch, and bound to be threatening to its intended targets, was the request that culprits be found, and perpetrators be outed and held accountable. South Africa, more specifically, requested that the prosecutor “investigate the Situation for the purpose of determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with the commission of such crimes.”
On May 3, officials from the ICC openly reproached efforts to tamper and modify any opinions on the part of the body regarding its activities. The ICC welcomed, according to Khan, “open communication” with government officials and non-governmental entities, and would only engage in discussions so long as they were “consistent with its mandate under the Rome Statute to act independently and impartially.”
As he continued to explain in his statement, Khan argued “That independence and impartiality are undermined … when individuals threaten to retaliate … should the office, in fulfilment of its mandate, make decisions about investigations or cases falling within its jurisdiction.” He demanded that “all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials cease immediately.”
Netanyahu had previously promised that, under his leadership, “Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.” He regarded any “threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state” as “outrageous.” Going heavy on the forces of light battling those of darkness – a favourite theme of his – the Israeli PM went on to claim that such actions “would set a dangerous precedent that threatens the soldiers and officials of all democracies fighting savage terrorism and wanton aggression.”
Far from threatening democracies of whatever flavour, the actions of the ICC can serve the opposite purpose, holding individuals in high office accountable for egregious crimes in international law. In doing so, it can contribute, in no small part, to efforts in defeating impunity and rebutting brutal and often callous assertions of self-defence.
But perhaps this is the real reason for using public money in this way is to silence anybody else who might be thinking of exposing the dark secrets inside Sellafield. She is not the only whistleblower.
One aspect of the second recent cost hearing against whistleblower and human resources consultant Alison McDermott by Sellafield and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which was not covered is the cost to the public and us the taxpayer.
During the hearing Deshpal Panesar, KC Sellafield’s lawyer from Old Square Chambers, rather pompously told the hearing that the fact Sellafield was claiming £20,000 off Alison was ” to protect the public purse”. He and the Nuclear Commissioning Authority which was also claiming £20,000 made a huge point that her “unreasonable behaviour” by pursing them at a tribunal meant she should pay a penalty.
What is now emerging from Freedom of Information requests is that the cost to bring this action far outweighs the money they will receive even if they are 100 per cent successful.
Both nuclear giants have already spent a huge sum – nearly £700,000 of taxpayer’s money – fighting Alison, whose consultancy was terminated, after her report revealed bullying and fear among staff at the nuclear site in Sellafield.
Now it is known from FOI that both organisations have spent £59,000 between them on preparing the case for the second hearing on top of money they had already spent for the first costs hearing. This doesn’t include the cost of hearing itself which is about another £20,000 considering Sellafield’s lawyers Deshpal Paneser. KC charges £5500 a day for the hearing and Emma Mills, from DLA Piper, who charges £3000 a day . The NDA employed another barrister, Rachel Levene and solicitors Pinsent Mason. Plus there were paralegals at the hearing.
Now one would think that after a High Court judge had ruled that the first costs decision was ” unsafe” and said his view should be taken into account by judge Stuart Robertson, who has heard the second hearing, there would be pause for thought. Both nuclear organisations are also lucky they will not face an appeal. So any sane organisation would decide to leave it there.
Instead we have the economic madness, which no commercial company conducting a risk assessment would follow, of throwing more money at bringing a second case when there is not the slightest chance of getting their money back. Indeed even if they were 100 per cent successful they stand to lose £40,000 and that is by no means certain they will get that. It is only that it is our money from the taxpayer they can throw it around like confetti.
So why are they doing it? The decision must have been endorsed by Euan Hutton, the new chief executive.
Despite previously serving as a Mental Health Champion alongside Ms. McDermott to foster a kinder and more supportive work environment, Mr. Hutton is now relentlessly pursuing costs against her.
In various YouTube videos, Mr. Hutton espouses the importance of treating people with kindness, yet his actions towards Ms. McDermott are anything but. He actually says that “kindness is putting in the time to think about how different people act differently, that’s what kindness is all about” [second video from 20 seconds onwards]. By hounding her for costs related to her whistleblowing for the second time, he has subjected her to immense stress and anguish, betraying the values he once claimed to champion.
Now Sellafield receives £6.7 million daily from taxpayers. Mr. Hutton’s decision to waste these funds on a vindictive legal battle against a whistleblower is an egregious misuse of public money. It is a slap in the face to taxpayers who trust Sellafield to use their contributions responsibly.
The Guardian has reported that the National Audit Office will investigate Sellafield’s substantial expenditure.
Mr. Hutton should be held accountable for his actions, which have caused harm to Ms. McDermott and undermined Sellafield’s commitment to employee wellbeing and to a culture of openness.
But perhaps this is the real reason for using public money in this way is to silence anybody else who might be thinking of exposing the dark secrets inside Sellafield. She is not the only whistleblower.
I approached Sellafield and the NDA about this waste of money but both said
“These issues are still subject to legal proceedings. We cannot comment further at this stage.”
On December 29, 2022, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) sued the U.S. Federal Communications Commission over its decision to approve SpaceX’s application for up to 30,000 more low-orbit satellites, in addition to the 12,000 already approved and in process of filling our skies. This is Case No. 22-1337 before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and has not yet been decided by the court.
American plasma physicist Sierra Solter implored the FCC to “please save our night sky… Please, please, don’t take away my stars. To feel that my place of comfort and calm — a starry sky — is being taken away and given to billionaires is suffocating.”
On December 18, 2023, Ms. Solter published a scientific article detailing her fear for our planet. Each of the 42,000 planned Starlink satellites, she wrote, has a design lifespan of only 5 years, after which it will be de-orbited, burned up in the atmosphere, and replaced. She calculated that this will require 23 satellites per day — each the size of an SUV or truck — to be burned up in the atmosphere forever into the future, leaving an enormous amount of toxic chemicals and metallic dust to accumulate in the air we breathe and in the ionosphere
This is already happening, she wrote, and should be stopped if we value our lives. “Since the beginning of the space industry, approximately 20,000 tons of material have been demolished during reentry… This is over 100 billion times greater than [the mass of] the Van Allen Belts.” She estimated that if 42,000 Starlink satellites are deployed and regularly demolished — let alone the 1,000,000 satellites planned by other companies and governments — “every second the space industry is adding approximately 2,000 times more conductive material than mass of the Van Allen Belts into the ionosphere.”
“Unlike meteorites, which are small and only contain trace amounts of aluminum, these wrecked spacecraft are huge and consist entirely of aluminum and other exotic, highly conductive materials,” she explained in an April 16, 2024 article in The Guardian.
Much of the metallic dust will settle into the ionosphere where, she says, it could act as a magnetic shield, reducing the magnitude of the Earth’s magnetic field in space. If that happens, the atmosphere itself could eventually be destroyed, because the Earth’s magnetic field — the magnetosphere — is what deflects the solar wind and prevents it from stripping away Earth’s atmosphere, as she told Teresa Pulterova in an interview on Space.com.
Other astronomers involved in the litigation before the FCC and now the Court of Appeals include Meredith Rawls with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile; Gary Hunt with Action Against Satellite Light Pollution in the UK; Samantha Lawler at the University of Regina in Canada; Graeme Cuffy of Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Mark Phillips, President of the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh; Roberto Trotta of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology in London; Carrie Nugent, Associate Professor of Computational Physics and Planetary Science at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts; and Cameron Nelson of Tenzing Startup Consultants in Virginia.
Other issues are also mentioned in the appeal. For example, the burned up aluminum produces aluminum oxide, which destroys ozone and contributes to climate change. So does the water vapor, soot, and nitrogen oxides in rocket exhaust.
Cameron Nelson told the FCC that “Humans, not to mention all other animal and plant life, have not given our consent for SpaceX to send the signals it is proposing into our bodies and irrevocably alter us.”
The BroadBand International Legal Action Network (BBILAN) mentioned “RF/EMF radiation from linked base and earth stations” in comments sent to the FCC. Starlink earth stations, also called Gateways, are far more powerful than the Starlink dishes that people are putting on their homes. The (as of March 2024) 2.6 million Starlink dishes each send one signal up to the moving network of satellites above them. All of this traffic is coordinated in space by thousands of lasers linking the satellites to one another, and on the ground by Gateways, which relay the thousands of signals in a large geographic area to and from the satellites. This is what a Gateway with 5 antennas (“radomes”) looks like:
Some Gateways have up to 40 radomes. Each of those domes weighs 1750 kilograms. Each aims a narrow beam at moving satellites. According to FCC filings by SpaceX, each beam can have an effective radiated power of more than 1,000,000 watts, which it can aim as low as 25 degrees above the horizon. If you are a bird you do not want to fly anywhere near a Starlink Gateway. And if you are a human you do not want to live near one either. When a satellite aims its beam containing thousands of signals at a Gateway, that beam is about 10 miles in diameter by the time it reaches the Earth.
Robin is a subscriber who lives in a remote area of Idaho less than 3 miles from the Starlink Gateway in Colburn. She writes about effects on her family and her animals…………………………….Robin knows many people in her area who are similarly affected. She adds that “when we first moved here in 2019 we had A LOT of birds. We now have a silent spring, it’s like a dead zone.
At last count there were 277 Starlink Gateways in operation or under construction in the world: 181 in North America and the Caribbean, 26 in South America, 2 in Africa, 26 in Europe, and 42 in Asia and the Pacific.
The FCC maintains a webpage listing thousands of licenses that it has handed out to hundreds of companies to operate both fixed and mobile satellite earth stations in the United States. Some of these stations are far more powerful than the Starlink Gateways. SES’s earth station at Bristol, Virginia emits up to 1,900,000,000 watts of effective radiated power, and it is allowed to aim it as low as 5 degrees above the horizon. SES’s earth station at Brewster, Washington is allowed to emit almost 1,000,000 watts in the actual direction of the horizon! SES owns O3b mPOWER, which is the satellite system that had its first radomes on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, the ship that had the famous outbreak of disease blamed on COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic
The findings are illustrated by 17 specific, horrific “incidents” and 18 pages of additional incidents. This review of incidents is said to be “supported by both credible media and civil society reporting and statements by Government of Israel officials and IDF uniformed officers.” But the incidents identified are “just the most easily identifiable among a clear pattern of violations of international law, failures to apply civilian harm mitigation best practices, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance,” by Israel and the IDF, often using U.S.-provided arms.
An independent expert report lays out how Israel systematically violated U.S. and International Law in Gaza, concluding that Israel launched indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian areas due to “extremely relaxed rules of engagement.”
Just days after the Biden administration showered the Israeli military with billions of dollars more in lethal aid, still with no apparent effort to restrict its use on non-military populations and structures, Palestinian solidarity activists were gifted with powerful ammunition to challenge Israel’s genocidal disregard for the International and U.S. laws and norms that protect civilians in war situations.
In a sober but scathing 76-page report, publicly released on April 24, the Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 (NSM-20), details “multiple credible incidents constituting violations of international humanitarian law, military best practices, and [improper] restrictions on humanitarian assistance.”
The volunteer and unaffiliated task force of prominent experts — including two recently departed senior State Department officials, legal scholar Noura Erekat, and a former senior “joint terminal attack controller,” Wes Bryant — was rapidly formed after President Biden signed NSM-20 on February 8, 2024. The memorandum tasked the Departments of State and Defense to report to Congress by May 8 on the compliance of Israel (and, nominally, other U.S. allies) with International Humanitarian Law and military best practices, as well as on whether it has impeded humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
Co-chair Noura Erekat said at a briefing that the task force report has two main goals: first, to “inform” State and Defense officials’ review with a selection of well-documented and assessed incidents of misuse of aid, and second, to put pressure on the agencies and the White House to act vigorously to curb the abuses. The pressure will depend on the report’s ability to focus the understanding of the media, the relevant experts, and activists on specific illustrative cases and to clearly explain the legal framework and standards that are supposed to apply.
The panel reported that its
“aggregate analysis of credible reports involving U.S-provided weapons by Israeli forces indicates a context of systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law, including recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects, wide area attacks without prior warnings in some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods in the world, direct attacks on civilians…and attacks against civilian objects, including those indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.”
The experts further reported:
“Israeli intelligence sources cited by credible media reports indicate that these patterns of unlawful attacks reflect reliance on an unyielding and unconditioned supply of U.S. weapons, relaxed rules of engagement, application of collective punishment, and the use of artificial intelligence technology to generate thousands of targets (including civilian police and civil defense personnel), at maximum speed and with minimal human oversight.”
The findings are illustrated by 17 specific, horrific “incidents” and 18 pages of additional incidents. This review of incidents is said to be “supported by both credible media and civil society reporting and statements by Government of Israel officials and IDF uniformed officers.” But the incidents identified are “just the most easily identifiable among a clear pattern of violations of international law, failures to apply civilian harm mitigation best practices, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance,” by Israel and the IDF, often using U.S.-provided arms.
Just as important for non-experts is the report’s outline of exactly how the U.S. and international legal systems are supposed to protect civilians from harm — and how they are flouted. Thus, the experts point to three “fundamental rules [that] govern targeting decisions in armed conflict”:
1 Distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives, with a presumption that persons or objects are protected from attack unless the information available at the time indicates that they are military objectives.
2. Take all feasible “precautions” in planning and conducting attacks to avoid or at least minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects.
3. Respect “proportionality,” i.e., conduct no attacks that are excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. The greater the foreseeable harm to civilians and civilian objects, the greater the foreseeable military advantage necessary to justify a particular attack. International humanitarian law (IHL) gives special protection to hospitals, clinics, and ambulances, as well as to humanitarian relief operations, and UN premises.
The report outlines the basics of “civilian harm mitigation practices,” including U.S. Defense Department practices. A key concept is “no-strike entities” (NSEs), which DOD says “may include, but are not limited to, medical, educational, diplomatic, cultural, religious, and historical sites, or other objects that do not, by their nature, location, purpose, or use, effectively contribute to the enemy’s war-fighting or war-sustaining capability.” The task force charges that Israel has “routinely and repeatedly” targeted six fundamental categories of NSEs, plus a broad array of slightly less protected entities.
Proportionality ‘rendered meaningless’
A common excuse the Israelis advance for the death and wounding of civilians is that they are being used by Hamas as “human shields.” The report notes that “taking advantage of the presence of civilians or other protected persons with intent to shield a military objective from attack constitutes a war crime.” However, U.S. military rules “affirm that an attacker shares responsibility for civilian harm with its enemies if it fails to take feasible precautions” to avoid killing shields.
NSM-20 itself spells out that its allies must “facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede . . . the transport or delivery of [U.S.] humanitarian assistance and U.S. Government-supported international…humanitarian assistance.”
Outlining the “context” of Israel’s “systematic disregard for IHL,” the report cites “recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects, wide-area attacks without prior warnings in some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods in the world, direct attacks on civilians or otherwise protected persons…and attacks against civilians objects, including those indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.” A high-ranking former IDF officer is quoted as condemning Israel’s “reckless conduct,” which he says “reflects an absolute assumption that the U.S. will continue to arm and finance it.”
“Extremely relaxed rules of engagement” inconsistent with IHL also explain much of the harm done to civilians. Thus, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Air Force, Omar Tishler, has stated that neighborhoods have been attacked “on a large scale and not in a surgical manner.”
Such attacks are facilitated by an expansion of the concept of “military advantage” in its proportionality assessments to weigh civilian harms against the advantages of “an operation as a whole,” rather than against each individual attack. That move “renders the proportionality rule meaningless,” the report says, as it’s impossible to compare the harms of a single specific attack with all the military advantages allegedly achieved or sought by the whole Gaza operation, which has lasted more than six months.
Similarly, former U.S. Air Force drone controller Bryant noted how Israel blurs the requirement of taking precautions to protect civilians “by employing precautions it knows are ineffective,” such as texting populations whose phones are not functional.
Also “relaxed” is Israel’s use of the term terrorist. Thus, a reserve officer told Ha’aretz, “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.” The extensive, open-ended imposition of “kill zones” is another way to disguise genocide, an Israeli intelligence officer has explained. With a “kill zone” lasting a month or two, “you could stick with an order that anyone approaching should be shot…But we’ve been there for six months, and people have to start coming out; they are trying to survive, and that leads to very serious incidents.”
Lastly, Israel asserts it can block humanitarianaid, if it has “serious reasons for fearing” that relief consignments “will be diverted from their civilian destination or otherwise provide a definite advantage to the enemy’s military efforts” — a position the task force says relies on a “defective rule” from 1949 that was modified in 1977 and superseded by a rule of customary international law. Recent UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions confirm that Israel “must allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief and may not deny such relief based on fears that a small portion of aid may be seized by armed groups.”
In conclusion, the report warns that “the Task Force’s findings raise grave concerns regarding the Administration’s compliance with both U.S. and international law, particularly with respect to security assistance and arms transfers.” It then identifies the laws in question, as well as citing “obligations under customary international law to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and to cooperate to bring serious violations of peremptory norms of general international law to an end through lawful means.”
This month, Israeli police arrested and detained for questioning Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a leading Palestinian legal academic, over comments made on a podcast weeks earlier. Shalhoub-Kevorkian holds a chair in law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and another at Queen Mary University of London.
The police said, “The detainee is suspected of making serious incitement against the State of Israel and for having said statements against Zionism and even claims that Israel is currently committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.” They added that they had found posters and pictures in her home depicting Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers as an occupying army.
Freedom of political expression in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been restricted and there have been widespread detentions of Palestinian citizens of Israel who have publicly criticised the war in Gaza. But this is the first time an academic has been targeted over opposition to Zionism, possession of posters against the occupation and claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza—statements that pose no “security threat,” let alone any “incitement” to violence, terror and racism. Since the attorney general’s office must approve all prosecutions relating to freedom of speech, Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s detention was greenlighted not just by the police but at the very heart of government.
Her detention is part of a broader crackdown on dissent and the targeting of Israel’s critics by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fascistic regime, aimed at intimidating and silencing Israel’s Palestinian citizens who make up 20 percent of the population. Netanyahu’s strategic goal of annexing Palestinian territory illegally occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and establishing an ethno-religious regime between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea means the “only democracy in the Middle East” eliminating even the tattered, democratic façade of the Israeli state.
The police confiscated books and posters from Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s home and questioned her extensively about her academic work, including articles published years ago, even though academic writing is afforded special legal protections in Israel. In her 60s, she was strip-searched, handcuffed so tightly it caused pain, denied access to food, water and medication for several hours, and held overnight in a cold cell without adequate clothing or blankets, conditions her lawyers described as “terrible” and designed to humiliate. While she was released on bail the next day, after a magistrate and a district court judge both ruled she posed no threat, days later she was summoned for further questioning.
Her lawyer, the director of the human rights organisation Adalah, Hassan Jabareen, said, “This case is unique. This is not only about one professor; it could be a [precedent] for any academic who goes against the consensus in wartime.” As he explained, “They could have asked her to come to the police station for two or three hours to discuss, investigate. To carry out the arrest like that, as if she was a dangerous person, shows the main purpose was to humiliate her. It was illegal, that’s why the magistrates court accepted my argument that she should be released and the district court confirmed it.”
Her arrest follows months of political attacks orchestrated by the Hebrew University, which likes to present itself as a model of liberalism and inclusion, in the run-up to her detention. The rector had called on her to resign in late 2023 after she signed a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and describing Israel’s campaign as genocide, and she was briefly suspended over a podcast in which she discussed the tragic events of October 7 and the subsequent destruction, death, and starvation in Gaza. He had objected to her calling for Zionism to be abolished and casting doubt about some aspects of the October 7 attack, particularly reports of sexual assaults.
More than 100 academics at the Hebrew University published an open letter backing Shalhoub-Kevorkian, criticising the university for not supporting her. They wrote, “Regardless of the content of Nadera’s words, their interpretation and the opinions she expressed, it is clear to everyone that this is a political arrest, the whole purpose of which is to gag mouths and limit freedom of expression. Today it is Nadera who stands on the bench, and tomorrow it is each and every one of us.”…………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/30/dxoj-a30.html
A former consultant at Sellafield has claimed that metadata in letters used against her in a tribunal hearing by the nuclear facility has been interfered with.
A tribunal has heard that three letters produced by managers at the vast nuclear complex and submitted as evidence in the employment dispute were “fabricated” and “tampered with”.
Alison McDermott lost a whistleblowing claim against the Cumbrian nuclear facility and is now fighting a demand to pay £40,000 costs.
The former Sellafield consultant said the metadata for one of the three letters was “wiped” by legal representatives for Sellafield.
She formally withdrew the allegations in her first employment tribunal claim against the nuclear complex.
The 2021 tribunal judgment determined that the letters were not “fabrications”.
“These letters are not fabrications, as had previously been asserted by the Claimant,” it found.
However, the ex-contractor raised her claims about the letters’ production and of alleged tampering during last week’s tribunal when defending herself from allegations she had acted “unreasonably” in the legal action with Sellafield and a regulatory body.
Sellafield maintains that McDermott’s allegations are “untrue”.
McDermott, a human resources (HR) consultant, signed a two-day-a-week contract with Sellafield worth £1,500 per day and was tasked in 2018 with looking at an employee’s sexual harassment allegations.
But within days of submitting a report that found the HR team was viewed as “broken and dysfunctional” by some staff, her contract was ended.
She has contested cost awards as a litigant-in-person during a one-day hearing in Leeds.
Summarising her arguments, tribunal judge Stuart Robertson said McDermott had suggested that the three letters used against her by Sellafield during the employment case over the termination of her contract were “fabricated and not genuine”.
Deshpal Panesar KC, who represented Sellafield at the tribunal, accused McDermott of “making baseless claims of the most damaging sort – representing an existential threat to the careers of multiple public servants”.
Panesar said McDermott had accused Sellafield and its regulatory body, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), of “illicit conduct, fabrication of evidence and false representations” when making her case.
McDermott sought to challenge cost awards made against her, amounting to £40,000, in a previous tribunal decision.
The employment tribunal claim she brought against Sellafield in 2021 was unsuccessful. But an appeal judge found aspects of her case “troubling” and she was subsequently recognised as a whistleblower under UK employment law.
Robertson, a new tribunal judge, is now considering whether McDermott’s claims and conduct have been “unreasonable”.
McDermott claims she suffered a number of detriments when her contract was terminated. She has since spoken out publicly against Sellafield, branding its workplace culture as “toxic”.
Sellafield and the NDA have contested the claims robustly, initially arguing McDermott’s work was ended for “financial reasons” and later as a result of her “poor” performance.
Suspicious of the letters
The three letters have been a central point of contention in McDermott’s court battle.
The Information Commissioner’s Office ruled in early 2021 that Sellafield had acted unlawfully, having broken data laws and committed security breaches for, among other things, failing to supply McDermott with the letters after she had made a data subject access request.
Sellafield subsequently used the critical letters against McDermott in the employment tribunal case she brought over the termination of her contract.
Iran’s attack on Israel was lawful self-defense carried out in compliance with international humanitarian law.
On April 13, Iran’s aircraft struck two air bases in the Negev desert, where the April 1 attack on Iran’s consulate had been launched. “Iran retaliated against those targets in Israel directly related to the Israeli attack on Iran,”
On April 1, Israel mounted an unprovoked military attack on a building that was part of the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, killing seven of Iran’s senior military advisers and five additional people. The victims included Gen. Mohamad Reza Zahedi, head of Iran’s covert military operations in Lebanon and Syria, and two other senior generals.
Although Israel’s attack violated the United Nations Charter, the UN Security Council refused to condemn it because the United States, the U.K. and France exercised their vetoes on April 4.
Iran considered this attack on its consulate “an act of war,” Trita Parsi wrote at Foreign Policy.
On April 11, the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations stated: “Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated.”
Then, on April 13, in response to Israel’s attack, Iran fired more than 300 drones and missiles at the Israeli air base from which the April 1 attacks had emanated. Only two of them landed inside Israel and no one was killed; a Bedouin girl was injured. The U.S., U.K., France, Jordan and Israel intercepted the remaining Iranian missiles and drones. A senior U.S. military official said “there’s no significant damage within Israel itself.”
The Iranian mission to the UN wrote in an April 13 letter to the UN secretary-general that Iran’s action was conducted “in the exercise of Iran’s inherent right to self-defense” under Article 51 of the UN Charter “and in response to the Israeli recurring military aggressions, particularly its armed attack” on April 1 “against Iranian diplomatic premises, in the defiance of Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations.”
The April 1 attack was not the first time Israel had attacked key Iranian personnel………………………………………………………………………….
Iran made clear that it seeks to avoid further escalation that could spark a widespread regional war. An April 13 social media post from Iran’s permanent mission to the UN stated, “The matter can be deemed concluded. However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe. It is a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. MUST STAY AWAY!”
At a Security Council meeting on April 14, Iran’s UN Ambassador Saeid Iravani defended the lawfulness of the missile and drone attack on Israel. He noted the hypocrisy of the U.S. and its allies that claim Israel is acting in self-defense as it conducts its genocide of the Palestinian people:………………………………………..
Israel’s Attack on Iranian Consulate Violated the UN Charter and Vienna Conventions
Iran’s April 13 attack on Israel was a lawful exercise of self-defense in response to Israel’s unlawful April 1 attack on the Iranian consulate. The Israeli attack was an illegal act of aggression.
Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter states, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
An act of aggression is inconsistent with the purposes of the UN. Article 39 of the Charter says, “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.”
An “‘act of aggression’ means the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations,” under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court. Aggression includes “the invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State.”
Moreover, “Consular premises shall be inviolable,” according to Article 31 of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Article 1 defines consular premises as “the buildings or parts of buildings and the land ancillary thereto, irrespective of ownership, used exclusively for the purposes of the consular post.”
The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations likewise provides in Article 22.1 that, “The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.”
During Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Syria, it targeted and killed very senior Iranian officials. The attack constituted an act of aggression, which triggered Iran’s right to self-defense.
Iran’s April 13 Attack on Israel Constituted Lawful Self-Defense
Article 51 states, “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
An armed attack includes not just an attack against the territory of a state, including its airspace and territorial sea, but also attacks directed against its armed forces or embassies abroad.
On April 13, Iran’s aircraft struck two air bases in the Negev desert, where the April 1 attack on Iran’s consulate had been launched. “Iran retaliated against those targets in Israel directly related to the Israeli attack on Iran,” former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote.
Nevertheless, the Security Council has failed to adopt a resolution condemning Israel’s attack on Iran’s consulate, as Iran pointed out in its April 13 letter to the UN secretary-general.
At an April 14 meeting of the Security Council, the Israeli representative declared that Iran is the number one global sponsor of terrorism and the world’s worst human rights violator. It is Israel, however, that has killed nearly 34,000 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and children — during its campaign of genocide in Gaza that has now entered its seventh month.
Iran’s self-defense action was the natural outcome of Israel’s violations of international law — both on Syrian territory and elsewhere — the representative from the Syrian Arab Republic said at the April 14 council meeting. Israel is trying to cover up its genocide and military failures in Gaza, the Syrian representative added.
Iran’s Attack Satisfied the Principles of Proportionality, Distinction and Precautions……………………………………………………………….
Netanyahu Is Gunning for War With Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like nothing better than to start a war with Iran. Netanyahu considers Iran an “existential threat” to Israel. He persuaded former President Donald Trump to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which was working to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
As the world waits for Israel’s response to the Iranian attack, President Joe Biden said the U.S. would not assist Israel in an offensive military action against Iran but it would give Israel defensive support if Iran attacks Israel. “But the distinction between offensive or defensive support becomes meaningless the second a war breaks out,” wrote Trita Parsi.
Streamed live on 17 Apr 2024Join Kevin Gosztola, author of “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange,” as he covers the U.S. government’s “assurances” that were submitted to a British appeals court. They represent a clear indication that President Joe Biden’s administration is not going to end the case. If Biden was “considering” a plea deal for Assange, as was reported, he has made the decision to keep pursuing extradition and a U.S. trial on Espionage Act charges.
The United States Embassy on Tuesday filed two assurances with the British Foreign Office saying it would not seek the death penalty against imprisoned WikiLeaks‘ publisher Julian Assange and would allow Assange “the ability to raise and seek to reply upon at trial … the rights and protections given under the First Amendment,” according to the U.S. diplomatic note.
Assange’s wife Stella Assange said the note “makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen. Instead,” she said, “the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”
The note contains a hollow statement, namely, that Assange can try to raise the First Amendment at trial (and at sentencing), but the U.S. Department of Justice can’t guarantee he would get those rights, which is precisely what it must do under British extradition law based on the European Convention on Human Rights.
The U.S. Department of Justice is legally restricted to assure a free speech guarantee to Assange equivalent to Article 10 of the European Convention, which the British court is bound to follow. But without that assurance, Assange should be freed according to a British Crown Prosecution Service comment on extraditions.
In USAID v. Alliance for Open Society, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that non-U.S. citizens outside the U.S. don’t possess constitutional rights. Both former C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo and Gordon Kromberg, Assange’s U.S. prosecutor, have said Assange does not have First Amendment protection.
Because of the separation of powers in the United States, the executive branch’s Justice Department can’t guarantee to the British courts what the U.S. judicial branch decides about the rights of a non-U.S. citizen in court, said Marjorie Cohn, law professor and former president of the National Lawyers’ Guild.
“Let’s assume that … the Biden administration, does give assurances that he would be able to raise the First Amendment and that the [High] Court found that those were significant assurances,” Cohn toldConsortium News‘ webcast CN Live! last month.
“That really doesn’t mean anything, because one of the things that the British courts don’t understand is the U.S. doctrine of separation of powers,” she said.
“The prosecutors can give all the assurances they want, but the judiciary, another [one] .. of these three branches of government in the U.S., doesn’t have to abide by the executive branch claim or assurance,” Cohn said.
In other words, whether Assange can rely on the First Amendment in his defense in a U.S. court is up to that court not Kromberg or the Department of Justice, which issued the assurance on Tuesday.
The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment,” said Stella Assange
Assange’s legal team now has the right to challenge the credibility and validity of the U.S. assurances filed on Tuesday. The U.S. would then have a right to reply to Assange’s legal submissions to the court, which will hold a hearing on May 20 to determine whether or not to accept the U.S. assurances.
If the court does, Assange can be put on a plane to the U.S. theoretically that day. If not Assange would be granted a full appeal against the Home Office’s 2022 order to extradite him. Assange is wanted in the U.S. on 17 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and one on conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces up to 175 years in a U.S. dungeon.
“The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future — his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism,” Stella Assange said.
In its 66-page ruling on March 26, the two High Court judges wrote Kromberg wouldn’t have said Assange would be without First Amendment rights at trial “unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with a real prospect of success.”
“If such an argument were to succeed it would (at least arguably) cause the applicant [Assange] prejudice on the grounds of his non-US citizenship (and hence, on the grounds of his nationality),” the judges said. They added:
“The applicant wishes to argue, at any trial in the United States, that his actions were protected by the First Amendment. He contends that if he is given First Amendment rights, the prosecution will be stopped. The First Amendment is therefore of central importance to his defence to the extradition charge.”
This is the statement Stella Assange put out on X Tuesday at 11:36 am EDT:
“The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited. The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future — his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism. The Biden Administration must drop this dangerous prosecution before it is too late.”
April 17, 2024, Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/faulty-assurances-the-judicial-torture-of-assange-continues/ Only this month, the near comatose US President, Joe Biden, made a casual, castaway remark that his administration was “considering” the request by Australia that the case against Julian Assange be concluded. The WikiLeaks founder has already spent five gruelling years in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he continues a remarkable, if draining campaign against the US extradition request on 18 charges, 17 incongruously and outrageously based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.
Like readings of coffee grinds, his defenders took the remark as a sign of progress. Jennifer Robinson, a longtime member of Assange’s legal team, toldSky News Australia that Biden’s “response, this is what we have been asking for over five years. Since 2010 we’ve been saying this is a dangerous precedent that’s being set. So, we certainly hope it was a serious remark and the US will act on it.” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson foundthe mumbled comment from the president “extraordinary”, hoping “to see in the coming days” whether “clarification of what this means” would be offered by the powerful.
On April 14, the Wall Street Journalreportedthat Canberra had asked their US counterparts whether a felony plea deal could be reached, enabling the publisher to return to Australia. “Prosecutors and a lawyer for Assange have discussed a range of potential deals, including those that include pleading guilty to a felony under the espionage law under which he was indicted, and those of conspiring to mishandle classified information, which would be a misdemeanor, people familiar with the matter have said.”
Last month, the UK High Court gavewhat can only be regarded as an absurd prescription to the prosecution should they wish to succeed. Extradition would be unlikely to be refused if Assange was availed of protections offered by the First Amendment (though rejecting claims that he was a legitimate journalist), was guaranteed not to be prejudiced, both during the trial and in sentence on account of his nationality, and not be subject to the death penalty. That such directions were even countenanced shows the somewhat delusionary nature of British justices towards their US counterparts.
On April 16, Assange’s supporters received confirmation that the extradition battle, far from ending, would continue in its tormenting grind. Not wishing to see the prospect of a full hearing of Assange’s already hobbled arguments, the US State Department, almost to the hour, filed the assurances in a diplomatic note to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). “Assange,” the US Embassy in London claimedwith aping fidelity to the formula proposed by the High Court, “will not be prejudiced by reason of nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing.”
Were he to be extradited, “Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” An obvious caveat, and one that should be observed with wary consideration by the High Court judges, followed. “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.”
The US embassy also promised that, “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange. The United States is able to provide such assurance as Assange is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.” This undertaking does not dispel the threat of Assange being charged with additional offences such as traditional espionage, let alone aiding or abetting treason, which would carry the death penalty.
In 2020, Gordon Kromberg, the chief Department of Justice prosecutor behind the case, toldthe Central Criminal Court of England and Wales that the US “could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.” There was also the likelihood that Assange, in allegedly revealing the names of US intelligence sources thereby putting them at risk of harm, would also preclude the possibility of him relying on such protections.
-ADVERTISEMENT-
That the zealous Kromberg will be fronting matters should Assange reach US shores is more than troubling. Lawyers and civil rights activists have accused him of using the Eastern District Court of Virginia for selective and malicious prosecutions. As Murtaza Hussain of The Interceptobservedwith bleak accuracy in July 2021, “[r]ather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world.”
The High Court also acknowledged Kromberg’s views at trial regarding the possibility that the First Amendment did not cover foreign nationals. “It can fairly be assumed that [Kromberg] would not have said that the prosecution ‘could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment’ unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with real prospect of success.” These latest assurances do nothing to change that fact.
A post from Assange’s wife, Stella, provideda neat and damning summary of the embassy note. “The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a US citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”
Government decision to withhold nuclear power plant information unlawful. A ruling by the Information Commissioner (IC) requiring the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero requesting the disclosure of information in respect of a proposed nuclear power plant on Anglesey was upheld by the General Regulatory Chamber (GRC) which concluded that the public interest supported its disclosure.
Calls for Assange’s freedom are renewed as the WikiLeaks founder marks five years in Belmarsh prison.
At the behest of the United States government, the British government has detained WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh for five years.
Assange is one of the only journalists to be jailed by a Western country, making the treatment that he has endured extraordinary. He has spent more time in prison than most individuals charged with similar acts.
Since December 2010, Assange has lived under some form of arbitrary detention.
He was expelled from Ecuador’s London embassy on April 11, 2019, and British police immediately arrested him. Police transported Assange to Belmarsh, a maximum-security facility often referred to as “Britain’s Guantanamo.”
Around the same time, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment that alleged that Assange had conspired with U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning to commit a “computer intrusion.” The following month the DOJ issued another indictment with 17 additional Espionage Act charges.
2019
On May 1, Assange was sentenced by a British court to 50 weeks in prison as punishment for seeking political asylum from Ecuador while Sweden was attempting to extradite him. His sentence was longer than the six-month sentence that Jack Shepherd, the “speedboat killer” received for “breaching bail.”
nuclear-news 