John Jones (lawyer)

John Jones (lawyer) (lawyer)
Born	14 June 1967
Died	18 April 2016 (Age 48) London, UK
Cause of death	struck by train
Nationality	UK
Alma mater	St Edmund Hall (Oxford), City University (London), George Washington University
Victim of	premature death
Interests	• Wikileaks • Clinton body count • Julian Assange
Assange lawyer who jumped in front of train

John RWD Jones was a British lawyer on team acting for Julian Assange, who died when he was struck by a train in London in 2016, in what the inquest ruled not a 'suicide' due to his state of mind.

Early Life

From the independent sixth-form college Mander Portman Woodward, London, he went to study philosophy, politics and economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and took master’s degrees in law at City University, London, and George Washington University, in the US capital. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1992.

At the inquest, his mother said her son enjoyed a happy childhood, spent partly in California when her husband, an academic, was at Stanford University, and that John had an “idealised” image of America.

Jones was a millionaire who lived in a $2 million villa in Hendon, north London with his Slovenian wife Misa Zgonec-Rozejand and their two children.

He worked as a legal officer for the ICTY 1995-99 in the Hague. He helped draft the ICTY’s rules of evidence and procedure, and then in 1998, did likewise for the ICTR, before moving on the International Criminal Court. In 2005 he joined Doughty Street Chambers, where he specialized in extradition law and served as a part-time immigration judge. He was appointed QC in 2013, and worked full time at the Hague from the following year as resident director of Doughty Street International.

In 2012 he worked with his colleague Amal Clooney to try and halt the execution of Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif and Libyan spy chief Abdullah-al Senussi to Libya.

At the time he became ill, he was a member of the team acting for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder then in political asylum Ecuadorian embassy in London pending the resolution of an extradition application by Sweden, and it was his submissions that persuaded the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to rule (much to the annoyance of the UK government and newspaper editorials) that Assange was being wrongfully detained.

While it is probably not right to include him in the Clinton body count, as some have done, one should note that the US deep state has a high involvement both in what happened in Libya and the Assange case.

The Suicide

On 18 April 2016, Jones was killed when he leapt in front of a train in West Hamstead, London. The lawyer, who suffered from “obsessive overthinking”, had been admitted to the private Nightingale Hospital in March, with a number of mental health issues which had been given a “working diagnosis” of bipolar disorder and anxiety by his psychiatrist. On the day before his death, Jones, who stayed at the hospital, had spent the day with his family, who had become increasing concerned about his wellbeing.

His psychiatrist, Dr. Pereira, said that Mr Jones was reluctant to open up because there were certain things he didn’t want to talk about and was convinced he would be “banished from the world” if he did, and that he felt “caught between the devil and the deep blue sea”.

The inquest heard that Mr Jones may have been suffering from the side effects of withdrawal from his medication. He returned to the hospital, where he was a voluntary inpatient, that night, but at 5am the following morning he was allowed to leave the hospital after filling out his own risk assessment form. Mental health nurse, Katie McTaggart, who agreed to let him leave, said he had shown no signs of being a danger to himself.

Mr Jones’ parents gave statements to say their son first displayed signs of mental disorder as a teenage schoolboy in the US. The court heard that Jones had some “financial and marital” difficulties, and had found relocating back to London after living in The Hague “stressful”.

The inquest heard that Jones leapt to his death at approximately 7am. The train driver gave a written statement to say it appeared to be “a deliberate act”.

The Coroner, Mary Hassell said that CCTV footage proved that he acted alone. She said the footage would not be played to the court she thought it would be “too distressing” but that she had watched it, and was satisfied that “nobody else was involved”, adding: “I rule out completely the action of any other person”

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.