36 Minute Trials and No Jury – Starmer’s Fascist Mass Courts

Craig Murray

Those charged with terrorism for supporting Palestine Action will have no jury in trials limited to 36 minutes each, with prison sentences up to six months. These are the plans for Starmer Courts for mass trials of anti-Genocide protestors.

The plans are devised by Justice Michael Snow. He is the epitome of judicial prejudice. When Julian Assange appeared before Snow in the first hearing after being dragged from the Embassy, Snow called Assange a “narcissist” even though Assange had said nothing but to confirm his name, and no evidence had been led.

Snow has now decreed that those 2,000 people charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act with supporting Palestine Action, will be tried in batches of five at the rate of ten people a day – giving 36 court minutes for each defendant. This is a farce, a spectacle of mass show trial. The 36 minutes includes both prosecution and defence cases and cross-examination.

At a scheduling hearing on Wednesday, one of the accused, 72 year old Deborah Wilde, objected that these trials would be far too short to present a proper defence.

Snow snapped back “I’m satisfied that the time is sufficient. I am not going to give more time. Your only remedy is the High Court”.

As I am sure Snow realises, ordinary people cannot afford to go to the High Court. The worrying thing is that the trials will be held before judges including the appalling Snow, with no jury.

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Assange as free to leave as someone ‘on a rubber boat in a sharkpool’ – UN's Melzer destroys Hunt

RT

After finding that Julian Assange displayed symptoms of “prolonged psychological torture,” UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer has traded barbs with the UK’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt over the WikiLeaks founder’s persecution. 

“This is wrong. Assange chose to hide in the embassy and was always free to leave and face justice,” British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Hunt tweeted less than an hour after Melzer gave his statement on Assange’s condition, insinuating that Assange’s time in the Ecuadorian embassy in London was somehow voluntary.

“The UN Special Rapporteur should allow British courts to make their judgments without his interference or inflammatory accusations,” Hunt added.

Melzer quickly fired back in a rather creative fashion, saying: “With all due respect, Sir: Mr Assange was about as ‘free to leave’ as someone sitting on a rubber boat in a sharkpool.” He also reiterated comments that the British justice system had failed to show the “impartiality and objectivity required by the rule of law.”

Melzer drew on his two decades' experience working with prisoners of war and political prisoners when assessing Assange’s deteriorating mental state, which was further exacerbated by a lack of adequate medical care for several years.

The UN special rapporteur on torture also stated that Assange appeared agitated, stressed and was unable to cope with the complexities of his legal case, for which he failed to testify via video link Thursday citing health issues.

Melzer expressed concern about the potential for a “politicized show trial” should Assange be extradited to the US to face a slew of charges under the Espionage Act, following what he dubbed “persecution” not “prosecution” at the hands of the British legal system. He alleged that “dozens if not hundreds of individuals” including judges and senior politicians had defamed Assange, though he did not name any specifically.

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See also:  ‘Grave concerns’: Assange can barely talk, moved to prison hospital, says WikiLeaks

BBC Correspondent Confirms Use of Secret Courts But Can’t Report It

True Publica 

This article first appeared yesterday, February 10th, was posted on bbc.com and was written by the BBC’s Home Affairs Correspondent Dominic Caciani. This piece echoes one that truepublica published just a few months ago entitled The Use Of Secret Courts Confirms The End Of Democracy In Britain. If you have not read it either, you should. The use of secret courts should raise the hairs on the back of your neck as it demonstrates an alarming rise of authoritarianism in Britain today.

The first paragraph of the trupublica piece reads as follows; “The use of secret courts is a place where trials take place that is not open to the public, nor generally reported in the news and generally no official record of the case or the judge’s verdict is made available. Often there is no legal allegation. The accused is usually not able to obtain the counsel of an lawyer or confront witnesses for the prosecution, and the proceedings are characterised by a perceived miscarriage of justice to the benefit of the ruling powers of the society. This is the stuff of cold war Russia and Nazi Germany – right? Think again.”

BBC Headline – Secret trial: One off – or the first of many?

BBC Correspondent’s Sub Headline – BREAKING: Reporter can’t tell you what’s happened.

 

Possibly the worst headline I’ve ever written. But before I’m accused of completely failing to perform basic contractual duties, allow me to explain why those seven words are rather important.

Since 2013, the BBC and almost every other leading news organisation in the UK has been locked in a bizarre battle to tell you the truth about Erol Incedal. “Who’s he?” I hear you ask. He’s a student from London who was accused of preparing some kind of major terrorism plan. And then after two trials he was found not guilty of that allegation. But I can’t tell you why.

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The Stealth Corporate Takeover of the Supreme Court

Disinfo via New Republic

Let’s face it, 21st century America is run for the benefit of corporations, so a corporate takeover of the Supreme Court shouldn’t be surprising. The New Republic argues it has already happened:

In August 1971, a prominent corporate lawyer from Richmond, Virginia, named Lewis F. Powell Jr. authored a “Confidential Memorandum” to the United States Chamber of Commerce. Powell observed that “with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, and political change.” He urged the Chamber to replicate game-changing litigation victories by “[l]abor unions, civil rights groups,” and “public interest law firms,” which often came “at business’s expense.” Six years later, with Powell himself having been appointed to the Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon, the Chamber created a “voice of business in the courts,” the National Chamber Litigation Center.

Over the past month, the Supreme Court heard three cases that show how radically Powell’s strategy has tilted the law business’s way—more so than he could have imagined, or even favored. Indeed, until he retired in 1987, Justice Powell embraced the Chamber’s position in only 53 percent of its cases he heard, whereas the Chamber has won 69 percent of its cases since John G. Roberts became chief justice in 2005. More significantly, as the Constitutional Accountability Center has reported, in ideologically polarized cases, the five-justice conservative bloc has awarded the Chamber a whopping 80 percent win tally.

This blow-out record has emboldened business advocates to shoot for the moon, throwing precedent and caution aside…

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VIDEO: Texas Man Faces Life in Prison For Pot Brownies

A Texas man faces up to life in prison for making pot brownies?

This is the kind of story that leaves you shaking your head.

19 year old Jacob Lavoro was arrested and charged with making and selling pot brownies. He’s charged with a first degree felony. Why is the charge so severe?

Because Lavoro’s recipe includes hash oil.

That allows the state to use the sugar, cocoa, butter and other ingredients to determine the weight of the drugs.

“They’ve weighed baked goods in this case. It ought to be a misdemeanor,” Lavoro’s attorney Jack Holmes said.

Read more: benswann.com/
Follow us: @BenSwann_ on Twitter

Unprecedented’: Critics Assail Kafkaesque Secret Trial in UK

Common Dreams

Blackout slammed as an ’outrageous assault’ on justice

For the first time in the UK’s modern legal history, two men could face an entirely secret criminal trial for terrorism charges, their identities, the proceedings, and the verdict concealed from the public record.

First reported Wednesday, the blackout sparked alarm among human rights campaigners, lawyers, and politicians.

“To hold trials entirely in secret is an outrageous assault on the fundamental principles of British justice," Clare Algar, executive director of UK human rights organization Reprieve, told the Telegraph.

Until Wednesday, the media was banned from reporting the trial at all. After a challenge to the gag order by UK media organizations, including the Guardian and the Daily Mail, the press won the right to cover a Wednesday hearing challenging the gag order. The court will rule on the appeal to the media blackout in the coming days.

The case involves two men, identified as "AB" and "CD," who will face terrorism charges in a criminal court. The Crown Prosecution Service successfully pushed for the secrecy, which would ban any public report on the trial’s proceedings and outcome, on the grounds that it is necessary for the protection of national security, with the specifics unknown to the public.

Yet, lawyers challenging the secrecy warn that the blackout constitutes a severe threat to civil liberties and justice. In modern history, no UK criminal trial has been this closed to the public, although partial gag orders have been imposed.

"The Crown has sought and obtained an unprecedented order that the trial of two defendants charged with serious terrorism offenses should take place entirely in private with the identity of both defendants withheld and a permanent prohibition on reporting what takes place during the trial and their identities," said Anthony Hudson, who is providing counsel to media organizations appealing the gag order, at Wednesday’s hearing, according to the BBC.

"This appeal raises important issues relating to not only the constitutional principle of open justice but the equally important principle of fairness and natural justice," he added.
 
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British Jury Rules Killing of (Unarmed) Mark Ruggan Lawful

Comment: Could we have really expected anything else?  

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Common Dreams

In what furious critics and his family blasted as "a perverse judgment," a London inquest jury has ruled that the 2011 police shooting of Mark Duggan, a young father who may or may not have had gang connections, was legal - even though they also found he was unarmed despite police claims to the contrary at the time and ongoing police references to "armed criminals." Local MP David Lammy said the killing of Duggan, which sparked the worst riots in modern English history, shows Britain "does not currently have the strong, efficient and independent regulatory body that is necessary for the public to have full confidence in the police."

Carole Duggan, Mark's aunt, said he had been "executed...The jury found that he had no gun in his hand and yet he was gunned down. For us that's an unlawful killing."