> The United States had objected that Mr Yates’ evidence should not include description of the actual content of the Collateral Murder video.<p>> A compromise had been reached that he could give evidence provided he did not allege he was tortured by the US Government.<p>It's frankly shocking that the US has anything to say in this (sham of an) extradition hearing in what constitutes acceptable evidence.<p>> Nicky Hager testified under oath that in the cables he redacted “strictly protect” designation of names was used to prevent political embarrassment<p>This is disgusting
>I am deeply suspicious of the “breakdown” of the videolink making el-Masri’s evidence in person “technically impossible”<p>>after days in which the US government tried to block that evidence.<p>I totally agree. Something tells me that the USA is involved here in blocking this videolink.<p>As a Navy veteran I am ashamed of that helicopter video.
It proves what a bunch of liars the US military can be.
> At this point, Julian Assange became very agitated. He stood up and declared very loudly:<p><pre><code> “I will not permit the testimony of a torture victim to be censored by this court”
</code></pre>
A great commotion broke out. Baraitser threatened to have Julian removed and have the hearing held in his absence. There was a break following which it was announced that el-Masri would not appear, but that the gist of his evidence would be read out, excluding detail of US torture or of US pressure on the government of Germany. Mark Summers QC started to read the evidence.<p>Khaled el-Masri, of Lebanese origin, had come to Germany in 1989 and was a German citizen. On 1 January 2004 after a holiday in Skopje he had been removed from a coach on the Macedonian border. He had been held incommunicado by Macedonian officials, ill-treated and beaten. On 23 July he had been taken to Skopje airport and handed over to CIA operatives. They had beaten, shackled, hooded and sodomised him. His clothes had been ripped off, he had been dressed in a diaper, shackled to the floor of an aircraft in a cruciform position, and rendered unconscious by an anaesthetic injection.<p>He awoke in what he eventually learned was Afghanistan. He was held incommunicado in a bare concrete cell with a bucket for a toilet. He was held for six months and interrogated throughout this period [details of torture excluded by the judge]. Eventually in June he was flown to Albania, driven blindfold up a remote mountain road and dumped. When he eventually got back to Germany, his home was deserted and his wife and children had left.<p>When he made his story public he was subject to vicious attacks on his character and his credibility and it was claimed he was inventing it. He believes the government sought to silence him. He sought a local lawyer and persisted, eventually getting in touch with Mr Goetz of public TV, who had proven his story to be true, traced the CIA agents involved to North Carolina and even interviewed some of them. As a result, Munich state prosecutors released arrest warrants for his CIA kidnappers, but these were never executed. When Wikileaks issued the cables the pressure that had been brought on the German government not to prosecute became plain. [The judge did not prevent Summers from saying this.] We therefore know the US blocked judicial investigation of a crime. The European Court of Human Rights had explicitly relied on the Wikileaks cables for part of its judgement in the case. The Grand Chamber confirmed that he had been beaten, hooded, shackled and sodomised.<p>There had been no accountability in the USA. The CIA Inspector-General had declined to take action over the case. The ECHR judgement and supporting documentation had been sent to the office of the US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia – precisely the same office that was now attempting to extradite Assange – and that office had declined to prosecute the CIA officers concerned.