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Julian Assange defender Mark Stephens gets CBE
Sir Bruce Forsyth gets the headlines - media lawyer Mark Stephens gets a CBE
Good to know the Queen has the cause of press freedom at heart. Amid the galaxy of entertainers, business leaders and sportsmen listed in today's Queen's Birthday Honours - knighthoods for Bruce Forsyth and Mervyn King, CBEs for Colin Firth and Bryan Ferry - is Mark Stephens, the London lawyer seeking to defend WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange from extradition to Sweden.
Stephens, 54, is a partner at Finers Stephens Innocent where he specialises in media law, intellectual property rights and human rights. He has been awarded a CBE.
Among other clients in his distinguished career were the leaders of the 1984 miners' strike and the former household cavalry officer James Hewitt at a time when it was first alleged that he was having an affair with Princess Diana.
Here is Stephens... on Julian Assange: "This is all about a man who is a journalist. He received, unbidden, an electronic brown envelope that journalists receive. This particular journalist has put it out. What they are doing is criminalising him, criminalising journalistic activity."
On Sweden's bid to extradite Assange: "I've worked with third world countries and authoritarian regimes where there has been more of an attempt at a fair process."
On the Ryan Giggs injunction (before he was named in Parliament): "This ruling suits those who can pay lawyers £700 an hour. What we have here is a man with the morals of an alley cat who, because he happens to be rich and famous, can afford the protection that ordinary folk can't get."
On Giggs's representation: "Schillings have made a disaster out of a crisis. They have turned a footballer into King Canute of the press world."
On the phone-hacking scandal (two years ago): "It appears that the police may well have fallen short of their statutory duty to investigate crimes and wrongdoing."
Stephens (pictured above with Assange in February) can expect to be back in the headlines when Julian Assange appears in court on July 12 to appeal against February's ruling that he should be extradited to Sweden.
