Julian Assange's wife, Stella Assange, warned on Thursday that the WikiLeaks founder would die if he was extradited to the United States, where he faces prosecution over a massive document disclosure, before a new appeal process was considered in London becomes.
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“His health is deteriorating both physically and mentally. His life is in danger every day in prison and if he is extradited he will die,” she told a news conference in London.
AFP
According to his supporters, 52-year-old Julian Assange is facing a hearing in what could be one of his final appeals against his extradition.
Two British judges will on February 20 and 21 examine the decision of the High Court of Justice in London of June 6, 2023 to deny Mr. Assange permission to appeal against his extradition to the United States, which was announced in June 2022 by the British government was adopted.
If he is successful, his appeal will be examined on the merits. If he fails, he will have exhausted all avenues of appeal in the UK, but his supporters have indicated he will take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights.
Julian Assange, an Australian citizen imprisoned in London since April 2019, faces decades in prison in the United States, where he is accused of leaking more than 700,000 classified documents since 2010 about American military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. to have published.
Among them was a video showing civilians, including two Portal journalists, being killed by fire from a US helicopter gunship in Iraq in July 2007.
Contacts “at the highest level”
The British judiciary has given the green light for the extradition of Julian Assange after the United States assured that he will not be imprisoned in the high-security ADX prison in Florence, Colorado, nicknamed the “Alcatraz of the Rocky Mountains”.
But the warnings are so great that this commitment “isn’t even worth the paper it’s written on,” said Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.
If extradited, “Julian will be put in a hole so deep that we will never see him again,” said Stella Assange.
As the hearing approached, Julian Assange saw the expressions of support piling up.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the prosecution of Julian Assange by the American justice system, while the Australian Parliament passed a motion on Wednesday calling for an end to that persecution.
“This matter cannot go on forever,” Mr Albanese told Parliament, adding that Australians on all sides agreed that “enough is enough”.
Mr Albanese said he had raised Mr Assange's case “at the highest levels” in Britain and the United States.
“suicide risk”
Mr Assange was arrested by British police in 2019 after being locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden as part of a rape investigation that was closed in 2019. He is currently incarcerated at Belmarsh maximum security prison in east London.
In early February, the UN special rapporteur on torture, independent expert Alice Jill Edwards, called on the British government to “suspend the pending extradition of Julian Assange.”
“Julian Assange has long suffered from periodic depressive disorder. He was classified as suicidal,” Ms Edwards said.
According to her, “the risk that he will be placed in prolonged solitary confinement despite his precarious mental health condition and that his sentence could be disproportionate raises the question of whether the extradition of Mr. Assange to the United States would come into question” with the international ones compatible with the UK's human rights obligations.
In a joint statement on Thursday, the International and European Journalists' Associations argued that “the ongoing prosecution of Julian Assange undermines press freedom around the world.”