legal « nuclear-news

Former Sellafield consultant claims the nuclear complex tampered with evidence

Whistleblower Alison McDermott claims former employer Sellafield tampered with metadata in letters used in evidence during an employment tribunal.

Tommy Greene, Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly, 22 Apr 24

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.

McDermott told Thursday’s tribunal that the letters had caused her “significant detriment”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366581793/Former-Sellafield-consultant-claims-the-nuclear-complex-tampered-with-evidence

April 26, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste clean-up company to be prosecuted over alleged cyber blunders

Sellafield Ltd accused of lax IT security at Europe’s largest nuclear facility

Jonathan Leake, 28 March 2024 , https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/28/sellafield-nuclear-waste-prosecuted-cybersecurity/

A state-owned company responsible for cleaning up decades of nuclear waste at the Sellafield site in Cumbria is being prosecuted over alleged cybersecurity blunders.

It follows an investigation prompted by fears that the business’s digital defences were breached by hackers acting for hostile states such as Russia and China.

Sellafield is Europe’s largest nuclear facility, serving as a testing ground and waste dump since 1947. It houses a massive range of highly radioactive wastes, including 140 tonnes of plutonium – a key ingredient for nuclear weapons.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has told Sellafield Ltd, the business tasked with clean-up, that it will be prosecuted under the Nuclear Industries Security Regulations 2003.

The charges relate to alleged information technology security offences during a four-year period between 2019 and early 2023.

The announcement coincides with reports today that Richard Meal, who is chief information security officer at the Cumbrian site, is to leave later this year.

It follows the departure of Mark Neate, the director responsible for safety and security, who announced in January that he intended to quit in a move that had been planned for some time.

Sellafield has denied claims the site had suffered serious security breaches and the ONR has supported this. The new charges are thought to relate to alleged failures in compliance – meaning they are more about lax security than actual breaches.

An ONR spokesman said there was no suggestion that public safety had been compromised. Details of the first court hearing will be announced when available.

Sellafield Ltd is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a quango overseen by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which is tasked with cleaning 17 decaying nuclear sites across the UK. Sellafield is the most expensive, costing taxpayers £2.5bn last year.

Some government estimates suggest the total cost of the clean-up will reach £263bn, with Sellafield accounting for the largest portion. The site employs 11,000 people and comprises more than 1,000 buildings, many not designed to house the radioactive material now stored in them.

Sellafield is so expensive that the Office for Budget Responsibility, which monitors threats to the UK Government’s finances, has warned that it and other legacy sites pose a “material source of fiscal risk” to the country.

The ONR investigation is in addition to another by the National Audit Office, Britain’s public spending watchdog, which is probing risks and costs at Sellafield and is due to report this autumn.

A Sellafield spokesman said: “The ONR’s Civil Nuclear Security and Safeguards (CNSS) has notified us of its intention to prosecute the company relating to alleged past nuclear industry security regulations compliance. As the issue is now the subject of active court proceedings, we are unable to comment further.”

It follows separate reports by Radioactive Waste Management Ltd (RWM), another government-owned company, that hackers unsuccessfully attempted to breach its defences using LinkedIn.

RWM, now part of Nuclear Waste Services, is the company tasked with designing the long-awaited Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) project, a vast underground nuclear waste store which would become the final destination for toxic waste now stored at Sellafield.

Nuclear Waste Services is currently seeking a site that would be geologically stable for the millions of years the waste would need to become safe – and which would be acceptable to the local communities hosting it.

Two sites remain in the running, one off the coast of Cumbria and the other off the coast of Lincolnshire, with the choice of site still surrounded in secrecy.

The development is expected to cost taxpayers up to £53bn.

A report filed at Companies House by Nuclear Waste Services said the attempted hacks had failed.

March 31, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, safety, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Julian Assange and the Plea Nibble

Barry Pollack, one of Assange’s legal representatives, has not been given any indication that the department would, as such, accept the deal, a point he reiterated to Consortium News: “[W]e have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case.”

March 23, 2024 by: Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/julian-assange-and-the-plea-nibble/

Be wary of what Washington offers in negotiations at the best of times. The empire gives and takes when it can; the hegemon proffers and in equal measure and withdraws offers it deems fit. This is all well known to the legal team of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who, the Wall Street Journal “exclusively” reveals, is in ongoing negotiations with US Justice Department officials on a possible plea deal.

As things stand, the US Department of Justice is determined to get its mitts on Assange on the dubious strength of 18 charges, 17 confected from the brutal Espionage Act of 1917. Any conviction from these charges risks a 175-year jail term, effectively constituting a death sentence for the Australian publisher.

The war time statute, which was intended to curb free speech and muzzle the press for the duration of the First World War, was assailed by Wisconsin Republican Senator Robert La Follette as a rotten device that impaired “the right of the people to discuss the war in all its phases.” It was exactly in time of war that the citizen “be more alert to the preservation of his right to control his government. He must be most watchful of the encroachment of the military upon the civil power.” And that encroachment is all the more pressing, given the Act’s repurposing as a weapon against leakers and publishers of national security material. In its most obscene incarnation, it has become the US government’s political spear against a non-US national who published US classified documents outside the United States.

The plea deal idea is not new. In August last year, the Sydney Morning Herald pounced upon comments from US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy that a “resolution” to the Assange imbroglio might be on the table. “There is a way to resolve it,” the ambassador suggested at the time. Any such resolution could involve a reduction of any charges in favour of a guilty plea, subject to finalisation by the Department of Justice. Her remarks were heavily caveated: this was more a matter for the DOJ than the State Department or any other agency. “So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think there absolutely could be a resolution.”

The WSJ now reports that officials from the DOJ and Assange’s legal team “have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like to end the lengthy legal drama.” These talks “remain in flux” and “could fizzle.” Redundantly, the Journal reports that any such agreement “would require approval at the highest levels of the Justice Department.”

Barry Pollack, one of Assange’s legal representatives, has not been given any indication that the department would, as such, accept the deal, a point he reiterated to Consortium News: “[W]e have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case.”

One floated possibility would be a guilty plea on a charge of mishandling classified documents, which would be classed as a misdemeanour. Doing so would take some of the sting out of the indictment, which is currently thick with felonies and one conspiracy charge of computer intrusion. “Under the deal, Assange could potentially enter that plea remotely, without setting foot in the US.” Speculation from the paper follows. “The time he has spent behind bars in London would count toward any US sentence, and he would be likely to be free to leave prison shortly after any deal has concluded.”

With little basis for the claim, the report lightly declares that the failure of plea talks would not necessarily be a bad thing for Assange. He could still “be sent to the US for trial”, where “he may not stay for long, given the Australia pledge.” The pledge in question is part of a series of highly questionable assurances given to the UK government that Assange’s carceral conditions would not include detention in the supermax ADX Florence facility, the imposition of notorious Special Administrative Measures, and the provision of appropriate healthcare. Were he to receive a sentence, it would be open to him to apply and serve its balance in Australia. But all such undertakings have been given on condition that they can be broken, and transfer deals between the US and other countries have been plagued by delays, inconsistencies, and bad faith.

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The dangers and opportunities to Assange have been bundled together, a sniff of an idea rather than a formulation of a concrete deal. And deals can be broken. It is hard to imagine that Assange would not be expected to board a flight bound for the United States, even if he could make his plea remotely. Constitutional attorney Bruce Afran, in an interview with CN Live! last August, suggested that a plea, taken internationally, was “not barred by any laws. If all parties consent to it, then the court has jurisdiction.” Yes, but what then?

In any event, once on US soil, there is nothing stopping a grand volte face, that nasty legal practice of tagging on new charges that would carry even more onerous penalties. It should be never forgotten that Assange would be delivered up to a country whose authorities had contemplated, at points, abduction, illegal rendition, and assassination.

Either way, the current process is one of gradual judicial and penal assassination, conducted through prolonged proceedings that continue to assail the publisher’s health even as he stays confined to Belmarsh Prison. (Assange awaits the UK High Court’s decision on whether he will be granted leave to appeal the extradition order from the Home Office.) The concerns will be how to spare WikiLeaks founder further punishment while still forcing Washington to concede defeat in its quest to jail a publisher. That quest, unfortunately, remains an ongoing one.

March 23, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, USA | Leave a comment

The Show Trial against Julian Assange

How US and British authorities are bending the law and undermining press freedom

FABIAN SCHEIDLER, FEB 24, 2024 ore https://fabianscheidler.substack.com/p/the-show-trial-against-julian-assange

“Those who tell the truth need a fast horse,” says an Armenian proverb. Or they need a society that protects the truth and its messengers. But this protection, which our democracies claim to offer, is in danger. As a journalist, Julian Assange has published hundreds of thousands of files documenting war crimes committed by the USA and its allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo and elsewhere. The authenticity of the documents is beyond question. However, none of the perpetrators have been brought to justice or convicted. In contrast, the messenger has been incarcerated in a high-security prison in London for five years with life-threatening health problems, having previously spent seven years locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy. He has been charged with no crime in the UK, in any EU country or in his home country of Australia. The only reason for his grueling deprivation of liberty is that the US government has initiated extradition proceedings accusing the journalist Assange of espionage, invoking a law dating back more than a hundred years to the First World War: the Espionage Act.

Never before has a journalist been charged under this law. The extradition process therefore sets a dangerous precedent. If it is successful, every journalist on Earth who exposes US war crimes would have to fear suffering the same fate as Assange. That would be the end of freedom of the press as we know it. Because it is based on the capacity to bring to light the dark sides of power without fear of punishment. Where this freedom is extinguished, it is not only the freedom of journalists that dies, but the freedom of us all: the freedom from the arbitrariness of power.

For this reason alone, this extradition process should never have been accepted by the courts in a functioning legal system. Julian Assange did not act as a spy in any way, but as a journalist and as such is subject to special protection. Incidentally, the key witness for the espionage charge was the notorious fraudster and convicted paedophile Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, who admitted in 2021 that he had lied on behalf of the FBI and had been granted immunity from prosecution.

Let us imagine the case with reversed roles: Suppose an Australian journalist had published war crimes committed by the Russian military and intelligence services and sought protection in a Western European country. Would the courts seriously consider extradition proceedings to Moscow for espionage, especially if the key witness is a convicted criminal?

Assange is facing the absurd sentence of 175 years in the USA. It is to be feared that he will not survive the extremely harsh conditions in the notorious US prison system. For this reason, the London Magistrates’ Court initially halted his extradition in 2021. The US government then published a paper stating that Assange would not face solitary confinement. However, according to Amnesty International, this declaration is “not worth the paper it is written on”, as the non-binding diplomatic note reserves the right for the US government to change its position at any time. The Court of Appeal, however, found this paper sufficient to clear the way for extradition – a travesty of justice, as Amnesty noted.

The hearings, which took place on February 20 and 21 at the High Court in London and whose verdict is expected in March, are the last opportunity for Assange to obtain an appeal against this extradition decision. However, there is a high risk that the law will once again be turned on its head. As the investigative platform Declassified UK reports, one of the two judges, Jeremy Johnson, previously worked for the British secret service MI6, which is closely intertwined with the CIA and whose illegal activities came to public attention through the work of Julian Assange.

For Julian Assange, the trial itself has already become a punishment. Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, concluded after detailed investigations that Assange had been subjected to systematic psychological torture for years. The fact that the US was prepared to go even further came to light in September of the same year: according to reports in the Guardian, senior intelligence officials, including the then head of the CIA and later Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, planned to kidnap and murder Assange in 2017.[v]

The background:

Wikileaks had published documents that year that became known as “Vault 7”. They show the CIA’s massive activities in the field of cyber warfare and prove how the secret service systematically and comprehensively intervenes in web browsers, IT systems in cars, smart TVs and smartphones, even when they are switched off. This was one of the most sensational revelations by Wikileaks since the leaks by Edward Snowden, who uncovered the massive illegal surveillance by the NSA. The CIA was not to forgive Assange for this coup and subsequently classified Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service” – a momentous neologism that allowed journalists to be declared enemies of the state. After Pompeo became Secretary of State in 2018, the US government initiated the extradition proceedings. This move replaced Pompeo’s original kidnapping and killing plan, with the goal remaining the same: the destruction of an inconvenient journalist.

The revelations of whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and journalists such as Julian Assange have shown that in the shadow of the so-called war on terror, a vast parallel universe has emerged in recent decades that is obsessed with the illegal spying on its own citizens and the arbitrary imprisonment, torture and killing of political opponents. This world is largely beyond democratic control, indeed it is undermining the democratic order from within.

However, this development is not entirely new. In 1971, leaks revealed a secret FBI program for spying on, infiltrating and disrupting civil rights and anti-war movements, which became known as COINTELPRO. In the same year, the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers leaked by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, which showed that four successive US administrations had systematically lied to their citizens about the extent and motives of the Vietnam War and the massive war crimes committed by the US military. In 1974, Seymour Hersh revealed the CIA’s secret programs to assassinate foreign heads of state and the covert operation to spy on hundreds of thousands of opponents of the war, which ran under the code name “Operation CHAOS”. Driven by these reports, the US Congress convened in 1975 the Church Committee, which carried out a comprehensive review of the secret operations and led to greater parliamentary control of the services.

Julian Assange is part of this venerable journalistic tradition and has made a decisive contribution to its renewed flourishing. However, there is one important difference to the 1970s: Today, the most important investigative journalist of his generation is openly persecuted, criminalized and deprived of his freedom. When states declare the investigation of crimes to be a crime itself, society enters a dangerous downward spiral, at the end of which new forms of totalitarian rule can emerge. As early as 2012, Assange remarked, at the time with regard to the increasingly comprehensive surveillance technologies: “We have all the ingredients for a turnkey totalitarian state”.

If the US authorities succeed in convicting a journalist for exposing war crimes, this would have another serious consequence. In the future, it would become even more difficult and dangerous to expose the sordid reality of wars, especially those wars that Western governments like to sell as civilizing missions with the help of embedded journalists. If we do not learn the truth about these wars, it becomes much easier to wage them. Truth is the most important instrument of peace.

Julian Assange has not yet been extradited and sentenced. Over the years, a remarkable international movement has formed for his release and the defense of press freedom. Many parliamentarians around the world are also raising their voices. The Australian parliament, for example, supported by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, passed a resolution by a large majority calling for Assange’s release. A group of over 80 members of the German parliament have joined in. However, the German government is still refusing to exert any serious pressure on Joe Biden’s government, which continues to persecute Assange. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who as the Green Party’s candidate for chancellor had spoken out in favor of freeing Assange, has persistently avoided questions on the subject since joining the government. Her ministry has left questions from MPs about the case unanswered for months, only to then make elusive rhetorical excuses. The leading politicians of the governing German coalition, who like to loudly present themselves as the guardians of democracy and the rule of law, must finally take action in this case of political justice and unequivocally demand the release of Julian Assange before it is too late. However, this would require overcoming the cowering attitude towards the godfather in Washington and actually standing up for the much-vaunted values of democracy.

February 26, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, media, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: Julian Assange’s Day in Court

The defense must convince the two judges that the District Judge made serious legal errors to see an appeal granted.

They argued that espionage is, as a matter of law, a political offense and that the extradition treaty with the U.S. prohibits extradition for political offenses. They focused on the extensive UK law, common law and international law that defines espionage as a “pure political offense” because e it is directed against a state apparatus. For this reason, those charged with espionage should be protected from extradition.

The hearing was, after those in 2020 that focused on Julian’s mental and psychological health, refreshing in that it discussed the crimes committed by the U.S. and the importance of making them public.

Julian Assange’s lawyers — in a final bid on Tuesday to stop his extradition — fought valiantly to poke holes in the case of the prosecution to obtain an appeal.

By Chris Hedges https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/21/chris-hedges-julian-assanges-day-in-court/

LONDON — By the afternoon the video link, which would have allowed Julian Assange to follow his final U.K. appeal to prevent his extradition, had been turned off. Julian, his attorneys said, was too ill to attend, too ill even to follow the court proceedings on a link, although it was possible he was no longer interested in sitting through another judicial lynching. The rectangular screen, tucked under the black wrought iron bars that enclosed the upper left hand corner balcony of the courtroom where Julian would have been caged as a defendant, was perhaps a metaphor for the emptiness of this long and convoluted judicial pantomime.

he arcane procedural rules — the lawyers in their curled blonde wigs and robes, the spectral figure of the two judges looking down on the court from their raised dais in their gray wigs and forked white collars, the burnished walnut paneled walls, the rows of lancet windows, the shelves on either side filled with law books in brown, green, red, crimson, blue and beige leather bindings, the defense lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald KC and Mark Summers KC, addressing the two judges, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Johnson, as “your lady” and “my lord” — were all dusty Victorian props employed in a modern Anglo-American show trial. It was a harbinger of a decrepit justice system that, subservient to state and corporate power, is designed to strip us of our rights by judicial fiat.

The physical and psychological disintegration of Julian, seven years trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and nearly five years held on remand in the high-security HM Prison Belmarsh, was always the point, what Nils Melzer the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture calls his “slow-motion execution.” Political leaders, and their echo chambers in the media, fall all over themselves to denounce the treatment of Alexei Navalny but say little when we do the same to Julian. The legal farce grinds forward like the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. It will probably grind on for a few more months — one can’t expect the Biden administration to add the extradition of Julian to all its other political woes. It may take months to issue a ruling, or grant one or two appeal requests, as Julian continues to waste away in HM Prison Belmarsh.

Julian’s nearly 15-year legal battle began in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified military files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — including footage showing a U.S. helicopter gunning down civilians, including two Reuters journalists in Baghdad. He took refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, before being arrested by the Metropolitan Police in 2019 who were permitted by the Ecuadorian embassy to enter and seize him. He has been held for nearly five years in HM Prison Belmarsh.

Julian did not commit a crime. He is not a spy. He did not purloin classified documents. He did what we all do, although he did it in a far more important way. He published voluminous material, leaked to him by Chelsea Manning, which exposed U.S. war crimes, lies, corruption, torture and assassinations. He ripped back the veil to expose the murderous machinery of the U.S. empire.

The two-day hearing is Julian’s last chance to appeal the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel. On Wednesday the prosecution will make its arguments. If he is denied an appeal he can request the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a stay of execution under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But the British court may order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction or may decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard by the court.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January 2021, at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, refused to authorize the extradition request. In her 132-page ruling, she found that there was a “substantial risk” Julian would commit suicide due to the severity of the conditions he would endure in the U.S. prison system. At the same time, she accepted all the charges leveled by the U.S. against Julian as being filed in good faith. She rejected the arguments that his case was politically motivated, that he would not get a fair trial in the U.S. and that his prosecution is an assault on the freedom of the press.

Baraitser’s decision was overturned after the U.S. government appealed to the High Court in London. Although the High Court accepted Baraitser’s conclusions about Julian’s “substantial risk” of suicide if he was subjected to certain conditions within a U.S. prison, it also accepted four assurances in U.S. Diplomatic Note no. 74, given to the court in February 2021, which promised Julian would be treated well. The “assurances” state that Julian will not be subject to Special Administrative Measure. They promise that Julian, an Australian citizen, can serve his sentence in Australia if the Australian government requests his extradition. They promise he will receive adequate clinical and psychological care. They promise that, pre-trial and post-trial, Julian will not be held in the Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado.

Continue reading →

February 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, UK | Leave a comment

The ICJ’s Provisional Orders: The Genocide Convention Applies to Gaza

January 27, 2024, Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/the-icjs-provisional-orders-the-genocide-convention-applies-to-gaza/—

On January 26, legal experts, policy wonks, activists and the plain curious waited for the order of the International Court of Justice, sitting in The Hague. The topic was that gravest of crimes, considered most reprehensible in the canon of international law: genocide. The main participants: the accused party, the State of Israel, and the accuser, the Republic of South Africa.

Filed on December 29 last year, the South African case focused on its obligations arising under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and those of Israel. Pretoria, in its case, wished that the ICJ adjudicate and declare that Israel had breached its obligations under the Convention, and “cease forthwith any acts and measures in breach of those obligations, including such acts or measures which would be capable of killing or continuing to kill Palestinians, or causing or continuing to cause serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians or deliberately inflicting on their group, or continuing to inflict on their group, conditions of life calculated to bring out its physical destruction in whole or in part, and fully respect its obligations under the Genocide Convention.”

The latter words derive from Article II of the Convention, which stipulate four genocidal actions: the killing of the group’s members; the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to those group’s members; the deliberate infliction of conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction, in whole or in part, of that group and imposing measures to prevent births within the group.

The sheer extent of devastation being wrought by Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza, justified by the Netanyahu government as necessary self-defence in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of October 7, led the South African team to also seek immediate provisional measures under Article 41 of the Court’s statute. (The review on the case’s merits promises to take much longer.) They included the immediate suspension of the IDF’s military operations in and against Gaza, the taking of all reasonable measures to prevent genocide, and desisting from committing acts within Article II of the Convention. The expulsion and forced displacement of Palestinians should also stop, likewise the deprivation of adequate food, water and access to humanitarian assistance and medical supplies and “the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza.”

By 15-2, the court accepted that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.” (Over 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, extensive tracts of land in Gaza pummelled into oblivion, and 85% of its 2.3 million residents expelled from their homes.) Measures were therefore required to prevent “real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.”

The grant of provisional measures was, however, more conservative than that sought by Pretoria. Conspicuously missing was any explicit demand that Israel pause its military operations. That said, the judgment did little to afford Israel’s leaders and the IDF comfort from the obligatory reach of the Genocide Convention, an instrument they had argued was irrelevant and inapplicable to the conduct of “innovative” military operations.

To that end, Israel was obligated to take all possible measures to prevent the commission of acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention, including by its military; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Palestinian populace in Gaza; permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip; ensure the preservation of, and prevent destruction of, evidence related to acts committed against Gaza’s Palestinians within Articles II and III of the Convention; and submit a report to the ICJ on how Israel was abiding by such provisional measures within one month.

As is very much the form, the justice from the country in the dock, in this case, Israel’s Aharon Barak, could see nothing inferentially genocidal in his country’s campaign. South Africa, he insisted, had intentionally ignored the role played by Hamas in its October 7 attacks, and “wrongly sought to impute the crime of Cain to Abel.”

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Inevitably, the singular experience of the Holocaust survivor, the sui generis Jewish view of trauma, used as solid armour against any possibility that Israel might ever commit genocide, became a point of contention. Genocide “is the gravest possible accusation and is deeply intertwined with my personal life experience.” Israel had a firm commitment to the rule of law, and to accept that it was committing genocide “is very hard for me personally”. Tellingly, he suggested that Israel’s campaign in Gaza be examined, not from the viewpoint of the Genocide Convention but international humanitarian law.

With classic casuistry, Barak did vote for the measure requiring Israel to do everything “within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza strip.” But having identified nothing in the way of such intent, the issue became a moot one. With some relief, Barak could state that certain measures sought by South Africa, including an immediate suspension of military operations, were rejected by the ICJ, which preferred “a significantly narrower scope”.

From the other side of the legal aisle, the South African foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, wished that the ICJ had grasped the nettle to order a halt in military operations. But, with some deft reasoning, she was satisfied that the only way Israel could implement the provisional measures would be through a ceasefire. Much the same view was expressed by the Associated Press: “The court’s half-dozen orders will be difficult to achieve without some sort of cease-fire or pause in the fighting.” That logic is clear enough, but the actions, given the various statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his officials alleging slander and a blood libel against their country, are unlikely to follow.

January 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, politics international | Leave a comment

Tokyo High Court holds Japan government not liable for Fukushima nuclear disaster

Sean Nolan | Southwestern Law School, US, DECEMBER 28, 2023

Tokyo’s High Court found the government of Japan not liable Tuesday for damages related to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and associated mass evacuations, leaving responsibility solely with plant operator the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).

The ruling also reduced the damages amounts of a previous court order from $414,400 to $165,000 for 44 of 47 petitioners. The decision mirrors a previous ruling in 2022 which found that the government “was highly unlikely to been able to prevent the flooding” that damaged the plant. Ultimately, the court held that more stringent regulatory actions would have been insufficient to prevent the disaster since the size, direction and scale of the tsunami exceeded estimations for such an event. This is the latest in a series of decisions with different outcomes over the last several years including court cases in 2020 and 2017 which litigated the government’s role in failing to prevent the disaster. There is also a 2022 court case that found TEPCO executives personally liable.

Motomitsu Nakagawa, a lawyer, representing the evacuees expressed dismay with the decision and raised the possibility of another appeal calling the decision a “copy and paste” of the previous Supreme Court ruling. The nuclear disaster has already caused $82 billion in damages to victims, decommissioning work and storage for contaminated materials. While TEPCO has been responsible for all the decommissioning, including contaminant storage, it’s financial position has deteriorated over the last few years amid the massive costs associated with the work and multiple postponements due to technological challenges.

Legal fallout has also extended to the cleanup itself with court cases from South Korea fisheries and Japanese fisherman over the release of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. The discharge also sparked international concern from neighboring countries and protests from activists who fear pollution and widespread destruction of wildlife and marine ecosystems.

December 30, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima continuing, legal | Leave a comment

Judge Rules Assange Visitors May Sue CIA For Allegedly Violating Privacy

Kevin Gosztola, Dec 19, 2023, The Dissenter

A federal judge ruled that four American attorneys and journalists, who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was in the Ecuador embassy in London, may sue the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for their role in the alleged copying of the contents of their electronic devices.

The Americans sufficiently alleged that the CIA and CIA Director Mike Pompeo—through the Spanish security company UC Global and its director David Morales—“violated their reasonable expectation of privacy” under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Richard Roth, attorney for the four Americans, reacted, “We are thrilled that the court rejected the CIA’s efforts to silence the plaintiffs, who merely seek to expose the CIA’s attempt to carry out Pompeo’s vendetta against WikiLeaks.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The U.S. government on behalf of the CIA will likely appeal the decision. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable development because there is a distinct possibility that there may be a civil trial, where CIA spying on Americans is challenged. And all while the U.S. government pushes forward with the unprecedented act of putting a publisher on trial for engaging in journalism. https://thedissenter.org/judge-assange-visitors-may-sue-cia-for-spying/?ref=the-dissenter-newsletter&fbclid=IwAR1S-KR9qxfueGXiIYf0quxldvaXEus_rLZsBUQbwIbPaTmZ_VjSft9KBzI

December 24, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, USA | Leave a comment

Anti-Nuclear Activist Goes on Trial Amid the Fallout of Oppenheimer’s LegacyKansas City’s Ties To The Bomb

Flatland, Clarence Dennis, cdennis@flatlandkc.org 10 Nov 23

At time zero the first thing I noticed was that although facing away from ground zero, it felt like someone had slapped my face: it was of course the heat radiation from a most successful test.”Hugh Richards, Ph.D., “Through Los Alamos, 1945: Memoirs of a Nuclear Physicist”

Last month, Ann Suellentrop, 71, stood before a judge in the 16^th Judicial Court of Missouri.

A retired maternal-child nurse and lifelong activist, Suellentrop was one of three people arrested for trespassing during a Memorial Day protest organized by PeaceWorks KC at the National Security Campus of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in south Kansas City earlier this year.

The only property line crosser who would plead not guilty, Suellentrop represented herself in court on Oct. 25. She argued that intentionally crossing the alleged boundary line by 10 feet or less, approximately three-fourths of a mile from the NNSA facility, was not trespass, but a peaceful, “limited protest” on a matter of principle and should not result in fines or jail time.

Facing a $500 fine, six months in jail, or both, the defendant argued her action was an expression of her First Amendment rights and stressed that advanced notice and planning of the annual protest was communicated to police and NNSA campus officials.

In front of more than a dozen supporters sporting bold black stickers that read “NO NUKES Y’ALL,” Suellentrop raised points to Judge Anne LaBella about her own character, the nature of her peaceful protest and the threats nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism pose to human health and society.

Facing a slew of objections based on relevance and witness testimony from the NNSA campus security guard who was on duty during the protest and warned the protesters to step off the property, all signs pointed to a guilty verdict.

Moments after all arguments were heard and the city rested its case, the prosecutor asked the judge to amend the charge to include NNSA campus administrator Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies.

Judge LaBella said the request came too late and she would not amend the charge. She then promptly announced her ruling on Suellentrop’s case.

Not guilty.

Modern-Day Peaceniks

A member of PeaceWorks KC and the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, Suellentrop has been arrested twice before in protests at the NNSA campus. The facility manufactures 80% of the non-nuclear components that go into the national nuclear stockpile……..

“Our ultimate goal is to convert the plant into a peaceful production of hopefully something that can fight the environmental crisis that’s going on. We need those brains, those skills and that money to convert it into something we really need,” Suellentrop said ahead of the trial.

Immediately following the verdict, Suellentrop and her peacenik partners picked up where her testimony left off. The group of mostly older adults gathered outside of the Jackson County Courthouse, taking turns passing a child’s toy microphone, celebrating the win and speaking about the threat nuclear weapons present to anyone who would listen.

“Because there is a group of old people, it doesn’t mean we are wrong. Historically, civil disobedience has played a big role in changing things,” said PeaceWorks KC board chair Chris Mann.

Mann, 73, participated in her first protest in college – a silent vigil during the war in Vietnam.

“Our group is becoming increasingly younger… a tradition of civil disobedience is only one of the measures,” Mann said, speaking to the makeup of PeaceWorks KC. “We think that younger people have a hard way to go now.”…………………………………….

The experience, plus an admiration for Australian physician, author and anti-nuclear advocate Helen Caldicot, fueled a lifetime of activism for Suellentrop, particularly in anti-nuclear efforts.

As for what keeps her civil disobedience going into her 70s, Suellentrop points to her faith.

“Like any person, I have fears and worries and self-doubts and what have you, but I just go to God and prayer,” Suellentrop said. “I get an overwhelming feeling of, ‘I got this.’ God is good and he’s opposing this – and this is an unspeakable evil.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://flatlandkc.org/news-issues/anti-nuclear-activist-goes-on-trial-amid-the-fallout-of-oppenheimers-legacy/

November 11, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, to investigate allegations that NuScale may have issued misleading business information

Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, announces an
investigation of potential securities claims on behalf of shareholders of
NuScale Power Corporation resulting from allegations that NuScale may have
issued materially misleading business information to the investing public.

Rosen Law Firm (accessed) 29th Oct 2023 https://rosenlegal.com/case/nuscale-power-corporation/

NuScale Power Corporation

October 31, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal | Leave a comment

Lawyers circle nuclear startup NuScale over claims a 24-reactor deal will fail

Short seller brands blockchain firm Standard Power a “fake customer”

October 27, 2023 By Peter Judge https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/lawyers-circle-nuclear-startup-nuscale-over-claims-a-24-reactor-deal-will-fail/

Nuclear power startup NuScale is facing investigation by lawyers after a short-seller’s report alleged that it has sold 24 reactors to a “fake customer.”

NuScale announced a deal earlier this month to supply blockchain firm Standard Power with 1,848MW of power provided by 24 of NuScale’s small modular reactors (SMRs), to power two US data center sites.

Last week its share price dropped around 10 percent after a scathing report from short seller Iceberg Research claimed that the deal, estimated at $37 billion, had “zero chance of being executed.” The shares bounced back around six percent earlier this week, when NuScale responded, saying the Iceberg claims were “riddled with speculative statements with no basis in fact.”

NuScale has contracted to provide Standard Power with 1,848MW of power, but Iceberg predicts Standard Power will be unable to support the contract. Among other things, Iceberg points out that Standard Power’s CEO Maxim Serezhin has an outstanding $54k tax warrant in New York, rendering his assets vulnerable to seizure, adding that a former Standard Power leader, Adam Swickle, was found guilty of securities fraud in 2003.

The Standard Power deal is massively bigger than NuScale’s only other contract, with the government-backed Carbon Free Power Project (“CFPP”) to provide Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (“UAMPS”) with 462MW, and is also bigger than Standard Power’s other major deal, a 200MW contract for nuclear power at Shippingport Pennsylvania.

Iceberg says NuScale has “around 15 months before its cash runs out,” and says the UAMPS contract is reaching a crucial stage, claiming: “NuScale has been given till around January 2024 to raise project commitments to 80 percent or 370 MWe.”

Iceberg also cast doubt on NuScale’s commercial partner Entra1, saying it was set up in 2021 to finance NuScale reactors, has only one employee, and was “very unlikely to be able to finance even a portion of this contract.”

NuScale said it “will not engage in a point-by-point rebuttal of every falsehood,” but issued statements on several points, saying that NuScale has a “solid balance sheet,” and that US Department of Energy (DOE) support for the CFPP “has advanced our SMR technology to the point of commercialization.”

DOE support has been a key factor in NuScale’s development, helping it bring nuclear power down to a commercial price point, however, the price of nuclear electricity from its projected plans has been creeping up, from an initial estimate of $55 per MWh to around $90 per MWh, making it less competitive.

Iceberg suggests that it may not be able to fully deliver without further support from the US government, which it says will “dilute” shareholder value. NuScale went public with a SPAC in May 2022.

Lawyers investigated NuScale on behalf of investors over “possible violations of federal securities laws,” include Howard G. Smith, which issued a press release this week, and Rosen Law Firm, which is planning a class action lawsuit. These releases are classed as “attorney advertising.”

Overall shares in NuScale have fallen around 75 percent since their peak in late 2022, from around $14 to around $3.5.

October 29, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Rights Lawyers Release Legal Analysis of U.S. Complicity in Israel’s Unfolding Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza

https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/25/rights-lawyers-release-legal-analysis-of-u-s-complicity-in-israels-unfolding-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/

By Center for Constitutional Rights

October 18, 2023, Geneva, Switzerland – On the heels of President Biden’s visit to Israel and as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza passes 3,300, expert attorneys from the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights released a legal and factual analysis of Israel’s unfolding crime of genocide against the Palestinian people and U.S. complicity in this grave international law violation. The emergency briefing paper comes soon after the U.S veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning both Hamas’s attack on Israel and all violence against civilians and calling for humanitarian access to Gaza. It also comes as President Biden seeks to secure additional, unconditional military support for Israel.

According to the emergency briefing paper, there is a credible case, based on powerful evidence, that Israel is attempting to commit or committing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory, and specifically against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The United States has a duty under Article 1 of the 1948 Genocide Convention to prevent acts of genocide, an obligation that has been domestically implemented through U.S. criminal law. The legal and factual analysis provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights describes how, through its ongoing unconditional military, diplomatic, and political support to Israel, the United States is not only failing to prevent genocide, but is complicit. Under international law, the United States – and responsible U.S. citizens, including and up to the President – can be held accountable for their role in furthering genocide.

According to the International Court of Justice, “a State’s obligation to prevent [genocide], and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.” States are required to take all measures “reasonably available to them” to prevent this risk from that moment onward, “if the State has available to it means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent.”

As scholars and observers increasingly warn of genocide, and as protestors rise up against Israel’s gravest atrocities against Palestinians since 1948, the Center for Consitutional Rights has been asked by Palestinian partners on the ground to offer this analysis as we strengthen our collective efforts towards accountability and freedom. The emergency briefing paper calls on the United States to take all necessary measures to secure a ceasefire, pressure Israel to end all military operations, end all U.S. military aid to Israel, and ensure the provision to Palestinians in Gaza of urgently needed basic necessities for life. The experts also stress in the briefing paper the urgent need to address the root causes of the current catastrophe, especially the 16-year closure of Gaza, the 56-year illegal occupation, and the apartheid regime across all of historic Palestine.

The emergency briefing paper will be submitted to national and international stakeholders, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. It will also be sent to President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and other U.S. officials and relevant agencies. Read the emergency legal briefing paper here. For more information, see our resource page. #USA #Israel #Palestine

October 26, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, legal, USA | Leave a comment

Judicial review will hear appeal against UK govt’s consent for Sizewell C nuclear

Together Against Sizewell C is delighted to announce that we now have the
date for our judicial review in the Court of Appeal, a two-day hearing has
been set for Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd November 2023.

This will give our legal team the opportunity to present TASC’s appeal against Justice
Holgate’s refusal in the High Court of our judicial review of then
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng’s decision to give development consent
to Sizewell C.

The unusually early date for the hearing is a result of
pressure from the government requesting the case be treated as a priority.
TASC continues to have the support of Suffolk Coastal Friends of the Earth
and Stop Sizewell C in this vitally important battle for the soul of the
Heritage Coast, however because of the short timeframe that has been forced
on us we have little time to raise the £25,000 needed to cover the costs
of our legal team for this appeal stage of the proceedings.

Crowd Justice 8th Oct 2023 #nuclear #antinuclear #Nuclearfree #NoNukes

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/save-suffolks-heritage-coast-w/

October 11, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, UK | Leave a comment

What’s Behind Talk of a Possible Plea Deal for Assange?

Were Assange to give up his legal battle and voluntarily go to the U.S. it would achieve two things for Washington:

1). remove the chance of a European Court of Human Rights injunction stopping his extradition should the High Court in London reject his last appeal; and

2). it would give the U.S. an opportunity to “change its mind” once Assange was in its clutches inside the Virginia federal courthouse.

Top U.S. officials are speaking at cross purposes when it comes to Julian Assange. What is really going on? asks Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/03/whats-behind-talk-of-a-possible-plea-deal-for-assange/

It was a little more than perplexing. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on Australian soil, left no doubt about how his government feels about one of Australia’s most prominent citizens.

“I understand the concerns and views of Australians,” Blinken said in Brisbane on July 31 with the Australian foreign minister at his side. “I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter.” He went on:

“What our Department of Justice has already said repeatedly, publicly, is this: Mr. Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country. So I say that only because just as we understand sensitivities here, it’s important that our friends understand sensitivities in the United States.”

In other words, when it comes to Julian Assange, the U.S. elite cares little for what Australians have to say. There are more impolite ways to describe Blinken’s response. Upwards of 88 percent of Australians and both parties in the Australian government have told Washington to free the man. And Blinken essentially told them to stuff it. The U.S. won’t drop the case.

A few days before Blinken spoke, Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia and daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, was also dismissive of Australians’ concerns, telling Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio:

“I met with Parliamentary supporters of Julian Assange and I’ve listened to their concerns and I understand that this has been raised at the highest levels of our government, but it is an ongoing legal case, so the Department of Justice is really in charge but I’m sure that for Julian Assange it means a lot that he has this kind of support but we’re just going to have to wait to see what happens.”

Asked why she met with the parliamentarians at all, she said: “Well, it’s an important issue, it has, as I’ve said, been raised at the highest levels and I wanted to hear directly from them about their concerns to make sure that we all understood where each other was coming from and I thought it was a very useful conversation.”

Asked whether her meeting with the MPs had shifted her thinking on the Assange case, Kennedy said bluntly: “Not really.” She added that her “personal thinking isn’t really relevant here.”

Blowback

Australia has too often behaved as a doormat to the United States, to the point where Australia is threatening its own security by going along with an aggressive U.S. policy towards China, which poses no threat to Australia.

But this time, Blinken got an earful. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reiterated that he wanted the Assange case to be dropped. Certain members of Parliament brusquely gave it back to Blinken.

Assange was “not the villain … and if the US wasn’t obsessed with revenge it would drop the extradition charge as soon as possible,” Independent MP Andrew Wilkie told The Guardian‘s Australian edition.

“Antony Blinken’s allegation that Julian Assange risked very serious harm to US national security is patent nonsense,” said Wilkie said.

“Mr Blinken would be well aware of the inquiries in both the US and Australia which found that the relevant WikiLeaks disclosures did not result in harm to anyone,” the MP said. “The only deadly behaviour was by US forces … exposed by WikiLeaks, like the Apache crew who gunned down Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists” in the infamous Collateral Murder video.

As was shown conclusively by defense witnesses in his September 2020 extradition hearing in London, Assange worked assiduously to redact names of U.S. informants before WikiLeaks publications on Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. U.S. Gen. Robert Carr testified at the court martial of WikiLeaks‘ source, Chelsea Manning, that no one was harmed by the material’s publication.

Instead, Assange faces 175 years in a U.S. dungeon on charges of violating the Espionage Act, not for stealing U.S. classified material, but for the First Amendment-protected publication of it.

Labor MP Julian Hill, also part of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, told The Guardian he had “a fundamentally different view of the substance of the matter than secretary Blinken expressed. But I appreciate that at least his remarks are candid and direct.”

“In the same vein, I would say back to the United States: at the very least, take Julian Assange’s health issues seriously and go into court in the United Kingdom and get him the hell out of a maximum security prison where he’s at risk of dying without medical care if he has another stroke,” Hill said.

Damage Control

The fierce Australian reaction to both Blinken and Kennedy’s remarks appears to have taken Washington by surprise, given how accustomed to Canberra’s supine behavior the U.S. has become. Just two weeks after Blinken’s remarks, Kennedy tried to soften the blow by muddying Blinken’s clear waters.

She told The Sydney Morning Herald in a front-page interview published on Aug. 14 that the United States was now, despite Blinken’s unequivocal words, suddenly open to a plea agreement that could free Assange, allowing him to serve a shortened sentence for a lesser crime in his home country.

The newspaper said there could be a “David Hicks-style plea bargain,” a so-called Alford Plea, in which Assange would continue to state his innocence while accepting a lesser charge that would allow him to serve additional time in Australia. The four years Assange has already served on remand at London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison could perhaps be taken into account.

Kennedy said a decision on such a plea deal was up to the U.S. Justice Department. “So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think that there absolutely could be a resolution,” she told the newspaper.

Kennedy acknowledged Blinken’s harsh comments. “But there is a way to resolve it,” she said. “You can read the [newspapers] just like I can.” It is not quite clear what in the newspapers she was reading.

Blinken is Kennedy’s boss. There is little chance she had spoken out of turn. Blinken allowed her to put out the story that the U.S. is interested in a plea bargain with Assange. But why?

First, the harsh reaction in Australia to Blinken’s words probably had something to do with it. If it was up to the U.S. Justice Department alone to handle the prosecution of Assange, as Kennedy says, why was the Secretary of State saying anything about it at all? Blinken appears to have spoken out of turn himself and sent Kennedy out to reel it back in.

Given the growing opposition to the AUKUS alliance in Australia, including within the ruling Labor Party, perhaps Blinken and the rest of the U.S. security establishment is not taking Australia’s support for granted anymore. Blinken stepped in it and had Kennedy try to clean up the mess.

Second, as suspected by many Assange supporters on social media, Kennedy’s words may have been intended as a kind of ploy, perhaps to lure Assange to the United States to give up his fight against extradition in exchange for leniency.

In its article based on Kennedy’s interview, The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to only one international law expert, a Don Rothwell, of Australian National University in Canberra, who said Assange would have to go to the United States to negotiate a plea. In a second interview on Australian television, Rothwell said Assange would also have to drop his extradition fight.

Of course, neither is true. “Usually American courts don’t act unless a defendant is inside that district and shows up to the court,” U.S. constitutional lawyer Bruce Afran told Consortium News. “However, there’s nothing strictly prohibiting it either. And in a given instance, a plea could be taken internationally. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s not barred by any laws. If all parties consent to it, then the court has jurisdiction.” But would the U.S. consent to it?

Were Assange to give up his legal battle and voluntarily go to the U.S. it would achieve two things for Washington: 1). remove the chance of a European Court of Human Rights injunction stopping his extradition should the High Court in London reject his last appeal; and 2). it would give the U.S. an opportunity to “change its mind” once Assange was in its clutches inside the Virginia federal courthouse.

“The U.S. sometimes finds ways to get around these agreements,” Afran said. “The better approach would be that he pleads while in the U.K., we resolve the sentence by either an additional sentence of seven months, such as David Hicks had or a year to be served in the U.K. or in Australia or time served.”

Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told the Herald his brother going to the U.S. was a “non-starter.” He said: “Julian cannot go to the US under any circumstances.” Assange’s father, John Shipton, told the same to Glenn Greenwald last week.

So the U.S. won’t be getting Assange on its soil voluntarily, and perhaps not very soon either. And maybe it wants it that way. Gabriel Shipton added: “Caroline Kennedy wouldn’t be saying these things if they didn’t want a way out. The Americans want this off their plate.”

Third, the U.S. may be trying to prolong Assange’s ordeal for at least another 14 months past the November 2024 U.S. presidential election. As Greenwald told John Shipton, the last thing President Joe Biden would want in the thick of his reelection campaign next year would be a high-profile criminal trial in which he was seen trying to put a publisher away for life for printing embarrassing U.S. state secrets.

But rather than a way out, as Gabriel Shipton called it, the U.S. may have in mind something more like a Great Postponement.

The postponement could come with the High Court of England and Wales continuing to take its time to give Assange his last hearing — for all of 30 minutes — before it rendered its final judgement, months after that, on his extradition. This could be stretched over 14 months. As Assange is a U.S. campaign issue, the High Court could justify its inaction by saying it wanted to avoid interference in the election.

According to Craig Murray, a former British diplomat and close Assange associate, the United States has not, despite Kennedy’s words last month, so far offered any sort of plea deal to Assange’s legal team. Murray told WBAI radio in New York:

“There have been noises made by the U.S. ambassador to Australia saying that a plea deal is possible. And that’s what the Australian Government have been pushing for as a way to solve it. What I can tell you is that there have been no official approaches from the American government indicating any willingness to soften or ameliorate their posihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNjwQNV4Gction. The position of the Biden administration still seems to be that they wish to persecute and destroy Julian and lock him up for life for publishing the truth about war crimes …

So there’s no evidence of any sincerity on behalf of the U.S. government in these noises we’ve been hearing. It seems to be to placate public opinion in Australia, which is over 80% in favor of dropping the charges and allowing Julian to go home to his native country…

The American ambassador has made comments about, oh well, a plea deal might be possible, but this is just rubbish. This is just talk in the air. There’s been no kind of approach or indication from the Justice Department or anything like that at all. It’s just not true. It’s a false statement, in order to placate public opinion in Australia.”

Afran said a plea deal can be initiated by the Assange side as well. Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson said in May for the first time on behalf of his legal team that they were open to discussion of a plea deal, though she said she knew of no crime Assange had committed to plead guilty to.

The U.S. would have many ways to keep prolonging talks on an Assange initiative, if one came, beyond the U.S. election. After the vote, the Justice Department could then receive Assange in Virginia courtesy of the British courts, if this the strategy the U.S. is pursuing.

September 5, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, legal, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

RADIOACTIVE TSUNAMIS: NUCLEAR TORPEDO DRONES AND THEIR LEGALITY IN WAR

SEPTEMBER 4, 2023, By Raul (Pete) Pedrozo, Center for International Maritime Security

Introduction

Russia and North Korea are both fielding a novel type of naval weapon – nuclear-armed torpedo drones. These new weapons introduce a variety of strategic and operational challenges that further complicate a worsening threat environment. They also pose critical legal questions about whether their intended concepts of operation are lawful. These weapons have a fearsome potential to weaponize the maritime environment, and precise questions of their legality should be resolved in order to dissuade their proliferation.

North Korea and Russia’s Doomsday Torpedoes

On July 28, North Korea displayed a new nuclear-armed drone torpedo at the 2023 Victory Day Parade in Pyongyang. Although its official classification is unknown, the new weapon is likely a Haeil-class drone torpedo. The nuclear torpedo drone is approximately 52 feet long and 5 feet in diameter, has an estimated range of about 540 nautical miles, and can be fitted with a conventional or nuclear warhead. It could therefore be used against targets in both South Korea and Japan. ……………………………………………..

The nuclear-armed underwater drone can be used to attack coastal naval installations or cities with little or no warning, providing North Korea with a strategic nuclear weapons delivery option that is difficult to detect and defend against.

The Haeil-class drone torpedo is similar to (but smaller than) the Russian Poseidon, an intercontinental, nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed autonomous torpedo that was first revealed by the Russian Navy in 2015. The Poseidon (also known as Kanyon or Status 6) can reportedly operate at speeds of around 70-100 knots and at depths of around 3,300 feet, which means it can outrun and out dive any conventional torpedo……………………………………………………….

These drone torpedoes can be armed with up to a 100-megaton nuclear warhead, but their primary method of destruction is less about directly impacting targets. Instead, they focus on weaponizing the immediate aftereffects of nuclear detonations in the maritime environment. These nuclear torpedo drones are designed to trigger a radioactive tsunami-like ocean swell that destroys coastal cities and renders them uninhabitable, potentially resulting in large-scale displacement and millions of deaths. The legality of this concept of operations deserves closer scrutiny.

Legal Means and Methods of Warfare

Generally, the legal right of the belligerents to adopt means or methods of warfare during an international armed conflict is not unlimited (AP I, art. 35; HR, art. 22; Newport Manual, § 6.1). Specifically, a belligerent does not have the unlimited right to inflict superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering on the opposing belligerent (HR, art. 23; Newport Manual, § 6.1). Weapons law “regulates which weapons and means can lawfully be used during an armed conflict,” and is comprised on both customary international law and treaties (St. Petersburg Declaration; Newport Manual, § 6.2). The customary international law principle of distinction and the prohibition of unnecessary suffering regulate the legality of the means of warfare (Newport Manual, § 6.2). Weapons law is also codified in treaties, such as the Environmental Modification (ENMOD) Convention and Additional Protocol I (AP I) to the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Damage to the environment is a concern. AP I places restrictions on weapons that “are intended or may be expected to cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment (AP I, art. 35(3); Newport Manual, § 6.3).” AP I further provides that the belligerent shall take care “in warfare to protect the natural environment against widespread, long-term and severe damage,” which includes a prohibition of the “use of methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause such damage to the natural environment…” that prejudices the health or survival of the civilian population (AP I, art. 55(1); Newport Manual, § 6.3). The International Committee of the Red Cross interprets “long-term” to include damage over a period of decades (ICRC Commentary to AP I, ¶ 1453(c))……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Conclusion

Armed with multi-megaton nuclear warheads, these torpedo drones will be detonated along an adversary’s coast to create a powerful radioactive tsunami to destroy coastal cities and naval bases. Given that the concept of operations for these new weapons might unlawfully modify and weaponize the natural environment, both the North Korean Haeil and Russian Poseidon torpedo drones are likely unlawful weapons per se under the law of armed conflict.

The unleashing of environmental forces in such a manner is contrary to the law of war and likely violates the ENMOD Convention, which prohibits any method of warfare for changing—through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes—the dynamics, composition, or structure of the Earth (DoD Law of War Manual, §§ 6.10.1-6.10.2; FM 6-27, ¶¶ 2-139, 2-140). ………………………………………………………………………………………..

As parties to AP I and the ENMOD Convention, both North Korea and Russia have legal obligations not to use environmental techniques that are prohibited by the Convention, or to employ means or methods of warfare that can cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment. https://cimsec.org/radioactive-tsunamis-nuclear-torpedo-drones-and-their-legality-in-war/

September 5, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, oceans, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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