At a preliminary appeals hearing held yesterday at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, U.S. attorneys argued against last January’s ruling by lower court judge Vanessa Baraitser, which denied the U.S.’s request for Julian Assange’s extradition, on grounds that he would likely face inhumane U.S. prison conditions and could become suicidal. The expert medical witness for the defense at that hearing, neuropsychiatrist Dr. Michael Kopelman, had testified that Assange was deeply depressed and at risk for suicide. The prosecution’s current expert medical witness, Dr. Nigel Blackwell, says Assange’s depression is “manageable,” and that extraditing him would not be “unjust.”
When the U.S.’s appeal of Judge Baraitser’s ruling was granted on July 5, it was on the grounds that the assessment of Assange’s mental health couldn’t be challenged. But yesterday, as Joe Lauria notes in Consortium News today, presiding judge Lord Timothy Holroyde reversed that, agreeing with U.S. prosecutors that Judge Baraitser gave too much weight to Dr. Kopelman’s assessment—she had an “incorrect approach,” he said— and that his testimony was “misleading.” How so? Kopelman failed to disclose that he was aware that Mr. Assange had begun a family with his fiance, Stella Morris, while living at the Ecuadorean embassy. As Kopelman explained, he withheld that information, knowing that Assange had been the subject of numerous death threats, espionage, and dirty intelligence operations, and wanted to protect Ms. Morris and the couple’s two children.
Too bad. Kopelman’s failure to disclose this information undermined his credibility and also Judge Baraitser’s original ruling, U.S. prosecutors argued, because Kopelman put the interests of the Assange family above his duties to the court, The Wall Street Journal reported them saying on Aug. 11. What this means, the Journal continued, is that the U.S. can now challenge the lower court’s extradition refusal “on multiple fronts…, both on points of law” as well as on the lower court’s central judgement on Assange’s mental health.
