Former SCANA nuclear executive pleads guilty to fraud
Former SC utility CEO pleads guilty to nuclear plant fraud
The utility executive who spent billions of dollars on two South Carolina nuclear plants that never generated a single watt of power pleaded guilty in two courts, By MICHELLE LIU Associated Press/Report for America, 25 February 2021, COLUMBIA, S.C. — The utility executive who spent billions of dollars on two South Carolina nuclear plants that never generated a single watt of power pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges Wednesday.
Former SCANA Corp. CEO Kevin Marsh will likely spend two years in prison and pay $5 million back to ratepayers, per the plea agreement prosecutors presented to U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis in Columbia.
Marsh’s formal acknowledgement of his role in the conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud comes more than three years after the project imploded publicly and federal and state agencies began investigating.
Marsh, 65, will be free on bond as he cooperates with federal authorities until he is formally sentenced. He headed to Spartanburg in the afternoon to plead guilty on a state charge tied to the investigation. Officials said he will serve any state sentence he receives concurrently with his federal sentence.
A judge will hand down the final sentence after the investigation concludes. Prosecutors haven’t given indication of when that might be.
Marsh and other executives insisted the project to build the two reactors at the V.C. Summer site north of Columbia was on track ever since it started in 2008. The company hiked rates on customers nine times between 2009 and 2017 to help fund the project.
Prosecutors said that as the project lagged, Marsh lied repeatedly to investors, regulators and the media, claiming the reactors would be making power by a 2020 deadline to get $1.4 billion in federal tax credits needed to keep the $10 billion project from overwhelming SCANA and its subsidiary, South Carolina Electric & Gas.
An independent report commissioned by SCANA in 2015 estimated the reactors would not be finished in 22 years. Executives fought to get the estimate removed from the copy of the report shared with state-owned utility Santee Cooper, which held a 45% stake in the new reactors, prosecutors said.
Santee Cooper ended up $4 billion in debt from the project. Lawmakers are still arguing over whether to sell or reorganize the utility.
Dominion Energy of Virginia bought out SCANA in 2019 after the former Fortune 500 company was crippled by the nuclear debacle.
In December, the Securities and Exchange Commission said both SCANA and its subsidiary agreed to settle a civil lawsuit filed by the SEC in February for $137.5 million, including a $25 million civil penalty.
Former SCANA Executive Vice President Stephen Byrne pleaded guilty to federal charges similar to Marsh’s in July. He is also awaiting sentencing. AT TOPhttps://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/sc-utility-executive-plead-guilty-courts-76084865
New nuclear build for South Africa would face legal stumbling blocks
Court is likely to regard decision to pursue a plant as irrational, regulator told at public hearing, 23 FEBRUARY 2021 –
Any decision to pursue a 2,500MW nuclear build will likely be seen as irrational and unreasonable if tested in court, the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) heard on Tuesday. Should the regulator be given the green light for a nuclear build, it would lead to “severe legal complications”, Anton van Dalsen, legal counsellor for the Helen Suzman Foundation, warned Nersa… … (subscribers only) https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2021-02-23-nersa-warned-nod-for-nuclear-build-would-face-legal-stumbling-blocks/
Bulgaria prosecutes former energy ministers over mismanagement of Belene nuclear power project
Intellinews 13th Feb 2021, Bulgaria’s prosecution has filed charges against former energy ministers Rumen Ovcharov and Petar Dimitrov over mismanagement that led to a loss of around BGN500mn (€250mn) related to the project to build the Belene nuclear power plant, the Anticorruption Fund NGO said in a statement on February 12.
There was no official statement from the prosecution, but the NGO has published a photo of the documents. The accusations against the two former ministers and two former executive directors of the state-owned National Electricity Company (NEC), Mardik Papazyan and Lyubomir Velkov, were raised back in 2016 when the prosecution launched an investigation. It
claims the two former ministers failed to exercise sufficient control over the executive directors of NEK when they allowed them to sign a deal with Atomstroyexport on the nuclear power plant at Belene.
U.S. Dept of Justice gets the resignation of attorney who launched Ohio nuclear corruption probe
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U.S. Attorney Who Launched Ohio Nuclear Bailout Bribery Probe Resigns https://radio.wosu.org/post/us-attorney-who-launched-ohio-nuclear-bailout-bribery-probe-resigns#stream/0
By JO INGLES The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio has submitted his resignation. David DeVillers is one of 56 U.S. Attorneys appointed by former President Trump asked to resign by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice.
DeVillers said in a written statement that he had hoped to stay on as U.S. Attorney until his successor was appointed. He urged the next U.S. Attorney to be just, apolitical, aggressive and impactful. “It is with a heavy heart that I announced my resignation,” DeVillers wrote. “I have been a prosecutor for my entire career, and it was my wish to remain a prosecutor until the end of my career, but that is not to be.” DeVillers, who was appointed by Trump in 2019 to replace outgoing U.S. Attorney Benjamin Glassman, was heading up several high-profile cases throughout the state. He made a splash last summer by announced racketeering charges against five individuals, including then-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, accusing them of funneling $60 million in bribes from a utility company in exchange for securing the passage of a nuclear bailout law. So far, two defendants and the dark money group Generation Now have pleaded guilty in the $60 million conspiracy. Householder has pleaded not guilty and remains in the Ohio legislature after winning reelection in November. DeVillers last year announced corruption cases against three current and former members of Cincinnati City Council, who are accused of taking bribes in exchange for favorable votes on development projects. One, Tamaya Dennard, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to honest wire fraud. And in Columbus, DeVillers was coordinating the federal criminal and civil rights investigation into the killing of Casey Goodson Jr. by a Franklin County Sheriff’s Deputy, and another civil rights probe of the killing of Andre Hill by a since-fired Columbus Police officer. “While it was my hope to continue on for a few more months to finish some of the work we have started, I am absolutely certain that the AUSAs and investigators working for the people of the Southern District of Ohio will bring this work to a successful and just closure,” DeVillers said. The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, Justin Herdman, resigned last month. |
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Court orders Tokyo Electric Power Company pay ¥600 million to 271 plaintiffs
Japan Times 10th Feb 2021, A court has ordered Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to pay a total of some ¥600 million to 271 plaintiffs over an evacuation caused by
the 2011 nuclear disaster. The Iwaki branch of Fukushima District Court
reached its conclusion Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by 297 plaintiffs —
which included residents of the heavily affected Yamakiya district in the
town of Kawamata who were ordered to evacuate — seeking ¥14.7 billion in
damages from Tepco.
The plaintiff side expressed its intention to appeal to
a higher court. The suit is the second in a series filed by evacuees who
left their homes due to the triple meltdown at Tepco’s Fukushima No. 1
nuclear power plant triggered by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The
plaintiffs excluded the state from the suit as it hoped to achieve an early
resolution.
Australian uranium mining company threatens Spanish government with legal action
Miner threatens Spain over uranium ban, Cosmo Sanderson, 01 February 2021
Use of illegal workers at France’s Flamanville nuclear site.
Mediapart 14th Jan 2021, After having exhausted all possible remedies, Bouygues is definitively convicted of having used on a large scale undeclared employees on the site of the EPR of Flamanville (Manche).
In a judgment delivered Tuesday, January 12, the Court of Cassation rejected the requests of the
French public works giant and two of its satellites. Through them, Bouygueshad illegally employed at least 460 Romanian and Polish workers between 2008 and 2012, on this site of the new generation reactor, essential for EDF (owner of the site) and Areva (which ensures the construction).
Acrimed 29th Jan 2021
https://www.acrimed.org/EPR-de-Flamanville-la-condamnation-de-Bouygues
Tokyo High Court holds TEPCO responsible for Fukushima nuclear crisis
No wonder that the global nuclear industry is hellbent on nationalising itself – so that the taxpayer is responsible. Nobody will want to invest in private nuclear companies after this.
High court denies government responsibility for Fukushima nuclear crisis, Japan Times, 22 Jan 21, The Tokyo High Court on Thursday ordered the operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to pay damages to evacuated residents, but it overturned an earlier ruling by Maebashi District Court that had also acknowledged the central government’s responsibility over the 2011 nuclear crisis.
Among around 30 such lawsuits across the country, the decision of the Tokyo High Court was the first high court ruling absolving the state of responsibility, contradicting an earlier decision of the Sendai High Court in September that ordered both the state and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to pay damages.
The government’s failure to instruct Tepco to take measures against tsunamis “is not found to be significantly unreasonable,” Presiding Judge Akira Adachi said in handing down the ruling.
The lawsuit focused on the reliability of an official long-term quake assessment made in 2002, which has been used in previous rulings to determine the liability of the state and Tepco for their failure to prevent the nuclear disaster.
Adachi noted the assessment had caused a debate since its release, and that the government was unable to predict a huge tsunami.
Implementing measures such as constructing seawalls would not have prevented the tide from entering the nuclear plant, he added.
Thursday’s ruling instead ordered Tepco to pay a total ¥119.72 million to 90 plaintiffs, more than triple the amount awarded in the lower court ruling. ………..https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/01/21/national/crime-legal/government-denies-fukushima-responsibility/
A view from the law: The Danger Of Sole Presidential Authority Over Nuclear Weapons
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The Gold Code Standard Revisited: The Danger Of Sole Presidential Authority Over Nuclear Weapons Jurist, Kevin Govern, JANUARY 19, 2021
Kevin Govern, a Professor of Law at Ave Maria School of Law, analyses the sole Presidential authority over nuclear weapons vis-a-vis the Trump administration and military intervention…
On January 8, 2021, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took the extraordinary step of publicly revealing she had talked with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, about “available precautions for preventing an unstable President from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.” Milley reportedly issued a statement saying he “answered [Speaker Pelosi’s] questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority.” Four days later, The House of Representatives voted 223-205 to formally call on Vice President Mike Pence to use the 25th Amendment to strip President Trump of his powers after he incited a mob that attacked the Capitol. With the Vice President’s refusal, impeachment proceedings went forward in the House on January 13, 2021, with a vote of 232-197, to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection” in only the fourth presidential impeachment in US history, and the first time a President has been impeached twice. Continue reading |
Profound questions raised by the employment tribunal case; bullying at Sellafield nuclear site?

Byline Times 15th Jan 2021, An employment tribunal case that has been running for more than two yearshas started to raise profound questions over management at Europe’s
largest nuclear reprocessing plant, the ability of the employment tribunal
system to defend the rights of whistleblowers, ethical conduct by major law firms, and a conflict of interest at the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The case of McDermott versus Sellafield, the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority and former Sellafield HR director Heather Roberts
has been brought under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 – also
known as the Whistleblowers’ Act. Alison McDermott, an HR professional
and diversity specialist, claims that the sudden termination of her
freelance contract in October 2018 by Sellafield was linked to her
protected disclosures containing evidence of systemic bullying, and racist
and sexist incidents at the Sellafield site in Cumbria.
Amid ongoing lawsuits about nuclear corruption, Ohio regulators will stall the nuclear bailout law
Ohio regulators set to officially pause nuclear bailout fees created through tainted energy bill https://www.cleveland.com/open/2021/01/ohio-regulators-set-to-officially-pause-nuclear-bailout-fees-created-through-tainted-energy-bill.html Jan 11, 2021 By Andrew J. Tobias, cleveland.com
COLUMBUS, Ohio — State regulators have ordered a pause on the $170 million in annual new fees created through the controversial House Bill 6, following a judge’s recent ruling in a lawsuit brought by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and officials in Cincinnati and Columbus. The Ohio Air Quality Development Authority will formally suspend the charges, $150 million of which would bail out two financially troubled Ohio nuclear plants owned by a former FirstEnergy subsidiary, during a scheduled meeting on Tuesday, the agency’s executive director wrote in a recent letter to officials with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. As part of the same official process, the PUCO on Dec. 30 acted to prevent the new fee from going into effect while the legal challenge continues. Both agencies cited a Dec. 21 ruling from a Franklin County judge who, ruling on the lawsuit from Yost and two Ohio cities, ordered the fees be blocked from going into effect. The fees, worth more than $1 billion to the nuclear plants, were to have appeared on Ohioans’ power bills starting on Jan. 1.
But the pause could remain in place at least until a March 5 hearing in the Franklin County case, according to a PUCO spokesman.
Yost and the local officials sued over the law after federal investigators said it was the product of an elaborate corruption scheme financed by FirstEnergy and its affiliates that led to the arrest of former House Speaker Larry Householder and others last July. Prosecutors have said in exchange for $61 million, spent to help Householder become speaker and on a political campaign supporting the law, Householder agreed to push the bill through the legislature. FirstEnergy, based in Akron, hasn’t been charged or officially accused of wrongdoing. Householder has pleaded not guilty to a federal corruption charge, but two associates who helped pass House Bill 6, Jeff Longstreth and Juan Cespedes, have pleaded guilty to participating in the scheme.
The fees will remain blocked even though the Ohio Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a different HB6 legal challenge filed by the Ohio Manufacturers Association, a business group. The Supreme Court previously ordered the fees paused while it considered OMA’s arguments. The OMA had asked permission to drop its challenge, saying the issue was moot since the PUCO had agreed to pause the nuclear subsidies in response to the Franklin County case.
DeWine and state legislative leaders have called for House Bill 6 to be repealed or at least, revisited. But state lawmakers failed to do so during their lame duck session in December, since House members were unable to agree on what specific action to take. The law’s future remains unclear, with legislators expected to reconvene in the coming weeks.
Numerous HB6-related state and federal investigations, including from the FBI and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, are ongoing, as are numerous lawsuits.
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According to experts, the U.S. military cannot legally prevent Trump’s accessto nuclear codes
The Military Can’t Legally Curb a President’s Access to Nuclear Codes, Experts Say https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/01/08/military-cant-legally-curb-presidents-access-nuclear-codes-experts-say.html 8 Jan 2021 By Gina Harkins and Oriana Pawlyk
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley Friday morning to discuss what she described as necessary precautions to prevent an “unhinged” president from accessing nuclear codes. But experts and officials said there’s no place in the system for the military — or Congress — to intervene in a sitting president’s access to the nuclear arsenal. The situation of this unhinged president could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, said Friday in a circulated letter. She and dozens of other lawmakers — mostly Democrats — have called for President Donald Trump’s removal from office following Wednesday’s violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol by the commander in chief’s supporters. Milley’s office confirmed that the call took place. “Speaker Pelosi initiated a call with the Chairman,” said Army Col. Dave Butler, Milley’s spokesman. “He answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority.” Pelosi said Friday that Trump should not be allowed to initiate “military hostilities or [access] the launch codes [to order] a nuclear strike.” CNN reported that, after her call with Milley, Pelosi told her caucus she received assurances about safeguards should Trump decide to launch a nuclear weapon. It’s unclear what those assurances would have been since, as the Congressional Research Service wrote last month, “The President does not need the concurrence of either his military advisors or the U.S. Congress to order the launch of nuclear weapons. “In addition, neither the military nor Congress can overrule these orders,” a December report titled “Defense Primer: Command and Control of Nuclear Forces” states. Ankit Panda, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s nuclear policy program, also noted that, short of removing Trump from office, there’s no legal remedy that Milley or Pelosi can take to prevent the president from issuing a valid and legal order to use nuclear weapons. “It’s how we designed the system,” he wrote Friday. “We could change it, of course. … If there’s a way in which the American presidency is effectively monarchical and absolute, it’s this one.” Officials with U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, which oversees nuclear weapons, referred questions from Military.com about Pelosi’s call to Milley back to the Pentagon. Adm. Charles “Chas” Richard, the head of STRATCOM, told reporters this week that he would not recommend changes to the system the U.S. has had in place for decades. He would, however, decline to follow illegal orders to deploy a nuclear weapon, Richard added. “I will follow any legal order that I’m given — I will not follow any illegal orders,” he said. “And if you go much further, if I were to say anything else, we’re starting to call in civilian control of the military, which I think is a prized American attribute.” Ultimately, he said, who has the authority to carry out a nuclear strike is “a political question.” “I’m prepared to execute whatever the political leadership of this nation would like to do,” he said. In the event of preparing for a nuclear strike, the president consults with military and civilian advisers. Advisers have the ability to push back on an order they believe does not meet stipulations outlined under the laws of armed conflict, or LOAC, according to the Congressional Research Service. During a Senate hearing in 2017, Robert Kehler, a retired Air Force general who previously served as the commander of STRATCOM, testified before lawmakers that military members can refuse what they deem to be an “illegal” order, but added, “Only the president of the United States can order the employment of U.S. nuclear weapons.” Kehler pointed out that the process is not automatic. “This is a system controlled by human beings,” he said, according to a report from CNN. The process “includes assessment, review and consultation between the president and key civilian and military leaders, followed by transmission and implementation of any presidential decision by the forces themselves.” Aside from nuclear weapon authorities, Milley’s role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs also, by law, falls outside of the chain of command. The role of the chairman is to serve as the president’s top military adviser. Several experts on civilian-military relations also noted Friday that if Pelosi and other politicians are concerned about Trump posing a security risk, they should find a political solution — not a military one. Pelosi and other lawmakers have said they will move ahead with impeachment proceedings if the vice president and Cabinet members do not invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. Richard Sisk contributed to this report. — Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. |
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Judge’s refusal to extradite Julian Assange is still part of cowardly process to deny freedom of information
The personal conveniently distracts from the political in the Assange story, https://www.theage.com.au/national/the-personal-conveniently-distracts-from-the-political-in-the-assange-story-20210107-p56siu.html
Elizabeth Farrelly Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s refusal to extradite Julian Assange for “mental health” reasons may look humanitarian but is in fact a deft political move. In reducing what should be an argument of law and principle to a test of personality, Baraitser managed at a blow to impugn Assange’s stability, repudiate any suggestion of innocence and open the door for America to prove the comforts of its solitary confinement and thereby win his extradition.
It’s a story of many twists and turns but underlying it throughout is a profound and widespread moral cowardice.
Baraitser’s 132-page ruling found that although the UK-US Extradition Treaty of 2003 specifically prohibits extradition for “political offence”, this provision never became law in the UK and therefore has no effect. In essence, the treaty is worthless.
The court also supported all 18 of the espionage charges against Assange, arguing that WikiLeaks’ hacking and publication “would amount to” offences in English law. Baraitser identified eight charges under the UK Official Secrets Act that would be, she said, equivalent.
Interestingly, this “would have” construction does not apply to the treaty question. Had Assange engaged in the same conduct in America, targeting British government information, he could not have been extradited because America’s “monist” system regards any treaty as law once signed. So it’s ironic that undermining this particular protection is a key US argument.
Anyone who saw the 2019 docudrama Official Secrets, chronicling the leakage by GCHQ analyst-turned-whistleblower Katharine Gun of information on US-UK dirty dealing in drumming up UN support for the Iraq war, will understand just how murky and terrifying such prosecutions can become.
This fear, and the persistent cowardice of yielding to it, is the theme of Assange’s story. I’ve written about Assange several times. I visited him in Ecuador’s embassy. Yet each time, I’ve found myself reluctant.
Seven years ago, when I met him, Assange was ebullient and hopeful, even funny. Now, as Baraitser says, he is “a depressed and sometimes despairing man who is genuinely fearful about his future”. Assange, she said, was at “high risk of serious depression leading to suicide if he were to be extradited and placed in solitary confinement for a long period”.
Baraitser noted the “bleak” conditions of Assange’s likely US confinement would include “severely restrictive detention conditions designed to remove physical contact and reduce social interaction and contact with the outside world to a bare minimum”, with family limited to one supervised 15-minute phone call a month. Detailing Assange’s mental state, she opined that his risk of suicide, in such conditions, was “very high”. This is the loophole she offers the appellant US prosecutor.
Those fears – his of 175 years in solitary (honestly, who wouldn’t top themselves?) and hers of his suicide – underpin her judgment. But there are other, more insidious fears at play here.
Such fears, I see now, feed my reluctance to revisit the Assange story: fear, in particular, of confronting the terrifying truth about our imperial system. Regardless of Assange’s innocence or guilt, the simple facts of what our controlling powers can do to you if you step out of line are terrifying.
But this small, individual fear also operates, very effectively, at nation level.
From the start, the case against Assange has contrived to turn issues of principle into questions of personality. The initial Swedish rape charges, since dropped for lack of evidence as the witness’s recollections after so long were clouded, were extremely personal, spinning off the cancellation of his credit cards upon his arrival in Stockholm, forcing him to accept hospitality; the seductions, the sex – which everyone agrees was consensual – his failure to wear a condom although asked and reluctance to take an STD test. Then the left turned against him because of the Clinton leaks – which one suspects would have been fine, had they been directed at the other side – and perceptions about Assange’s ego. He was vain, it was said, and narcissistic. As if that itself were a crime, reason enough to let him rot in solitary.
The personal and emotive nature of all this – the Swedish prosecutor’s refusal to interview him in London, Britain’s willingness to imprison him for a year on bail charges, America’s determination to prosecute him for exposing their war crimes (in the Iraq War Logs of October 2010 and the film Collateral Murder showing air crew shooting unarmed civilians from a helicopter) and the description of WikiLeaks by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as “a hostile non-state intelligence service” – all suggest a bigger picture, and smaller values, than mere truth or justice.
It’s often said that Assange endangered the lives of US informers but, as Baraitser notes, no causality has been shown. Even the Senate Committee on Armed Service said, “the review to date has not revealed any sensitive sources and methods compromised by disclosure”. It is said that Assange, by dumping hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, gave us Trump. But if she was engaged in skulduggery as alleged, wasn’t it better for the world to make its own judgment?
When you look coldly at the facts it’s hard not to suspect that Sweden was coerced into the original charges and that Britain and Ecuador have been similarly pressured. Certainly Australia’s persistent refusal to intervene for Assange, an Australian citizen who has broken no Australian law, suggests a similar abject timidity in the face of US might.
That’s the fear that guys like Assange and Edward Snowden make us confront. And it’s why they deserve, at the very least, a fair and open trial.
Assange denied bail after extradition blocked, will appeal to UK High Court
Assange denied bail after extradition blocked, will appeal to UK High Court, WSW
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser handed down the decision Wednesday in Westminster Magistrates Court, after ruling on Monday against Assange’s extradition to the United States on mental health grounds. Assange will remain in custody until the prosecution’s appeal of that ruling is heard.
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson announced afterwards that Assange’s legal team would be taking the bail decision to the High Court.
Baraitser’s refusal to grant bail confirms that her decision not to extradite was motivated by political considerations and not any genuine concern for Assange’s health. Assange will be kept in conditions which have had a grave impact on his mental health, during a massive escalation of the UK’s COVID-19 epidemic.
Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald Tuesday, Nick Vamos, former head of special crime and head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service, indicated that the appeal process would likely take two to three months.
In her decision, Baraitser accepted the prosecution’s insistence that Assange’s flight into the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012—after a UK court had granted him bail in connection with Sweden’s trumped-up sexual assault investigation and extradition request—was proof of his willingness to abscond in the future. This is an absurd and vindictive position……..
Assange now has a court ruling in his favour. He is, regardless, prepared to submit to stringent bail conditions amounting to effective house arrest with a GPS tag—conditions which have allowed terror suspects to receive bail. His experience of claiming asylum in an embassy has proved it “unpleasant”, in Fitzgerald’s words, and led “to him being effectively confined for some seven years” before having his asylum revoked. “That is not something that he is ever likely to repeat.”
Assange also now has a family, a partner and two children, in the UK. Besides being a reason for Assange not to abscond, Fitzgerald argued, his family provides significant human rights grounds for his release on bail. On account of COVID-19 restrictions in the prison, Assange “hasn’t seen his family in person since March 2020”. He has never been able to live with them, having spent 15 months held on remand pending his extradition hearing.
Assange’s family, Fitzgerald noted, is highly relevant to the question of his mental and physical wellbeing. “The grant of bail”, he said, “would allow actual physical contact with his family, that would… alleviate mental distress”.
Baraitser had acknowledged the benefit of his family’s support to Assange in her ruling on extradition, which described him as a “depressed and sometimes despairing man, who is genuinely fearful about his future.”
Bail would also “considerably reduce” the risk of Assange’s exposure to COVID-19. Fitzgerald pointed to the “severe outbreak” of the virus suffered by Belmarsh Prison recently and said there had been 59 positive cases prior to Christmas. He added, “on any view, the position [the state of the UK’s epidemic] is worse now and, on any view, he would be safer isolating with his family than if he was in Belmarsh.”
Baraitser dismissed these concerns, declaring “this prison is managing prisoners’ health during this pandemic in an appropriate and responsible manner.”………. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/07/assa-j01.html?pk_campaign=assange-newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
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