00:00 Dawson's Deputy General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists.
00:03 Tim, thank you for being with us here on France 24. We appreciate your time.
00:07 What's your take on today's hearing in London?
00:09 Well, we didn't really learn very much new. We heard arguments that were made during the
00:17 five weeks of the extradition hearing, I suppose you'd say repackaged and represented
00:23 in the hope that they would gain more traction this time. In particular, Edward Fitzgerald
00:29 spoke at some length about the issues surrounding whether one can be extradited from the UK to the
00:37 US for a political crime. It's fairly well exercised that it says on the front page of
00:42 the extradition treaty between the UK and the US that you can't be extradited on political grounds.
00:50 Assange's legal team argue that his crimes are undoubtedly political. The Americans,
00:56 on the other hand, during the hearing who persuaded the judge in the first round,
01:02 made the case that the extradition treaty is just that, it's a treaty between governments,
01:07 not something that has been approved by the legislature. And they said that citizen rights
01:14 can only be created by an act of parliament, not by a treaty. The argument that Assange's team were
01:21 making today was that in fact there have been many treaties, some ratified by parliament going
01:27 back over centuries, that contain this protection. Indeed, their claim is that it's an almost
01:32 standard feature of extradition treaties that they have this caveat that you can't be extradited on
01:39 political grounds. So clearly, they are hoping that that will persuade the two judges that there
01:44 are matters here that are worth re-examining. Your correspondent is right also that they revisited
01:50 the stories of the CIA plot to kill or kidnap Julian Assange, which are really, I mean, quite,
01:56 quite shocking stories. And I mean, it's worth remembering that they were originally researched
02:03 by Yahoo, its news division, and they found 30 CIA, retired CIA operatives who corroborated some
02:11 or all of their story, which I must say, I thought at the time was an extraordinary number of sources
02:17 to have for a story. I've written many stories with far fewer than 30. So, I mean, it was
02:22 essentially an attempt to represent arguments we've heard before, but I thought they made a
02:28 strong case today. In terms of what would happen were Julian Assange to be extradited to the United
02:36 States, Tim, do you feel he could face a fair trial over there? The prison term they're talking about
02:41 is 175 years, which sounds baroque, but clearly it's an idea of what he would be facing were he
02:49 to cross the Atlantic Ocean and face trial there. Well, yes, there is, I mean, there is the potential
02:57 sentence. And actually, I mean, I know that you hear this figure bandied about all of the time.
03:02 There is effectively a manual in the United States penal arrangements that explains how
03:09 each crime is tallied up. And we had this explained to us during the original
03:13 extradition hearings. And it's really rather chilling. I mean, as people will know, there
03:18 are 18 charges under the Espionage Act, 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one other.
03:23 And for each crime, you know, he would get five years and then there's a kind of five,
03:27 10 years, whatever. And then there's an extra portion added because it's political, an extra
03:32 portion added because it's national security, an extra portion added because he's considered
03:36 to be a flight risk. So yes, the prospect of a for the rest of your life sentence by European
03:43 standards seems like something from medieval ages and hard to, you know, think that that
03:51 is reasonable punishment, even if you think that Julian Assange has done the worst things.
03:55 There are other concerns about a fair trial, though, because it would be heard in Virginia,
04:00 in an area which is known to be the home for a great many senior American military families and
04:05 and security service families. And very few trials of this kind that have been heard in those courts
04:13 have acquitted in national security cases. So I think there's a fairly strong case for saying
04:18 that's an area of concern. And also, don't forget, there is extensive evidence that Assange's
04:25 meetings with his lawyers were bugged while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy on the borders of the
04:30 CIA. So in many instances, that alone, I think, would compromise the ability to have a fair trial.
04:38 So certainly, if he is extradited, I would be feeling his prospects look very bleak, indeed,
04:44 quite apart from the very real health concerns that we heard about today.
04:49 Indeed, his health concerns. Benny DiPavio, a correspondent,
04:52 saying that he wasn't well. Do you have any further insight on that?
04:57 Well, I don't, only to say that he has been present, I'm pretty sure, for every session up
05:03 till now, or if he's missed one or two, it is really only that. And there have been weeks and
05:08 weeks of proceedings. So I can't imagine that he missed those sessions lightly. I know that he
05:15 broke a rib during a coughing fit around Christmas, which is a pretty extreme reaction to a coughing
05:21 fit. And a couple of people I've spoken with who visited him recently, you know, who are not part
05:26 of his inner circle, told me that they had concerns about his seeming distracted and
05:32 taking a long time to answer questions. One colleague said that she saw him not long before
05:40 Christmas, and whenever she put something to him, there was quite a long silence after her question.
05:46 And whether that was his wariness or his sort of disassociation, she couldn't say for certain,
05:51 but it didn't seem like the reactions of a healthy man. Indeed, Tim, on a more general level,
05:56 there are obviously journalists facing challenges in different countries where the rules, the laws,
06:03 the constitutions of those countries, the approach of the government's, authoritarian or not,
06:07 has a different take on what a journalist should and shouldn't do. You and I, I suspect, come from
06:12 the English stable where there are laws that protect and you can stand in a court and say,
06:17 I'm not revealing my source, and you take the law in the face and you have the right to do that,
06:22 and you have the right to do that as a journalist, protect your source. I'm wondering what this case
06:26 means for journalists worldwide. Will it indicate in some ways a different kind of treatment for
06:30 journalists across the world? Given what you've been talking about, the CIA's involvement,
06:35 this idea of bugging conversations on a third party country's ground, Ecuador's embassy,
06:41 those kind of issues, do you think this will create a different way that journalists are
06:45 dealt with and approached across the world? I do, I do. And to be perfectly honest, that's
06:50 what has motivated my involvement in this. I didn't, you know, during the glory days of the
06:58 war logs and WikiLeaks, I mean, I paid them attention as a journalist, but I wasn't some
07:03 sort of Assange fanboy. But when the charges were published and I looked at those, then I became
07:10 very worried, because while they're dressed up in this rather arcane language of the United States,
07:15 Espionage Act, the misnamed Espionage Act, it was in fact passed to try and suppress
07:20 opposition to the First World War in America. The actions for which they're seeking to prosecute
07:26 Julian Assange are of seeking out a source to wrongdoing and discreetly helping that source
07:32 to pass information to somebody who intends to publish it and then publishing it for general
07:39 consumption. And those, it seems to me, are the actions that journalists undertake every day.
07:44 If you think about many of the big stories that we will have watched or been involved with,
07:48 MPs expenses in this country, Thalidomide, the Panama Papers, all of them involve somebody
07:56 witnessing wrongdoing, feeling uncomfortable about it and passing information to a journalist. And I
08:01 think if Assange is convicted, then journalists all over the world, if they are offered
08:07 security classified information, whatever it reveals, will find themselves thinking,
08:13 do I want to risk 175 years in prison? Is this story worth it? Is it worth the risk?
08:19 And I'm sure that journalists are curmudgeonly and many very, very brave and some won't be
08:25 affected, but I think some will. So if he's convicted, if he goes to prison for the rest
08:30 of his life, there are stories that we won't learn about that otherwise we would have done.
08:34 And that worries me a great deal. Tim Dawson, Deputy General Secretary of the
08:38 International Federation of Journalists. Thank you, sir, for your time. Thank you for
08:42 answering my questions and thank you for your analysis of the situation facing Julian Assange
08:47 and journalists across the world in the light of this case. Thank you, sir, very much indeed.
08:51 Great to see you. Thank you.
Comments