Your Man in the Public Gallery – Assange Hearing Day Four

This is the article Day 4. For a bit of context, from the article Day 1:<p>&quot;in the courtroom itself, <i>Julian Assange is confined at the back of the court behind a bulletproof glass screen</i>. He made the point several times during proceedings that this makes it very difficult for him to see and hear the proceedings. The magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser, chose to interpret this with studied dishonesty as a problem caused by the very faint noise of demonstrators outside, as opposed to a problem caused by Assange being locked away from the court in a massive bulletproof glass box.<p>Now <i>there is no reason at all for Assange to be in that box, designed to restrain extremely physically violent terrorists.</i> He could sit, as a defendant at a hearing normally would, in the body of the court with his lawyers. But the cowardly and vicious Baraitser has refused repeated and persistent requests from the defence for Assange to be allowed to sit with his lawyers.&quot;

This show trial is proving to be a disgrace for the UK judicative (and government in general). Also the US is no longer trying to be a role model for the free world in terms of civic rights, quite the contrary: They want to make an example of people like Julian who dare to drag their dirty laundry into the spotlight.

The conclusion seems foregone, all that is left is to let them create a record of how the process itself was the punishment. British justice appears to have become fickle, cynical, partisan, and self dealing. These are of course the views of only one person who is also a supporter of the accused, but the behaviour of the magistrate as described is of someone without accountability.

OK, I tried to read this, but (as is probably on purpose with these legal things) I did not understand what is going on here. Who is arguing which argument? (What I understood is that UK government is arguing some UK law is void such that they can ship Assange off to the US, I don&#x27;t know if this is a correct interpretation). Can someone give an ELI5?

You couldn&#x27;t make that up!. So the prosecution are arguing that the very extradition treaty that they are using is void as it excludes extradition on political grounds.