Niall McCrae: Controversial Judge Presides Over Assange Extradition Case

Guest post by Niall McCrae

Fighting against extradition to the US on eighteen charges of espionage, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is unlikely to get a fair trial. It would not be too cynical to suggest that the judgment has been decided already, with the proceedings at Woolwich Crown Court merely a façade of justice. Prominent Labour figure John McDonnell described this debacle as the ‘Dreyfus case of our era’ (Alfred Dreyfus was a French army captain who was falsely convicted in 1904 of passing military secrets to the Germans, a decision tainted by anti-Semitism). This really is a scandal.

The judge, Lady Emma Arbuthnot, is a gilded member of the British liberal-progressive establishment. She has frequently protected the privileged and powerful from scrutiny by lesser mortals, her judgments weaponising the law for censorship and preservation of the social class hierarchy. Significantly, she has failed to declare a major conflict of interest in presiding over Assange’s case, which could lead to a death penalty.

In 2019, Assange was arrested after spending seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy, and immediately he faced an extradition order by the US authorities. Lady Arbuthnot, Chief Magistrate for England & Wales, took on the case. As World Socialist website remarked, Lady Arbuthnot ‘is flouting fundamental legal principles to ensure that she presides over a show trial against Assange’.

Lady Arbuthnot’s husband, Lord James Arbuthnot, is closely connected with the British armed forces and security services. Now a Conservative member of the House of Lords, Lord Arbuthnot was previously a MP in the House of Commons. From 2005 to 2014 he chaired the Defence Select Committee, a body that oversaw military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Lord Arbuthnot sits on the advisory boards of defence manufacturer Thales and the Royal United Services Institute for Defence & Security Studies. As a director at security and intelligence consultancy firm SC Strategy, he worked for two years with fellow directors Lord Carlile, who promoted the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (‘Snoopers’ Charter’) giving state access to internet records without a warrant, and Sir John Scarlett, who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee and was responsible for the ‘dodgy dossier’ on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Lord Arbuthnot was mentioned in over 50 entries in the WikiLeaks exposure, which also made almost 2000 references to Thales and over 400 to the RUSI.

Assange’s legal team and United Nations rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer have argued that due to this conflict of interest Lady Arbuthnot should recuse herself from the case. The Guide to Judicial Conduct states: –

‘Where a close member of a judge’s family is politically active, the judge needs to bear in mind the possibility that, in some proceedings, that political activity might raise concerns about the judge’s own impartiality and detachment from the political process and should act accordingly.’

According to World Socialist, ‘her husband’s entire political life has been dedicated to crushing the sort of transparency and accountability advocated by WikiLeaks’.

After his arrest in 2019, Assange was tried for skipping bail at Westminster Magistrate’s Court. Assange’s lawyer Liam Walker presented the defence of reasonable excuse, arguing that chief magistrate Lady Arbuthnot, who had previously dealt with the case, was biased against him due to the activities of her husband. District judge Michael Snow responded: –

‘This is grossly unfair and improper to do it just to ruin the reputation of a senior and able judge in front of the press. He has chosen not to give evidence, he has chosen to make assertions about a senior judge not having the courage to place himself before the court for the purpose of cross-examination. Those assertions made through counsel are not evidence as a matter of law. I find they are not capable of amounting to a reasonable excuse.’

The judge branded Assange ‘a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests’ and sentenced him to 12 months in prison.

As when activist Tommy Robinson was taken thrown straight into jail in 2018 for filming child rape gang convicts arriving for sentencing at Leeds Crown Court, the mainstream media are very reluctant to report on this apparent abuse of the criminal justice system. When they can be bothered writing anything, they vilify Assange, just as they vilified Tommy and his supporters. Have they received orders from the authorities? A few brave websites are doing the job that the likes of the BBC, Guardian and Daily Mail have shamefully shirked.

The Daily Maverick has persevered, presenting further evidence that Lady Arbuthnot is compromised: –

‘Lady Emma Arbuthnot was appointed Chief Magistrate in Westminster on the advice of a Conservative government minister with whom she had attended a secretive meeting organised by one of these Foreign Office partner organisations two years before. Liz Truss, then Justice Secretary, ‘advised’ the Queen to appoint Lady Arbuthnot in October 2016. Two years before, Truss – who is now Trade Secretary – and Lady Arbuthnot both attended an off-the-record two-day meeting in Bilbao, Spain. The expenses were covered by an organisation called Tertulias, chaired by Lady Arbuthnot’s husband.’

Lady Arbuthnot refuses to do the right thing. Yet in 2018, she was obliged to stand down from a case against Uber taxis after it was revealed that her husband had a business interest in company through SC Strategy. According to a judicial spokesman: –

‘As soon as this link was pointed out to her, she assigned the case to a fellow judge. It is essential that judges not only are, but are seen to be, absolutely impartial.’

However, Lady Arbuthnot has form in flouting the rules against conflict of interest. She denied knowing Soubry, but her husband certainly does, sitting with Soubry in the House of Commons and also in their previous legal careers. In December last year she harshly jailed Brexit supporter Amy Dalla Mura for verbal harassment of MP Anna Soubry (a trenchant Remainer who referred to Leave campaigners as fascists). On conviction Dalla Mura was barred from visiting the parliamentary constituency where she was standing (against Soubry) in the general election. As free speech campaigner Andrew Tettenborn described,

‘The comments made by chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot in the case are alarming. Having started by saying that this was not a freedom-of-speech case – always a surefire indication that free speech really is at stake – Arbuthnot went on to refer to Dalla Mura’s activities as ‘intimidation’ (which they were not).’

Lady Arbuthnot compared Dalla Mura’s verbal expression to the 2016 murder of MP Jo Cox by a madman. Accusing Dalla Mura of damaging democracy, she asserted that ‘MPs should be able to do their jobs without putting up with harassment’. Making an example of Dalla Mura by imprisoning her for a month, Lady Arbuthnot declared: –

‘You insulted her by calling her a traitor among other things. This behaviour against elected representatives carrying out their duties will not be tolerated by this court.’

As Tettenborn remarked, this means that insults against politicians are now criminal acts. But this wasn’t the first time that Lady Arbuthnot had put Brexiteers in their place. Earlier in 2019 she gave a suspended sentence to James Goddard, for called Soubry a ‘Nazi’ and a ‘traitor’. According to Lady Arbuthnot, ‘vulnerable’ Soubry had shown ‘great courage’. Goddard, leader of a burgeoning ‘yellow vest’ movement in support of Tommy Robinson and Brexit, was banned from visiting Westminster area for five years.

This is the judge who could effectively condemn Assange to the electric chair. It’s the ‘deep state’ in action, and the silence from politicians is deafening. However, patriot and London mayoral candidate David Kurten told the inconvenient truth: –

‘Julian Assange is a political prisoner.’

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