UK authorities seek for solutions over deleted Julian Assange emails comes too late to retrieve information
Is it potential {that a} public authority destroyed the e-mail account of a lead lawyer assigned to a high-profile and controversial authorized case, whereas the case was nonetheless ongoing?
And that for greater than six years, that authority refused to undertake satisfactory searches as to who, when, why and the way the account was destroyed?
And that when it lastly did conduct such searches, it was too late to have retained nearly the entire data as to when and why the account was destroyed?
Sure, that’s exactly what occurred with the Julian Assange case.
The UK authorities have lastly performed detailed searches to attempt to reconstruct how, when and why they deleted the e-mail account of the lead Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyer concerned in liaising with Sweden over allegations towards the WikiLeaks founder.
CPS Lawyer Paul Shut suggested Swedish prosecutors to not interview Assange in London after Sweden issued extradition proceedings towards him over rape allegations. His recommendation helped create the authorized paralysis that stored Assange arbitrarily detained in London and below investigation in Sweden for years.
Right now, all investigations towards Assange have been closed. The WikiLeaks founder was freed in June 2024, however the full reality continues to be not identified.
Relentless litigation
The CPS was ordered to conduct the searches after a ruling in January 2025 by the London First-tier Tribunal, chaired by Decide Foss, required it at hand over any data it had that might make clear the deletion of Shut’s emails.
This adopted a relentless Freedom of Data Act (FOIA) litigation by investigative journalist – and the creator of this text – Stefania Maurizi, led by the British barrister Estelle Dehon KC, after we found in 2017 that key paperwork had been destroyed.
At the moment, the Crown Prosecution Service disclosed to us a few of Shut’s emails that had been stored in paper information, however we recognized gaps within the timing of the correspondence and the CPS defined these gaps by reference to the deletion of the e-mail account.
“If there ever existed additional emails,” the CPS said, “they weren’t printed off and filed by Paul Shut, and the digital copies have been deleted when he retired and are now not within the possession of the CPS.”
Since 2017, now we have been attempting to unearth the reality in regards to the deleted data and to find out if there may be any strategy to retrieve it, or whether it is now completely misplaced.
Lacking paperwork cowl essential interval
The lacking documentation issues among the most vital phases within the Assange case, reminiscent of when Sweden issued a European arrest warrant towards the WikiLeaks founder in December 2010, when he took refuge within the Ecuadorian embassy in June 2012, and when he obtained asylum in August 2012.
In these years, the CPS was headed by Keir Starmer, who was the director of public prosecutions. Nevertheless, through the previous 10 years of our FOIA battle, not one of the paperwork launched to us by the CPS present any proof that Paul Shut ever acted on the instruction of Starmer.
New data launched by CPS
On account of its new searches, the CPS launched the next data to us:
- The final login to Shut’s electronic mail account was 31 March 2014, however the CPS has been unable to seek out data on precisely when his account was deleted.
- Neither the CPS’s former IT service supplier nor the CPS’s extradition unit have retained any “transactional information” – data on the deletion of Shut’s account
- The CPS authorities have been already conscious in September 2017 that the account had been deleted: “It now transpires that each one the information related to Paul’s account has been deleted and isn’t able to being recovered,” wrote the top of departmental safety on the CPS on 15 September 2017.
As to why the Crown Prosecution Service deleted Shut’s account, the CPS has at all times maintained that it was accomplished in accordance with commonplace process, after he retired in March 2014.
Nevertheless, from 2017 to 2023, the CPS refused to take our repeated requests for data critically and supplied contradictory statements on precisely when the emails have been destroyed.
The leavers course of doc
It was solely in 2023, after Decide O’Connor ordered it to make clear the destruction of paperwork, that the Crown Prosecution Service supplied a duplicate of the “leavers course of doc”.
In line with the CPS’s model of the information, the leavers course of doc justified the deletion of Shut’s electronic mail account and outlined the usual working procedures – which the CPS mentioned have been in place in 2014 – for deleting the accounts of CPS attorneys and workers after they retired.
However whereas the 2 rulings – one by Decide O’Connor in June 2023, the opposite by Decide Foss in January 2025 – have opened a crack within the wall of secrecy surrounding the destruction of key paperwork, too many mysteries stay.
If Shut’s account was deleted below commonplace and authorized process outlined in an official doc, why in six years of our FOIA litigation did nobody ever point out that doc to us?
And why did the CPS refuse to supply data for years? And why did it take two rulings by two judges to seek for such data?
Had the UK authorities with the Crown Prosecution Service addressed our requests critically from the very starting, it’s possible the CPS’s former IT service supplier or the CPS’s extradition unit would have nonetheless had information in regards to the destruction of paperwork.
“The tribunal choice [by Judge Foss] vindicated Ms Maurizi’s rivalry that the CPS by no means correctly dealt along with her request and was more likely to maintain details about the deletion of Paul Shut’s emails,” Estelle Dehon KC, a outstanding FOIA specialist with Cornerstone Barristers representing us within the FOIA litigation since 2017, instructed Laptop Weekly.
“Now the CPS has disclosed some additional restricted data, however that raises additional questions, so a evaluate shall be requested,” Dehon added.
Why we want metadata
To find out whether or not the leavers course of doc is real, and whether or not the e-mail by which it was internally circulated by the CPS is real, it might be vital to acquire the related metadata, however the CPS authorities have refused to launch it to us, and Decide Foss dominated of their favour in terms of metadata.
“Electronic mail metadata contains details about how and when emails have travelled over the web, in addition to which people and computer systems have been concerned,” Steven Murdoch, professor of safety engineering at College School London and a Royal Society College analysis fellow, instructed Laptop Weekly.
“This data is added to an electronic mail as ‘headers’, which aren’t sometimes proven to customers however are invaluable to investigators attempting to determine the authenticity and significance of the e-mail,” Murdoch added.
“For instance, these headers can point out whether or not an electronic mail is real, the way it may need been modified and by whom, in addition to whether or not it truly is from who it claims to be,” he mentioned.
