Reply to post:

There isn't a legal system in the world that's entirely innocent-until-guilty. Failing to provide a breath specimen if suspected of drink-driving sees you arrested on a separate offence of doing just that, for example. With harsher penalties. Though the police can't *prove* that you were over the limit because you did that, they have a specific offence for that exact action of failing to co-operate with them. It's not the only example - all kinds of anti-terror legislation and even much more mundane matters have an element of guilty-until-innocent (think bailiffs coming to cart your stuff away... they will happily tag everything, even if it doesn't belong to you, until the person whose property it is comes and proves it... all sanctioned by a court and pre-dating any modern political manoeuvring whatsoever).

In this case, the court has evidence that it says (paraphrased) "may be used in a criminal proceedings" in its possession, i.e. they're not done with it as they may still convict him. He wants that evidence back, before then. And he's still under US indictment, which is why they can still hold that evidence. Legal maneuvering is slow.

The "You brought this on yourself" is because he had failed to co-operate with any form of accessing that data, presumably. If he was innocent, he could co-operate, the courts get the evidence, he gets his kit back and the matter would be over. But he's not co-operating and instead demanding the evidence back from the courts itself, because - basically - his not-co-operating has slowed everything up.

Though you are not required to incriminate yourself, failing to co-operate with the courts is never going to end well.

As I said before, you don't represent yourself in court because this is what happens. Any lawyer trying to same argument would be laughed at and quite possibly sanctioned. It's like a murderer demanding his bloody knife back from the court, before it could be analysed. Except in this case, the only reason the evidence can't be properly analysed is because he refuses to unlock it.

There's a reason no lawyer would touch him, even via legal aid. And he's not accustomed to arguing in court and instead working on "principles" like "innocent-until-guilty". The law is much more specified than that. And a defendant in a criminal case demanding his own evidence-against-him back while simultaneously preventing the prosecution from accessing it is not something that any court in the world would allow.

This is a plain rebuke from the court for even attempting that line of reasoning. You can be sure any lawyer instructed to argue that would a) refuse or b) be sanctioned for doing so. There may well be several dozens legal paths you could try, but not like this.

And on £120 a week, you better hope that you can hire a legal genius for nothing in order to discover them.