Wikileaks founder awaits appeal from US lawsuit over alleged crimes that could sentence him to 175 years
Thousands of people have formed a human chain around the perimeter of the British Parliament this Saturday, demanding the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has spent nearly four years in a maximum-security prison in London, waiting for the US extradition request to be resolved. .
Assange’s wife, Estella Moris, a leading human rights lawyer, has stated that “Julian could face a possible 175-year prison sentence in the United States for his work as a journalist.” He explained it in these words: “For receiving information from a source and publishing it, and it was in the public interest. It covered war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it revealed the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians that had not been recognized before.”
In addition to the London event, protesters and personalities rejecting imprisonment and possible extradition gathered in Melbourne and Washington. Australia’s new Prime Minister, Labor Anthony Albanese, has refused to support the demands of the Australian journalist’s defenders. In the American capital, they met in front of the Justice Department.
The Joe Biden administration has failed to follow the policies of Barack Obama, who withdrew the Assange petition and pardoned his source, Chelsea Manning, who passed on documents to Wikileaks that he obtained from the Department of Defense databases while working as a military intelligence expert. The current government has facilitated the decision of the British judges and Boris Johnson’s government to extradite him.
The British judge who saw the first sentence rejected the extradition, in January 2021, because of the risk that Assange would take his own life if he were extradited and placed in special solitary confinement. That “oppressive” nature of the trial was endorsed by doctors and psychiatrists who testified to the mental health problems the detainee suffered after years of isolation and jail time.
The Australian took refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, when the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against the decision to extradite him to Sweden, to respond to the investigation into two allegations of rape by supporters of the Wikileaks boss. . They would have agreed to sexual intercourse on the condition that he would use a condom, which the suspect has taken off.
As this act is also rape under England and Wales law, the London courts hearing the case decided to send the case to Sweden, within the legal framework of the European Arrest Warrant. Assange spent seven years in the Ecuadorian diplomatic compound, until a change of government in Quito ended the asylum, prompting British police to enter to arrest him in 2019. He was imprisoned in Belmarsh Prison, where he remains today.
The US Department of Justice then activated his extradition request, alleging 15 crimes of espionage and another of illegal computer manipulation. The espionage is based on the publication of confidential documents and the other on the charge that Assange advised Manning to enter the databases without leaving fingerprints to identify him.
After rejecting the extradition in the first stay, Washington resorted to the Court of Appeals, where he assured that no special prison terms would be applied to him if he is sent. The court accepted the guarantee and the extradition and allowed the prosecuted lawyers to appeal to the Supreme Court. The highest court saw no legal argument worth hearing in the appeal.
After that negative sentence, the case returned to the first instance, which upheld the extradition and handed over the decision to the then Interior Minister, Priti Patel, who gave the green light. Assange’s defense has appealed to the Court of Appeals against Patel’s decision and the United States lawsuit, seeking the annulment of the trial judge’s other considerations that, except for “suppression,” gave for Good rendition. If the appeal is rejected, he will ask to be heard by the European Court of Human Rights.
Source: La Verdad
I am an experienced and passionate journalist with a strong track record in news website reporting. I specialize in technology coverage, breaking stories on the latest developments and trends from around the world. Working for Today Times Live has given me the opportunity to write thought-provoking pieces that have caught the attention of many readers.
