Digging
deeper
Arbuthnot
is married to Lord James Norwich Arbuthnot, a Conservative peer,
known as Baron Arbuthnot of Edrom. Lord Arbuthnot was a Tory MP for
28 years and was chair of the Defence Select Committee between 2005
and 2014. He was elevated to the peerage in October 2015. He’s also
a member of the advisory board of the Royal United Services Institute
for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI). And he is chair of the
advisory board of the UK division of multinational defence
manufacturer Thales.
Lord
Arbuthnot is also listed as a senior consultant to SC Security.
Company records, however, show that Arbuthnot was a former director
of SC Security, along with Lord Carlile and Sir John Scarlett, who
remain as active directors.
Lord
Carlile
Lord
Carlile reportedly received £400,000 from SC Security, whose “only
known client” appears to be sovereign wealth fund the Qatar
Investment Authority (QIA).
According
to the Guardian, in October 2013 Carlile argued that the publication
of Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance “amounted
to a criminal act”. Carlile oversawUK anti-terrorism laws and
subsequently took on the role of “independent reviewer of national
security” in Northern Ireland.
He
is also a vocal defender of MI5 and voted in favour of the ‘Snoopers’
Charter’, saying:
We
have taken the view that if the head of the security service and the
current Metropolitan police commissioner argue that these powers are
needed urgently to retain communications data due to changes in
technology, then we needed to act now rather than wait for reports
that we do not know when they will be completed.
Recently,
MI5 was forced to admit it misused that legislation and illegally
retained files on millions of UK citizens.
Sir
John Scarlet
As
for Sir John Scarlett, he was the former head of MI6. He was on a
panel of experts who oversaw a report that argued the security and
intelligence agencies should retain powers to “collect bulk
communications data”, again warned of by Snowden.
While
chair of the government’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC),
Scarlett was responsible for the compilation of the ‘dodgy dossier’
on Saddam Hussein’s WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), which paved
the way for the Iraq War.
Judge
refuses to recuse herself
UN
Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer told US journalist Chris Hedges
that Lady Arbuthnot “has a strong conflict of interest” and that
“her husband had been exposed by WikiLeaks”. Hedges adds that
Assange’s lawyers have asked the judge “to recuse herself”, but
that “she has refused”.
However,
Lady Arbuthnot was forced to recuse herself in August 2018 after an
investigation by the Observer into her husband’s business dealings
with Uber. The judge ruled in favour of Uber but stepped down from
the case when it was shown that SC Strategy’s client the QIA had
taken a stake in Uber.
And
there are other precedents. For example, retired high court judge
Lady Butler-Sloss was forced to resign as chair of the panel tasked
with examining allegations of child abuse within institutions. This
was after she admitted to a family conflict of interest (Sir Michael
Havers, her brother, was attorney-general during the period when most
of the alleged abuse occurred).
Given
the evidence relating to her family background, it may be time for
Lady Arbuthnot to recuse herself once more, and for the extradition
proceedings to be halted.
Not
just about Assange
The
judge presiding over the pre-extradition hearings against Assange has
family links, past and present, to people and organisations that are
diametrically opposed to the publishing work of WikiLeaks. Such work
included exposing war crimes committed during the Iraq War, and
providing assistance to Edward Snowden when trying to escape US
authorities
It
should also be emphasised that hundreds of citizens face similar
class bias via the justice system every single day. Likewise, thanks
to cut-backs the prison conditions they experience, including lack of
legal aid and poor access to lawyers and documents, is the norm.
Call
it institutionalised bias.
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