Julian Assange, the co-founder of the Wikileaks website, faces from next week to his greatest fear: the possibility of being extradited to the United States. And his lawyer has achieved a small victory this week during the previous issues phase, before the oral hearing that will begin next week before a London court. Edward Fitzgerald has requested, and obtained the permission of the magistrates, to call to testify to a witness who assures that an emissary of the American president, Donald Trump, offered the fugitive the pardon if he assured in his statement that Russia had nothing to do with the leaks of the emails of the campaign of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, in 2016.
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Julian Assange faces a year in jail before his extradition to the United States
The witness in question is Jennifer Robinson, an Australian lawyer representing Assange. Since he does not have the category of barrister (ward lawyer) that Fitzgerald does, he cannot directly exercise the defense in court. Robinson says that Republican US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher went to the Ecuadorian embassy in London - where Assange spent almost seven years as a political asylum - in August 2017 to speak directly with him and offer him, according to the lawyers' version, Trump's offer. Rohrabacher has been in the eye of the hurricane in recent years for his close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his surroundings.
White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grishman has denied that the US president has made this offer to the cyber-activist: "The president barely knows Dana Rohrabacher, other than that he is a former congressman. He has never spoken to him about this issue or almost any subject. It is a complete invention and a total lie. "
The United States claims Assange for 18 charges, which include alleged crimes of conspiracy and espionage, and can carry up to 175 years in jail. Initially arrested in 2010 in the United Kingdom at the request of Sweden for a case of alleged sexual crimes currently filed, Assange has spent the last ten years confined, first under house arrest and then at the embassy in London of Ecuador, which in 2019 withdrew him political asylum. The 48-year-old activist awaits the judicial process in the London high security prison in Belmarsh.