2024-04-10 19:30:25
US President Joe Biden may not want to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for betraying secrets. “We are thinking about it,” Biden replied when asked about a request from Australia when he received Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Assange’s lawyer viewed the US President’s statements as very encouraging.
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“This is a case that should never have been started,” Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said at a rally in London to mark the fifth anniversary of Assange’s arrest in Britain. “The solution to this case, where we are dealing with a political persecution, is a political solution and a political push,” Hrafnsson said.
The human rights organization Amnesty International has once again called for the release of Assange, who has been in prison in Great Britain for exactly five years this Thursday. “Julian Assange dared to bring revelations about alleged US war crimes to light. It is unacceptable that years of his life were stolen from him,” said Secretary-General Agnès Callamard. The organization warned of a catastrophic precedent for global media freedom if Assange were extradited to the US. Amnesty demanded that the USA drop all allegations against Assange.
Most recently, a British court ruled in March that Assange could not be extradited if the US authorities did not guarantee that he would not face the death penalty. Assange is charged in the US with 17 counts of espionage and misuse of a computer. The background is the publication of around 700,000 confidential diplomatic and military documents on the WikiLeaks disclosure platform almost 15 years ago. If found guilty, Assange could face up to 175 years in prison in the USA.
Supporters see Assange as an investigative journalist, his opponents as a spy
US prosecutors accuse the 52-year-old of encouraging and helping former military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal some documents. Assange’s supporters, on the other hand, see him as an investigative journalist who exposed wrongdoing by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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In February, the Australian Parliament, with the support of the head of government, passed a motion calling for an end to the prosecution of 52-year-old Assange. For years, the government in Canberra has been appealing to the USA to drop the allegations against the Australian citizen. She argues that there is a disparity between the US’s treatment of Manning and Assange. Then-US President Barack Obama had Manning’s 35-year prison sentence commuted to a seven-year sentence, meaning Manning was released in 2017.
Stella Assange warns that her husband will die in a maximum security prison
Assange was arrested in Britain in 2010 in connection with a now-closed investigation in Sweden. Shortly before his extradition to Sweden, he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he holed up for seven years. In 2019 he was jailed on charges of breaching bail conditions.
Since then he has been in the maximum security prison in Belmarsh. Stella Assange has repeatedly warned of her husband’s deteriorating health in prison, which she believes could also lead to his death.
US President Joe Biden may not want to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for betraying secrets. “We are thinking about it,” Biden replied when asked about a request from Australia when he received Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Assange’s lawyer viewed the US President’s statements as very encouraging.
“This is a case that should never have been started,” Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said at a rally in London to mark the fifth anniversary of Assange’s arrest in Britain. “The solution to this case, where we are dealing with a political persecution, is a political solution and a political push,” Hrafnsson said.
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