[News:] WikiLeaks ‘fundamental’ in documenting war crimes and human rights violations, court hears

(London, U.K.) A world-renowned human rights lawyer has outlined the role WikiLeaks has played in bringing forth evidence that highlighted war crimes and human rights violations.

Clive Stafford-Smith OBE, testifying at the second day of Julian Assange’s ongoing U.S. extradition proceedings, told the Old Bailey in London that the numerous files and cables published by WikiLeaks were “fundamental” in documenting assassinations, torture and secret renditions.

Among the revelations discussed in Tuesday’s proceedings (September 8), Stafford-Smith outlined how the WikiLeaks disclosure of documents relating to Afghanistan were key to the International Criminal Court’s recent decision to open an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by U.S. forces and the C.I.A in the region — an investigation that has recently been the centre of a growing controversy after the U.S. issued sanctions against high-level I.C.C. prosecutors as a means of punitive retribution.

Stafford-Smith – the founder of Reprieve, a British-based charity aimed at securing Habeas Corpus rights for Guantánamo Bay prisoners — also detailed how the WikiLeaks publications greatly helped the work of his organisation.

He outlined how — due to the abundance of challenges in investigating the cases of his clients — WikiLeaks helped him “fill in the gaps” and allowed him to secure the freedom of a number of indefinitely held prisoners, many of whom subjected to years of physical and psychological torture at the hands of U.S. authorities.

Reprieve has so far been able to secure the freedom of over 80 men illegally detained at Guantánamo Bay without charge or trial — more than any other non-governmental organisation.

Stafford-Smith, 61, also gave evidence of how the WikiLeaks files led to a number of High Court rulings in Pakistan in which it had been determined that the U.S. drone program in the country was “a blatant violation of basic human rights” and that the U.S. government was liable to compensation claims from victims’ families.

Cross-examining the witness for the prosecution on behalf of the U.S. government however, James Lewis QC claimed that the documents which Stafford-Smith referred to in his testimony were not the ones Assange was being indicted for.

He pointed to a statement provided by Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg in which it stated: “The only instances in which the superseding indictment charges Assange with the distribution of national security information to the public are explicitly limited to his distribution of documents classified up to the secret level containing the names of individuals in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world, who risked their safety and freedom by providing information to the United States and its allies.”

As pointed out by Assange’s lawyers however, the statement directly contradicts the U.S.’s indictment — even in its most recent iteration — where the WikiLeaks publisher is accused on multiple counts for solely obtaining and disseminating national security information, with no mention of whether they caused harm to military personnel and informants.

Lewis’s argument is further discredited by the fact that the U.S. government itself admits that there is no evidence anyone was ever harmed as a result of the documents released by WikiLeaks – a matter that was agreed in Chelsea Manning’s court martial in 2013.

The case continues.

Read Clive Stafford-Smith OBE’s witness statement in full: