Julian Assange looked pale and drawn as he sat behind a glass wall in the magistrates' court in Belmarsh Prison yesterday, writes MARK HENNESSY
HAVING SPENT Christmas on a 600-acre estate in Norfolk, Julian Assange was back in the dock yesterday in Belmarsh magistrates’ court in southeast London.
Socialites Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger looked on from the public gallery overhead and waved support.
The court hearing began 10 minutes late, while Assange’s barrister Geoffrey Robertson held hurried discussions with Hannah Pye, representing Swedish prosecutors who want the Australian extradited to Stockholm to face sexual assault charges.
The hearing itself, before district judge Nicholas Evans, was brief, with Assange confirming his name and age, though he appeared surprised that his address on the court records was given as Queensland in Australia.
The heart of the issue will not be dealt with until the two sides meet again for a two-day hearing in early February. It will consider the merits of the Swedish application. Yesterday Robertson was more concerned with seeking the court’s approval for publication of the defence team’s provisional “skeleton” argument, laying out why it believes Assange should not be extradited to Sweden.
Barrister for the Swedish authorities Hannah Pye appeared to have no objection, though the small group of journalists and others allowed into court no.3 had to strain to catch every word.
Judge Evans, too, appeared to have no objection, caring only that the defence and prosecution agreed and that both would be ready to deal with the substantive arguments at next month’s two-day hearing.
Assange’s solicitor Mark Stephens crept forward for a quiet word in Robertson’s ear, leading the barrister to interject that the defence wanted some changes to the bail conditions set down when the Australian was freed from jail last month. He urged the district judge to agree that Assange could stay at the Frontline Club – a foreign correspondents’ haunt in London – during the two-day hearing.
Travelling from Norfolk meant rising at 3am, Robertson told the judge. “It is very difficult for him,” he said. “This would enable him to reach the court. You never know with the difficulties these days whether there is going to be snow.”
Thirty minutes later, Assange appeared before the ranks of television crews and photographers outside the court. Refusing to take questions, he said only that WikiLeaks would step up its publication of the secret US diplomatic cables it possesses.
By the afternoon, the defence team’s skeleton argument had been published on the website of Stephens’s firm – appropriately known as Finers, Stephens and Innocent – where it warned that Assange was at “real risk” of being put to death, or held in Guantánamo Bay if he was sent to Sweden and then on to the US.