Sydney (Australia), 11 apr. More than eighty Australian and British parliamentarians called on US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to end the extradition proceedings against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on the fourth anniversary of his imprisonment at the United Kingdom.
“We implore you to abandon extradition and allow Mr. Assange to return home,” stresses the letter signed by 48 Australian legislators, pro-government and opposition, who insist that the 51-year-old Australian published “information with evidence” about “crimes against humanity, corruption and human rights abuses” perpetrated by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange -pending the resolution of the extradition process to the United States to be tried for 18 crimes of espionage and computer intrusion- has been in the high-security Belmarsh prison, in southeast London, since April 11, 2019. Ecuador withdrew his political asylum and expelled him from its embassy in the British capital.
Australian parliamentarians noted that Assange “has been effectively jailed for well over a decade” and suggested that he be treated similarly to former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who “leaked classified information” to WikiLeaks, and was released when her sentence was commuted to 35 years in prison in 2017.
“If (Assange’s) extradition request is approved, Australians will witness the deportation of one of our citizens from one AUKUS partner to another – our closest strategic ally,” the letter stresses, alluding to the recent security pact. linking Washington, Canberra and London.
Likewise, more than thirty British legislators recalled that 18 charges against Assange, with a sentence of up to 175 years in prison, would have a “chilling impact” on the practice of journalism and would set “a dangerous precedent” for other journalists and media organizations.
“It would also undermine America’s reputation for free speech and the rule of law,” the British MPs said.
Assange, who assures that the legal actions against him respond to a political persecution by the United States for the disclosure of WikiLeaks, is pending at any time the decision of the High Court of London on whether the journalist can appeal the decision of June 2022 of the British Ministry of the Interior to authorize its delivery to Washington.
Assange was initially detained in 2010 – shortly after WikiLeaks exposed alleged US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – at the behest of Sweden, which wanted to question him on alleged sex crimes for which he was never charged, in a case that was eventually settled. withdrawal.
