Welcome to season three, episode nine of CN Live. Doctors warn Assange may not survive appeals process. I'm Elizabeth Voss. And I'm Joe Laurier, editor-in-chief of Consortium News. Doctors for Assange began writing to governments in late 2019, warning that imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Jolene Assange was in a fragile state of health and could die in prison. The doctors have repeatedly called for his release on urgent medical grounds. Since then, the medical experts who examined Assange testified in court to the seriousness of his medical condition. They explained that he would not survive oppressive prison conditions, and his extradition to the United States was denied on most grounds. The High Court in London subsequently stood by the medical findings and ruled that the medical evidence could not be challenged. Meanwhile, having won his case, Assange remains in the very conditions that caused and perpetuated his precarious state of health in the first place. With appeals set to drag on for years, unless Assange is released from prison, there is every reason to expect his condition to deteriorate, potentially dramatically so. And given this medical evidence that is openly on the table, Doctors for Assange warns that Jolene Assange may not survive the appeal process itself. The group, which includes over 250 medical professionals from 35 countries, penned an open letter to the Biden administration earlier this month, urging him to drop the Espionage Act charges against Assange. The authors asked the U.S. leader to halt the misguided prosecution initiated by the Trump administration before its dire consequences become Biden's responsibility. The letter comes as the leading witness for the prosecution, a diagnosed sociopath convicted of fraud, forgery, and child sex abuse, confessed to making false claims against Assange in exchange for illegal immunity, with the revelation that the indictment was fraudulent, the cases effectively collapsed. This is the latest in a long series of violations of judicial integrity associated with the prosecution of Assange, including illegal spying on him and the denial of his right to consult with his attorneys. According to the Doctors for Assange, the collapsible legal case against Jolene makes his continued arbitrary detention in a dangerous prison all the more reprehensible, underscoring the urgent need for Biden to drop the case now. On the same day the letter was sent, the U.K. High Court granted the U.S. limited permission to appeal to District Judge Vanessa Beretsis, January 4 decision to not extradite Assange on the grounds of his mental health and the condition of U.S. prisons, which combined put him at high risk of suicide. Crucially, the High Court, however, did not permit the U.S. to appeal the findings based on Assange's medical and psychological status and affirm Beretsis' decision regarding his clinical condition. The doctors noted that in light of this ruling, the U.S. Avenue for Appeal appeared limited. Specifically, the U.S. was refused by the High Court the right to appeal Beretsis' decision to accept the evidence of defense witness Michael Koppelman, Dr. Michael Koppelman, on Assange's medical condition. Astoundingly, the U.S. has now been granted the right to challenge the High Court's decision not to allow the U.S. to appeal that part of Beretsis' decision based on Koppelman's testimony regarding Assange's health. That challenge will be heard at the High Court on August 11. To discuss this, we're joined tonight by Dr. Bob Gill, writer and producer of the film The Great NHS Heist, by Professor William Hogan, MD, specialist in internal medicine, and a professor of myo-medical informatics, Dr. Lisa Johnson, a PhD clinical psychologist and writer in Australia, Dr. Jill Stein, MD, internist at Lexington, Massachusetts, a former instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a two-time U.S. presidential candidate, Dr. Derek Semefield, an honorary senior clinical lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College, University of London, he's a former chief psychiatrist at the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture, and by Dr. Sue Warren, OAM, Order of Australia, an MBBS general medical practitioner who's now retired. She's a co-founder of ICON, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. She comes to us from Australia. Our producer is Kathy Bogan. I'd like to invite you all to share your thoughts now individually for five to 10 minutes before we get into a general discussion. And, Lisa, I was going to start with you. Thanks, Elizabeth. Thanks for having us all on. Well, so coming on to talk today, I was thinking about that first letter we sent back in 2019 and thinking about what's changed since then and what's stayed the same. And a lot has changed, but a lot has also stayed the same. And I think the fact that so much can stay the same while so much changes really sort of speaks volumes in terms of where we're at at the moment. So, you know, just before we sent that first letter, we received a fair bit of pushback behind the scenes. We were told that we were practicing armchair medicine and being Twitter doctors and violating the Goldwater Rule. And we shouldn't do this. The Goldwater Rule is that you can't diagnose somebody you haven't examined yourself. But we stood firm and we said, well, look, we're not issuing any diagnoses. We're issuing a warning about foreseeable and predictable medical and psychological harm that can and should be expected to be occurring and to get worse as a result of the persecution and abuse that Julian Assange and medical neglect that he's experiencing. And, you know, it's based on information that was in the public domain. So, you know, one thing that's changed is that now, you know, the various medical and psychological harms that we were warning about have been described in court by doctors who have examined Julian Assange and it accords with what we were saying, you know, and it's sort of part of the point was that we hadn't, we didn't have any inside knowledge about Julian Assange's medical status, but it was just obvious based on what was happening that this is what could be expected. And sure enough, that's what we heard. And, you know, the court, as you've said, heard evidence about the seriousness of his medical condition to the extent that he would be very unlikely to survive extradition into brutal, oppressive prison conditions in the US. But despite all that one thing that stayed the same is that, of course, he was sent right back into the brutal prison conditions in the UK, you know, that contributed towards him being in that really dire state of psychological and physical health. And of course, another thing that's changed is that Julian Assange won his case, the US lost, but still he's in prison in, you know, the most punitive harsh prison conditions available in the UK that have been deemed arbitrary detention and torture and cruel in, you know, in human degrading treatment by the relevant UN authorities.  The world's leading human rights groups and press freedom groups have come out since we wrote the letter, really come out in force and unequivocally standing by Julian Assange and denouncing the extradition request. Still he's in prison. Since the US lost, politicians all around the world have appealed directly from across the political spectrum. I think recently the president of Mexico in several countries appealed directly to Biden to drop the charges, but still the US is pursuing Julian. And another thing that's changed, of course, is the US administration has changed. So these espionage charges that people have attributed to the Trump administration's hostility towards journalists stand under the Biden administration. So I think where that leaves us is in a situation where there's a long, slow, drawn out abuse of process and whether the US brutalizes Julian Assange by extraditing him or whether they brutalize him by keeping him in prison while they pursue endlessly pursue a case and cause appeals to go on for years, no matter how shamefully discredited their case becomes, both are dangerous. They're both dangerous for Julian Assange and they're both dangerous precedents. I mean, the extradition, of course, sets a dangerous precedent for free press and democratic rights and freedoms, but a long, slow public torturing of a journalist in public sets a torture precedent which is equally dangerous. Even the medical evidence that we now have, the longer this goes on, the more we can expect Julian Assange's health to deteriorate, the more dangerous that becomes, and then we become societies that torture journalists to death if that happens, which we can't come back from. So I think that's where we are now and those are the medical and democratic dangers that we're facing. Jill. A big thank you to everyone listening out there and to doctors for Assange and Consortium News, and I'll just add to the summaries that Lisa and Elizabeth have already stated, which I think are really wonderful. As I listen to Lisa's words, it reminds me of an article Chris Hedges just wrote, I think it's called the collective suicide of empire or something to that effect about how empires go down in a blaze of militarism, which goes hand in hand with human rights abuse. And I'm listening to Lisa describe the outrages of this case. I don't really understand how anyone who's informed about this can consider it anything but a complete mockery of justice, a kangaroo court. It's almost hard to listen to the legal discussion of this, which puts formal names on this as if it was a legitimate process, but it sort of violates basic human rights and judicial integrity and the assumptions that we live with as a democracy. So I just want to express, it would drive its victim to suicide, which is what psychological torture does, but I have to say it almost explains Chris Hedges title, the collective suicide of empire. It's such an inherently abusive process. To say it's infuriating or that it destroys the fabric of society is kind of an understatement. And I'll just mention one tangential fact. In the US, about half of Americans refuse to take the COVID vaccine. Our faith in our institutions has been utterly destroyed, even where our own lives are at risk. And to look at this case exemplifies that. So I'm just going to describe a little bit of what I find just especially shocking. And these are some of the facts that are hidden because, unfortunately, journalism is supposed to be the watchdog of governmental power, but in the US and so much of corporate media around the world, it's not the watchdog, it's the lapdog of authoritarian power. So we're not informed as citizens and members of society about this case in particular. And to my mind, this is really a poster child of what is wrong, the state of emergency that our democracy is in. We're in a state of emergency for the health of Julian Assange, but also for the health of our democracy. And to look at certainly press freedom, as Alyssa was saying, to have an eminent journalist, probably the most consequential publisher of our generation, and perhaps of a century, to have this publisher sitting in the dungeon of a COVID-infested high security dangerous prison tells you everything you need to know about what this means for press freedom. And the psychological torture aspects of this are just overwhelming. Consider stripping someone yourself, for example. Consider stripping you of your communications, your social connections, all of your rights, innocent till proven guilty, doesn't apply. All the rights that were established in the Bill of Rights for the United States, what were they established for as safeguards against authoritarian power, against arbitrary searches and seizures and arbitrary detention, all of that. I mean, every single right in the book has basically been stripped from Julian Assange.  He is the subject of an Orwellian prosecution that systematically has violated the rule of law and due process and is based on little to no facts. That's according to the UN rapporteur, Nils Melzer, who has studied the case very closely and who, as it happens, speaks four languages, including Swedish. So he is very familiar with the actual facts, or shall we say lack of facts in the case. Julian Assange has had his communications with his attorneys completely shut down, not to mention spied upon where they've managed to confer in the Ecuadorian embassy and has been consistently surveilled and essentially ensnared for prosecution and for extradition. And I want to just add the outrages of this sham of a legal case in which the both the CIA and the FBI have been implicated in constructing the situations intended to create crimes or violate his rights. But the point being that the security agencies have been very involved in this. And I'll just make two more points here because I don't want to go on too long. But when you think about the involvement of the security agencies, think about what Mike Pompeo, who was previously head of the CIA here in this country before becoming Secretary of State, his comment, I think, is more telling than any I have ever heard about our security agencies. And what he said was that, and this was a quote in a talk that he was giving at a university, I think it was Texas A&M in 2019. So it's not like this is forever long ago. This was pretty recent. And what he said was, at the CIA, you know, our motto is we don't lie, cheat or steal and, you know, something to that effect. He says, well, you know what, we lied, we cheated, we steal, we stole, and we had whole courses in it. And he giggled, you know. And I think this is probably the best summary of what's wrong with our security agencies, which are what one would expect in an empire whose purpose really is the acquisition of power, resources, and money for its elites, which is why empire's self-destruct, as Chris Hedges points out in his excellent article. But this is what you get. And these security agencies were involved both in the surveillance of Julian Assange with the installation of cameras into the embassy. But they were also involved, the FBI was involved in constructing crimes, basically, in engineering crimes in Iceland. And this has been shouted about by the interior minister of Iceland. There's an excellent panel that was done by Consortium News that included him and others, which was just mind boggling. And anyone who thinks that this case is not important, or that this case doesn't really represent a state of emergency in our democracy, let alone for Julian Assange, really ought to listen to that panel. It's really incredible. The FBI came to Iceland to frame Julian Assange. It really documents how the FBI essentially engineered crimes against Iceland and tried to use those crimes to implicate Julian Assange.  Any of these facts in and of themselves should have been enough in any real court of justice. They should have led to the outright dismissal of this case. I don't understand how the prosecution is not liable for some kind of malpractice, which is really destroying people's lives and destroying our society. To say that the case should be dismissed is the least of it. But this goes on. The recent exposure Alyssa described of the star witness whose character speaks volumes of the character of the prosecution.  This is the star witness whose testimony has now been shown to be fraudulent. And what is this case doing in court at all at this point? It is completely a sham and demonstrates that our legal system has been hijacked as well as human rights and press freedom being destroyed. But it's in a pretty sorry state of existence to start with that the press has been really missing in action and derelict of its responsibilities here in its failure to cover this case. So I think this is another case in which we the people we are all being disserved and the remnants of our democracy is being murdered in front of our eyes as well as this long term effective destruction of Julian Assange. It's a very important rallying point and I just want to give great thanks to people who are not sleepwalking through this or brain dead and who are actually mobilizing because this is a really important focal point for us to stand up, take our democracy back. It's been flawed to start with but that's no excuse for letting it be destroyed and mobilizing on behalf of Julian Assange. Thank you. Thank you, Derek. Well Jill said much but I would say just to reiterate the kind he's been standing on for two years on the one hand is our sense of it as a citizen, a citizen supposedly of Western liberal democracies witnessing the sort of implacable abuse by process and how far this has given us an angle on the soul of the state, the dark part of the beast it seems to me, in a way that it's absolutely shaming isn't it? What it says about what the governments of the US, the UK and Australia really feel about democracy, really feel about a free press is obviously something that we've seen unfolding. What they're concerned about of course is the threat of a good example, Snowden has holed up in Moscow, Manning was given a presidential pardon and they really want this one to stick it seems to me. So the words like oppressive and torture I must say as I've said before once the UN rapporteur Mel Sir when he first saw Assange two years ago he was unusually for a for a rapporteur forthright about psychological torture. I suppose I've interviewed hundreds of people who've been through these sort of experiences actually over the years in various settings. It's remarkable that Assange has been able to keep his head up in some way so far I'd say but I would certainly commend the conclusions drawn by Professor Cochran who's a distinguished London consultant neurosurface in London a former colleague of mine actually where not only was he talking about the risk but he seemed almost to be virtually predicting suicide or Julian Assange and I suppose that risk will continue whether if he continues in this sort of limbo in the UK as well as what would happen if he went to the US. We know already that US prisons have been held to violate the UN committee against torture by their internal conditions not the least prolonged solitary confinement. Here we're talking about a man who's had two-year solitary and high security businesses if he was a mass murderer as opposed to the others that he's illuminating being the mass murderers and several years in virtual solitary before that in an embassy. This is a kind of long drawn out hanging drawing and quartering. I don't think they would mind if you committed suicide perhaps in some ways. The main thing is to to avert the threat of a good example. As people say this has always been a political matter and additionally ominous thing is the way that the mainstream newspapers including the London Guardian are supposedly left of centre party who published some of the Assange material and now have dropped him comprehensively they've been touched up by secret services I no doubt and who is on his side he has a legal team he has our kind of movement but he is terribly alone facing the state isn't it and yet to me he is what a cutting-edge citizen actually is in this age a purveyor of truths demonstrating how governments lie to us how they they commit atrocities against foreigners with impunity.  Thank you. Thank you very much. Sue. Thank you. Thanks Elizabeth. I'm representing medical association for prevention of war and I really I can't do much more than to confirm the concerns that have been expressed by others all of us here and especially the health professionals at this real travesty of justice and and what's a deliberate infliction of suffering and that's just anathema to the health health professionals so a man with severely degraded mental health subject to prolonged solitary confinement the court knows that his mental health is ailing there's not as has been pointed out there's not even a date set for any any hearings so there's a prospect of year of this dragging on for years and years and I guess what we do know is that unless Julian Assange is released from prison then his medical condition will is almost certain to deteriorate deteriorate further and there's certainly amounts to cruel inhuman and degrading treatment as as we have stated there's no way that Julian's mental health could be adequately addressed when he remains in the same situation the very situation that has inflicted this torture on him in the first place over some years and there's no way that he should be sent to the oppressive conditions in US prisons so we're really looking at multiple failings of due process which have all been documented and we really can't come to any other conclusion other than the legal system has been totally manipulated to punish a man who's been in prison for years he's been convicted of nothing and he's suffering severely as a result so so the the US is overseeing the torture of a man whose publications expose their own crimes and for that he is being published and punished and of course the UK is complicit in this and my own country Australia Julian's country our government has failed him most disgracefully and monumentally I do want to thank the Australian parliamentarians who've spoken out with parliamentarians for other countries and it's extremely important that they've done that and I will just note that they've been from not just from the opposition party but from both of our two major parties and also the Greens the third biggest party and also a number of independents so really from right across the political spectrum in Australia Julian has received support the implications of this case for for journalism and for freedom of the press have been pointed and they are extremely serious as Jill and others have said to us the fact that a journalist can be punished for exposing the lies of his own government it's pretty hard to overstate how serious this is for our right to know about what what is done in our name so MAPW stands in solidarity with all of you with all of Julian's supporters doctors for Assange and others were appalled by his treatment and we urge President Biden at President Biden to finally bring this travesty to an end by dropping these charges and we call on the Australian government to finally find a voice and to speak up for one of their own citizens Julian Assange who's shown more courage than most of us will ever see this case is political it's storted and it's degrading for any country that talks about the rule of law and freedom of the press so thank you thank you very much uh William yeah I want to bring back the medical aspect of this and some of the medical facts so like Lisa says these are not our medical assessments our medical conclusions or our medical diagnoses these are the assessments conclusions diagnoses prognoses of our colleagues who are have extensive expertise in these areas the first expert I want to highlight is Dr. Sandra Crosby who evaluated Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy and wrote a letter to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights about her concerns and her concerns were that what's happening to Julian even before he's evicted from the embassy is a violation of the convention against torture she stated that directly Dr. Crosby has extensive expertise a world-renowned expert in the assessment of torture victims and working with refugees her credentials are impeccable she supplied the Istanbul protocol which is the standard international medical protocol and legal protocol for assessing victims of torture 500 times so she's done this over and over and over again and when she assessed Julian her conclusions were so concerning that she directly invoked the convention against torture and a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that letter led to the UN special repitour on torture Dr. Niels Meltzer who's been mentioned before a legal expert to visit Julian by the time he was supposed to visit Julian in the embassy but due to the abuses and legal manipulations and foreign affairs abuses between the United States Ecuador and the UK they evicted him from the embassy before Meltzer could get there that was deliberate that was on purpose they did not want Meltzer to visit him in the embassy before they had the chance to violate international law and evict him but Dr. Meltzer visited Assange in Belmarsh prison in May of 2019 with two medical experts one of whom is a colleague of a member of doctors for Assange also experts in the assessment of victims of torture also experts in the application of the Istanbul protocol all three individuals the two medical experts in the UN special repitour examined and assessed Julian independently and all three independently conferred and came to the same conclusion before they conferred that this was psychological torture so we have four experts definitively saying that Julian Assange is a victim of psychological torture it's an undisputed medical fact and legal fact that Julian Assange is being psychologically tortured it's no expert in the assessment of torture victims in the Istanbul protocol has ever reached a different conclusion and the conclusion is overwhelming Dr. Meltzer has said that the that Julian shows all the signs of psychological torture so this is an undisputed medical fact recording in progress that this is this is going on but the special repitour wrote to all four countries engaged in this legal frame up the United States the United Kingdom Sweden and Ecuador and they all respond that in the same manner as the worst totalitarian abusive nations and governments in the world which is they didn't respond or they responded oh we don't torture they did not engage in a dialogue and under international law when the special repitour has a finding of torture the country is obligated under the convention of torture that is sufficient evidence to initiate an investigation no none of those four countries has started an investigation into this episode with Assange and his torture the the the expert in Assange's extradition hearing on which the judge relied mostly was Dr. Michael Koppelman as has been mentioned the reason she favored Dr. Koppelman was he had assessed Assange on more occasions and more points in time and for longer durations than any other expert he also unlike the other experts interviewed Assange's family and acquaintances and he came to the unequivocal conclusion that Assange is severely depressed and at significant risk for suicide and would likely commit suicide if extradited the other medical experts in the case did not evaluate Assange for as long or for over as protracted a period and the other thing Dr. Koppelman did that impressed the judge was he took extensive contemporaneous notes about his discussions and relied on those notes hundreds of I think pages of notes which he summarized at the extradition hearing so Assange has multiple risk factors for suicide including he's on the autism spectrum he has a family history and he has severe depression due to all of the legal abuses that we've been discussing the torture has now had an added physical component I might add where we heard this past winter that the prison refused to deliver Assange's warm clothes so he was freezing cold this is a well-known torture tactic to expose the tainies to extreme cold conditions this has happened to bantatomo tainies as well documented including I might add a quick plug for the movie the Mauritanian if everybody wants to understand that America my country I'm ashamed to admit the United States is a torturing country we torture and that's been well documented and we're doing it in the case of Assange as well and then you know just another medical aspect to this that gets overshadowed perhaps rightly so it's just the the invasion of medical privacy so there was the CIA spied on Assange in the embassy through a company called UC global that's now being criminally investigated in Spain for its illegal actions at what it did to Assange and his visitors in the Ecuadorian embassy they film recorded his visits and audio recorded his visits with doctors that's a protest violation of doctor patient privacy we object to that we decry that we call that out America you're reprehensible for doing that as well as a American citizen you kind of have this some some understanding of the international condemnation of our criminal justice system especially with the death penalty typically but for this case to have in part come down to refusing Assange's extradition because US prison conditions are so reprehensible and objectionable to the conscience of the world is also stunning to me personally as American and lastly if you are a healthcare professional especially a medical professional out there or a psychologist watching this today join us join doctors for Assange add your voice to the chorus we need you we need more voices we need people to object to this treatment and we need people to object to torture and I know I said that was finally do have one more thing to say and then I'll wrap up is that Nils Meltzer has written the introduction to an impressive volume that I took the time to read front to back called interrogation and torture and there's a chapter in there written but every chapter is written by a different author that describes how torture erodes the very foundations of democracy and justice and the rule of law and so the more we torture the more our democracy crumbles and so this case of Assange is literally eating away at the foundations of our society thank you Bob hi thank you for inviting me to take part in this very important discussion a lot has already been said about the detail about Assange's current predicament there can be no doubt in people who followed followed his persecution that what we are witnessing is the state and the secret services of several countries colluding against the most important journalist of our time and I'm afraid this is part of a wider authoritarian drift we're seeing in the states and I'm also seeing unfold in the UK there are talks of reforms to the policing and crime bill in this country which will threaten to decriminalize you know criminal acts conducted by the police in the security services there are efforts to vote to suppress in this country we're taking more and more leaves out of the American political playbook and you know we're we're currently coming out of a pandemic where our own prime minister has been quoted as saying let the bodies pile high and a former chief medical officer estimates a hundred thousand excess deaths preventable deaths as a result of the catastrophic handling of a pandemic yet the state imprisons a truth teller the state in prison is the most important person who held up a mirror to these states that have conducted wars of aggression resource grabs killing a million Iraqis and Julian Assange and wiki leaks and others like him have shown that the democracy we are sold is largely a charade and this is becoming more and more obvious the longer that the Julian Assange torture continues and now we have the the total discrediting of their chief witness who you know is a proven proven fraudster as has been said earlier now this should if there was never a point before now this is certainly the point at which a credible government like the Biden administration projects itself to be should be dropping the case so you know the facts in favor of Julian Assange are overwhelming I think it's important for us as our group and other groups to continue as our efforts in in publicizing his treatment his despicable treatment in a maximum security prison and and building building allies is good to see politicians in Australia being more vocal about his treatment is good to see people in the alternative media I can think of one great example Jimmy Dore in America who's highlighted the plight of Julian Assange and I share the share the sentiment that every doctor should be joining doctors for Assange to increase the momentum of our of our voice up the power of our voice and you know from in terms of how it was never more important to have truth spoken in a democracy well now is the time in the UK there is legislation in parliament at the moment which will render our national health service a copy of the US dysfunctional managed care system and there is next to no appreciation of what's going on in our parliament by the public and this is the importance of journalism journalism is there to expose what the government is up to in an understandable way to the public so we can see what our leaders are doing in our name and without the important work of unfettered journalism that can carry out its function without fear of being imprisoned which should be a basic demand and a basic right then democracy is dead and our work in this group and others who are supporting us is very important it's a protective factor for Julian's mental health to know there are people fighting for him Stella Morris has been doing great work is it's also good Julian has his children to see growing up although you know the contact is extremely limited these are all protective factors knowing there are people fighting for him and knowing that the fight is getting bigger and stronger day by day thank you thank you Bob for that your article on the NHS that we published has gotten enormous readership so I thank you for that and I thank Jill for pointing out that show we had it was called Assange on the Brink it was a couple of weeks ago we had Chris and happens in the editor of WikiLeaks the former interior minister of Iceland the journalist who wrote the story and our own analyst John Kiriakou on prisons and Alexander McCuris on the legal aspects of it Vanessa Baraitse was a district judge that on January 4th decided to deny the U.S. extradition request she did that on two grounds on the health grounds what you've been speaking about and on the condition of U.S. prisons when the U.S. applied for appeal the High Court granted it only on the grounds of the U.S. prisons they said the U.S. could not challenge the findings on Assange's health now the U.S. made an offer that they would send them to Australia if you were convicted and that they wouldn't put them in a SAMS in a super max prison in the U.S. but of course if he did something they would it was based on that offer that the High Court allowed the U.S. to appeal this case so I find very disturbing but now even more so this is what I want to ask everyone is that the U.S. is appealing the decision by the High Court not to allow any discussion or appeal of the health issues and the U.S. was granted on August 11th a hearing in London to do that has anyone ever heard on this panel of a medical testimony and it's basically Michael Coblin's testimony that was the basis as we heard of Baraitse's decision and the U.S. is saying they want to appeal that when High Court said you couldn't so they are trying to appeal against the decision of the High Court has anybody ever heard of expert testimony being challenged like that in a way that an appeals court already said you can't appeal this and the U.S. says yes we can we want to to try to appeal that I find this is a really disturbing development on August 11th will be this hearing I don't know if anyone wants to weigh in please so I'll take a stab at it no I've never heard of it obviously not in the U.K. or legal expert but the grounds on which they would like to discredit compliment is because he protected the anonymity of Assange's fiance Stella Morris in his testimony and the only thing he did was talk about her as two different people not conclusively stating that she was the same person so compliment acknowledged Stella as part of Julian's legal team beginning I think in about 2011 and 2012 and then he also alluded to her as his mother of his children and a support that he had particularly in the context of the bail application in March and 2019 that parades are denied and then as part of that bail application that's why Stella was made public because the judge demanded it so that's the grounds in which they want to try and discredit compliment is that he implied only implied that Stella was two different people when she's the same person and that's the entire basis on which they want to try and challenge compliment now the prosecution psychiatrist also has a bigger and more serious issue of credibility and that he denied the existence of a particular report that the defense immediately submitted before the court proving thereby its existence and undermining the credibility of the prosecution psychiatrist so it's like the most absurd and shakiest the grounds at which they're going after compliment and if I could just add to that I think it was one of consortium news is legal analysts commenting about the case who said in the first place new evidence is not supposed to be introduced so the whole you know the whole argument well the prison system isn't so bad let's look at the prison system in the US and it has you know aspects that are you know kinder and gentler and you know we'll just put Assange into that wing of the prison system you know which is preposterous and really isn't an offer that they even made because the prosecution asserted that it would be able to change Assange's status in prison at the blink of an eye without any reviewer accountability so it was really a non-offer that contained a retraction within it so it was bogus in the first place but it shouldn't have been allowed as new evidence so the very you know at its core the appeal is illegitimate in the same way that this whole case is illegitimate at every step outrageous are you know are present that are really grounds for dismissal you know the fact that that the whole evidence for the prosecution to start with has crumbled with the admission by the star witness that he was lying which shouldn't have been a surprise in the first place I mean how ridiculous is it to have a you know a diagnosed sociopath which means and recurrent liar you know at the core of your case is like a joke this case is complete mockery of our system of justice and this was the first I had heard when you mentioned Joe that actually there is a hearing based on the review of his medical system it just adds you know outrage upon outrage here in this case and you know I think this this becomes a really important point you know for us to turn up the volume here as doctors for Assange because you know that's sort of the area of expertise that you know many on this panel had just commented on and you know I as one who's just you know I'm a garden variety doctor you know I'm a general internist by training and by profession although I'm not you know I'm not an active clinical doctor as of recently but I have instincts of a doctor and spent decades practicing medicine and you know I'm not an expert in torture but I found what I was witnessing with Assange which looked like a whole litany of medical conditions that you know medical and mental health conditions that were really putting him at grave risk it was really agonizing to watch this as a human being let alone as someone in the health profession is absolutely outrageous and you know I think it's important for us to be heard and Doctors for Assange I think has a really important role in you know in the coming week or two to help get this message out and I can't thank Consortium News enough for providing a platform to help us you know not only get the word out but even to hear each other because I find it extremely empowering to hear kind of the affirmation of our common humanity here and I think society as a whole is really begging to hear this right now as much as we are experiencing an authoritarian drift you know you can also see evidence all over the place that people don't like this one bit you know in the U.S. you can look at all sorts of polling including the incredible disrepute that the public holds our press in you know our press which is completely negligent on this issue and the needs of everyday people you know completely missed you know the the crash of Wall Street and you know the accountability of those who caused it you know the weapons of mass destruction you name it on every major item the press has either been missing in action or totally got it wrong because they are a lapdog not a watchdog unfortunately in its current corporatized state so you know just to make the point we have a role to play here and I think it resonates enormously with deeply felt public need right now. I was just going to add on that question Joe about picking up on what Bill and Jill have been talking about the question about the challenging of the medical evidence and I was thinking you know that's really an extension of this abuse by process and the arbitrariness which is part of the torture all the way along you know the U.S. has gotten away with throwing due process and even laws out the window you know they're extra trying to extradite him under the Spanish Act the U.S. law but they're not providing the protections of the first amendment you know they want to extradite him under the U.S. extradition act but they want to abide by the conditions of the UK extradition act it's this sort of Frankenstein's monster pieced together different bits of legislation and none of it makes sense none of it's predictable it's arbitrary and that's part of the torture that you know Julian Assange can't know what to expect can't plan his defense in any kind of reasonable way because goodness knows what could happen and the UK will say yes you know even in the conflicts of interest and the the judge that's overseeing the judge who's in the courtroom etc and the other thing about it is dehumanization has been a big part of it dehumanizing Julian and saying well you don't have a right to have a doctor who has an opinion about your health you don't have the right to the human right to health which is one thing we're standing up for here you know of course it's obvious to anyone looking that he's not well and he's suffering of course he would be suffering he's been in isolation for years and it's in the same vein that the whole case has been run as you were saying Julian and that itself I think it's the abuse and the torture that's ongoing now that's going to continue to cause the deterioration as these trials are um so um you know that's um it's to be expected but it's also to be as you say be denounced and decried yeah it really does speak to the desperation of the Biden administration to keep this case going by trying to challenge now the medical issues I mean the Biden when he was vice president said that we can only really prosecute Assange if we can prove he participated in the stealing of U.S. government documents now that has collapsed because this witness we've seen from Iceland has made up all of this and he's admitted he made it all up so they have nothing left and still the Biden administration continues to try to get this man and to the point where they're now challenging the High Court's decision not to allow them to appeal the medical side of this it's just so desperate I just wanted to make that comment that Elizabeth sure yeah and earlier one of I guess mentioned the press and I wanted to ask you all as a part of doctors for Assange have you gotten any mainstream press coverage that you can describe for us how has it been if it's been there are you just been you know blacklisted and not covered at all well Alyssa might be the best person to answer this she's our press expert but I think the biggest amount of coverage we got in the press was in November of 2019 after the first letters started going out that's actually when I joined since then it seems to have trailed off and now like none of us has been invited on any kind of BBC or MSNBC or Fox News or anything like that whatsoever it's a complete blackout almost yeah that's true in terms of the TV coverage and it seems to vary letter to letter so you know the first letter yes it was huge coverage which was took me by surprise it was very good surprise and you know things that were very unexpected happened like there's a story in the Guardian in the morning that it went out it was the most red story on the Guardian even though it seemed like they had kind of tried to bury it it was difficult to find it but in the morning it was the most red story which said that to me that there was a lot more support and interest in Julian Assange's case than a lot of people claim but you know mainstream outlets in the US and UK and then since then you know some letters like the letter to the Australian government got a fair bit of coverage and I have to say in Australia we get quite often get almost saturation coverage in the local regionals our press release will go out and they'll pick it up so every little paper in every town all around Australia will run the story and that happened with the letter to Biden um I mean we got picked up here in there so um we do get coverage and we do get mainstream coverage um off and on you know it's it's a bit hard to predict um the Lancet that it's got coverage it's it's hard to tell what drives it but my sense is when when something is happening with a trial and it's not in the US interest for there to be coverage that seems to be when we don't get it I don't know if that you know if that's me reading something in but that does appear to be a bit of a pattern I'll just comment also if I could as Lisa was saying our mainstream media in in Australia are not good so the coverage here isn't anything like um what this issue warrants but on social media it's a different story and we do get good interest from social media and more so with the issue of Julian Assange and some other issues that our MAPW organization of health professionals uh works on so there's certainly interest there but it's our mainstream media that are letting us down you mentioned the letter to Biden that you all wrote recently and I wanted to just emphasize that again because I think it was a really I mean very well written letter it had made a lot of really important points um so if any of you would like to discuss a few of those and just give a brief rundown of what you will send to the Biden administration that would be wonderful because obviously we didn't hear a lot about it in the media as you might expect I could say a few things about that um yeah so our main message you know was to tell President Biden that he needed to to drop this case uh immediately really a case that he had inherited from Donald Trump and just reminding people that um Barack Obama had tried to pursue this and discovered the so-called New York Times problem that you couldn't hold Julian Assange accountable uh for publishing this material revealing war crimes torture and corruption because then you would have to hold the New York Times and other mainstream newspapers accountable as well so they backed off and did not pursue the extradition but um Trump did and so Biden was basically inheriting Trump's case and his failure to disavow it and then to proceed to actively pursue it for through the um the appeal of the extradition decision for example you know it was a really dangerous thing and that Biden needed to drop it before its disastrous consequences become his personal responsibility and you know I think we are there now what's happening is Joe Biden's personal responsibility he is the driver of this right now and then we wanted to point out how this would um you know this is an assault on press freedom it's an assault on human rights and um uh and on the integrity of our judicial system so you know that was our main concern I don't know if others want to add to that but you know we were really trying to call attention to this that this is now you're doing and you need to really fully understand what the dire consequences of this are um you know now what they're trying to overturn the health decision as well it becomes you know even more an active assault on the on the part of the Biden administration and just one comment on the side which is that you know in terms of the attention it's very hard you know getting the attention of the press on something that's not trivial you know uh the press loves to cover you know little softball human interest stories you know I'm speaking of the corporate media here and um you know not things that really challenge it or challenge the state of the US empire so it's you know it's a difficult um sell from the get go but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it you know or that we just limit ourselves to the window dressing here you know I think we have to bear witness and the American public you know at the seat of the empire is not a fan of our media and it's just a question of when you know when is this breakthrough uh going to happen chris hedges you know describes how in the stasi state um in east germany that uh he was uh either there or nearby at the time so he was following this on the ground and described how the proponents of democracy thought a breakthrough was just not on the horizon you know maybe a decade off and then suddenly you know the mobilization just hit critical mass and you know it's like when occupy wall street broke out and you know things like that you don't know when these things are going to happen and I think it's really important for us to continue bearing witness there's a lot going on right now you know between you know the assault on human rights and this is and uh really our civil liberties which are under attack on you know on all fronts as um bob gill you know was mentioning with these uh laws that are sort of permitting greater militarization of police and so on you know which of course is happening in this country too um there's certainly an all-out assault on our on our um civil liberties you know we have the pandemic which is resurgent and not under control you know globally and puts us all at risk and the climate you know is absolutely um you know exploding right now you know so we sort of have multi-system failure going on here is like the patient is on life support you know is like every system every sort of social system is really experiencing kind of a meltdown right now which I find chris hedges article that sort of reviews the history of empires seventy empires and how they fall you know we are clearly at the teetering stage and you know and it's really important for us to be you know to sort of think big here because this problem doesn't get solved we are not going to solve the issue of the you know growing authoritarianism and the assault on human rights and civil liberties uh we're not going to solve that um outside of the bigger problem and you know so I think it's really important for us to seek you know alliances and um you know a broader uh movement really for for democracy and human rights you know and and peace because it's fundamentally you know I find the concept of empire very unifying right now in terms of you know how these struggles are are interrelated and you know how we sort of need a bigger system change in order to fix them at the same time that we continue you know looking for pressure points within the system that we're that we're working in and you know I think right now that the health aspects of this case are under review it's a really important time for us to just keep hitting on this and you know maybe we can strategize afterwards particularly uh as Sue was saying on um you know on social media there may be ways that um you know we can seek broader coverage right now as doctors for Assange because this is sort of our area and it would be um you know I think empowering for people to hear this perspective and I actually I have a question for Joe do you have any idea what the time frame of this hearing or maybe Elizabeth um you know what what's the time frame of this hearing that's opening I think you said the 11th of August is this a a one day affair is this open-ended is this expected to go on weeks what's you know what and I also have to say it's just like unthinkable why is that being reviewed and not not the testimony of the witness who just confessed that that it was all made up why is that not under review I mean this the whole thing is just it makes a democracy of our system of justice it's it's outrageous but yeah how long how long and I think that's an important point for us to make here you know uh and sort of an overarching point as we make the you know medical um uh case clearer uh but how long will this go on Joe do you have any idea uh or Elizabeth I have no idea Joe I would imagine a one-day hearing but I really don't know but it's August 11th we'll have to keep stay tuned we're going to have an article from our legal expert uh Alexander McCruss coming in a day or two so he may explain that yeah just finishing that I think this is a really important point for us to um you know put our heads together uh as doctors for Assange I mean this I think this really calls for a another kind of press offensive you know and a press release I hate to you know load more work on people but I think this is really kind of time critical yeah and this whole situation with this hearing that you're discussing is uh it brings up the the indefinite kind of nature of this process and we've you all have spoken about the way in which this could drag on and drag on and so we talk about the um torturous and inhumane conditions that he would face in the United States but if any of you would like to just comment a little bit further get into a little bit more depth about the inhumane conditions he's facing right now and the psychological effect of not knowing when this will actually reach a conclusion yes with respect to that uh we heard um again public facts from Stella uh his fiance that he is in mental turmoil uh was I think an exact quote um due to COVID restrictions he went eight mount months from roughly September to April or May with no visits in-person visits from her and their two boys that did finally happen I think in June um you know his calls are restricted we've read about how you know he gets 10 minute calls and in exactly 600 seconds the call is abruptly cut off and shut down immediately and the special rapporteur did identify the cause of his psychological torture as the legal persecution uh combined the four supposedly western democratic enlightened civilized nations the United States the UK Ecuador and Sweden so the whole legal process is the root cause of the torture the torture goes on the torture is not ending the arbitrariness of it is a huge aspect of the torture and the key component of it and here we go one more time you know we were all told and reassured that the High Court denied the US appeal on the basis of Dr. Koppelman you know trying to exclude Dr. Koppelman's testimony or derogated or undermined it in any way and now just I think it was yesterday or the day before this August 11th hearing comes up and the High Court is going to let the United States Joe Biden his government Merrick Garland's DOJ through their UK solicitors make a run at Koppelman again and it's arbitrary it's like what's going on why is that allowed how can that possibly be and Koppelman's evidence is solid you know it's really unassailable and the judge was absolutely right to rely on it no other expert who testified had anywhere near the level of interaction with Assange's family his acquaintances at the various critical time points along the way you know like any patient he fluctuates so the prosecution psychiatrist spent four hours with Assange spread over two visits when Assange you know was doing relatively well compared to other points where he was doing much worse the prosecution psychiatrist Nigel Blackwood had a really grotesquely incomplete picture of Assange's health whereas Koppelman had the complete view so the arbitrariness of this is frustrating to us all but it's torturing Assange I would add to that absolutely agree with all of that Bill and you know in terms of suicide risk to key risk factors for suicide hopelessness and helplessness and the longer this drags on and there's no sense of anything that Julian or his team does really having effect even when he wins his case he's still in Belmarsh even when there's solid medical evidence that can be challenged you know you could expect hopelessness to be increasing in helplessness not you know when you do it's open-ended you don't know when it's going to end you don't know what you can do to defend yourself and that that would certainly increase suicide risk and not knowing how long something's going on not having something tangible to work towards you know you know if you think about being tormented being terrified having your life on the line being helpless being isolated you know every moment can feel like an eternity an hour can feel like a week a day can feel like a month the prospect of that going on in an unending way can become really unbearable is all things that we can sort of imagine and relate to when you're somewhere where you don't have stimulation you don't have you don't have human contact you know in a meaningful ongoing way and it's not hard really to imagine how corrosive that can and will be to his mental state and his suicide risk in the UK I don't know if you want to add anything Derek with your with your background no just endorse what you say that the interminability of it that helps is you know is real I mean I do think there's a realistic possibility this guy will end up dead and I think the states that have persecuted him won't be entirely unhappy it will be a disposal of a certain kind we have to do everything we can but the interminability is staggering things I don't know whether the fact that the the chief witness has been shown to be a liar or has recanted does that give the legal team any further options only if they do a cross appeal in other words to appeal the parts of Barat's decision which agreed with everything the US said everything they said on post amendment on the computer intrusion charge she agreed with everything that the US said she only denied the extradition based on the medical condition and the condition of US prisons so that all depends on whether they want to cross appeal the other parts of that we don't know whether they will or not yeah I see I'd like to welcome you all to share any last thoughts before we sign off if you'd like to if there's anything you feel we haven't covered that you'd like to add I have one more and that's the fact that in rereading the judge's decision to deny extradition to the United States it strongly implied if not outright stated that the mere decision itself to extradite to the United States is highly likely to trigger a suicide and also the US prison conditions you know the US assurances about special administrative measures which are unconscionable and not putting them in 80x Florence doesn't mean he won't be in solitary confinement the use of solitary confinement inappropriate and torturous use of solitary confinement is rampant throughout US federal prisons and a lot of state prisons too so and then the other thing is the US has given this assurance in the past and violated it so Abu Hamza the in the extradition hearing there was testimony from his defense attorney that they the judge was assured oh he's so medically unhealthy he couldn't you know they would never put him in special administrative measures well as soon as he got to the US they put him in special administration measures and as far as I know he's still there so the US has no reliability on keeping these kinds of promises it's not worth the paper it's printed on or the electrons it's transmitted at her photons it's admitted over it's completely unreliable assurance and is probably irrelevant to boot because the decision itself to extradite is what is also high risk for triggering suicide and I just want to add briefly that you know I feel like Julian Assange is a very important you know I say this in part for him as if we could talk to him but I'm also just saying it for myself you know I feel like this case is a really important rallying point and I hope that you know as Bob Gill was saying before that you know it is you know it's a source of hope perhaps to Julian Assange that people are rallying around him and I think it's really important for him to know how important he is you know I think this is you know true of other whistleblowers as well you know but especially in the case of Julian Assange because there's so much that this case is a microcosm of and he is such a focal point for our not just resistance but for our rallying and for our you know efforts to transform our internal disease you know in the US empire we are our democracy is extremely sick right now and so everything else is very sick this case represents a confluence of so much of that you know that sickness in our basic you know our civil liberties the fact that we're an empire at eternal war you know using over 50% of our discretionary budget to destroy the world to destroy democracies you know the fact that we have 68 regime change initiatives to our credit you know the US empire since the Second World War you know 100 military bases we have special operations troops in 149 countries you know if there has ever been a history an empire in the history of the world we are it and we represent all the dangers of the globalization of empire it's a very disastrous thing and you know not to make this so big but there's an awful lot that's wrapped in that up in Julian Assange's case it's not only about civil liberties it very much is about perpetual war and empire and holding government accountable you can't have a democracy and have an empire you know we have to choose which are we and you know Julian Assange and the fight for Assange is really a fight for our democracy and for our future so if you hear us Julian Assange or if you if a report of this ever gets back to you we need you you know we really need you to hang in there for us so that we can mobilize ourselves and rescue our future we are all imperiled by this you're a symbol really of you know of our our reclaiming our democracy so we all need to hang in there especially Julian Assange thank you so much I think that's a great point to leave off on and I'd like to thank the time spent by all of our guests here including Dr Bob Gill Dr Lisa Johnson Dr Jill Stein Dr Derek Summerfield Professor William Hogan and Dr Sue Ware and my co-host of course a consortium news editor Joe Lauria as well as our executive producer Kathy Bogan for CN Live I'm Elizabeth Boss and thank you again everyone for watching if you are a consumer of independent news in the first place you should be going to is consortium news and please do try to support them when you can it doesn't have its articles behind a paywall it's free for everyone it's one of the best news sites out there and it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades I hope that with the public's continuing support of consortium news it will continue for a very long time to come thank you so much