Julian Assange has received the support of a group of 117 doctors who denounce the "psychological torture" inflicted on the founder of Wikileaks, threatened with extradition to the United States who accused him of spying, as well as Reporters Without Borders ( RSF). In a letter published in the British medical journal The Lancet , a group of doctors from 18 countries accuses the British government of infringing Julian Assange's fundamental right to access healthcare, a week before the British court's examination of the request for extradition of this 48 year old Australian, detained in Belmarsh high security prison.
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"If Assange were to die in a British prison," as warned by the UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzner, in November, "he will indeed have been tortured to death," say the signatories. Since Julian Assange was examined by a practitioner in 2015 at the Embassy of Ecuador in London where he had taken refuge three years earlier, the doctors' recommendations have been "constantly ignored," they add. They denounce a "politicization of the fundamental principles of medicine, the implications of which go beyond the case of Julian Assange" . "We are asking governments to end Mr. Assange's torture and provide him with the best care before it is too late," they conclude.
Vicious circle
Firmly opposed to the extradition of Assange, who "transmitted information of general interest to journalists" , the association Reporters Without Borders for its part launched a petition which collected more than 20,000 signatures on Monday. In early November, the UN rapporteur on torture said his concern was linked to "new medical information transmitted by several reliable sources claiming that Mr. Assange's health has entered a vicious cycle of anxiety, stress and helplessness, typical of people exposed to prolonged isolation and constant arbitrariness. ”
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Detained in Belmarsh, south London since his arrest in April 2019 at the Embassy of Ecuador, Julian Assange is claimed by Washington. He faces up to 175 years in prison in the United States for espionage. The American authorities reproach him for having endangered some of their sources at the time of the publication in 2010 of 250,000 diplomatic cables and around 500,000 confidential documents relating to the activities of the American army in Iraq and Afghanistan.