[News:] U.S. prosecution team has wilfully lied to the courts, Assange lawyers say

(London, U.K.) Prosecutors on behalf of the United States government have wilfully lied and misled the courts, lawyers for Julian Assange have asserted.

On the second day of a historic press freedom case where the U.S. is seeking extradition of Assange from Britain in order to face espionage charges that could see him handed down a sentence of 175 years imprisonment, lawyers for the WikiLeaks publisher accused the prosecution of knowingly misrepresenting the facts in order to secure the desired verdict.

Representing Assange on behalf of Matrix Chambers, Mark Summers QC told Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday (February 25) that purely on evidence that was already in the public domain, it was “patently clear” that the judge was being misled.

“You can accurately describe this chapter of the case as lies, lies and more lies,” Summers told District Judge Vanessa Baraitser.

Assange is wanted in the United States on 17 charges relating to the 1917 Espionage Act, with an additional charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The charges relate to documents provided to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley) which included the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, the U.S. military’s Iraq rules of engagement in addition to files relating to Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

During the previous day’s hearings, the U.S. prosecution team, led by James Lewis QC, argued that Assange put the lives of U.S. military informants at risk by publishing 250,000 unredacted military cables. It was also argued that Assange “aided and abetted” Manning in stealing the confidential information and was a co-conspirator for soliciting the leaks.

On Tuesday however, Summers outlined to the court how Assange had taken extreme care to not publish harmful information, working with a handful of prominent media publications and the U.S. State Department over a nine-month period to remove the names of informants who could be at risk.

He relayed publicly available information that the unredacted version of the cables was only made available after a former Guardian journalist involved in the redaction process published the encrypted password as the chapter title of a book.

Both The Guardian and David Leigh, the journalist in question, issued statements to deflect the blame after the hearing.

Summers also outlined how Assange had contacted officials within the White House and the U.S. State Department within 20 minutes of becoming aware of the unredacted files, in addition to “begging” Freitag, the German news outlet which had discovered the password, to not publicise the information.

The barrister, relying on undisputed evidence from Manning’s 2013 court martial, also described how it was impossible to conclude that Assange helped the former army intelligence analyst in leaking the documents because Manning already had access to all the necessary files.

It also transpired that the password hash which Assange is accused of trying to help Manning crack — unsuccessfully, even by the U.S. prosecution’s version of events — was not related with the files that WikiLeaks had received, but to aid soldiers in bypassing system administrators on army-issued computers so that they could download music, movies and video games.

Summarising his statements, Summers told the court: “It is difficult to conceive of a clearer example where the prosecution has so boldly and brazenly misconstrued the facts in an extradition hearing.”

He pointed to three examples in case law — most notably Castillo vs. Kingdom of Spain — where precedent gave the judge the ability to determine a more accurate picture of the facts in the case when the court has been severely misled. The new facts can then be used to determine whether dual criminality exists, a requirement of extradition.

Lewis dismissed the allegations of deception, telling the court: “What he [Summers] is trying to do is consistently put up a straw man and then knock it down.”

The case continues.