The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

What is Julian Assange doing still in prison

2021-02-10T23:31:14.923Z


The United States exhausts the deadlines to present the arguments of appeal before the British justice, more than a month after a judge rejected the extradition of the founder of Wikileaks


Assange is transferred from court to prison in May 2019 in London.Matt Dunham / AP

The legal battle for the freedom of the founder of Wikileaks, the Australian Julian Assange, 49, only began on January 4 in the Old Bailey court in London.

The rejection of the extradition request made by the United States - justified in its health problems and risk of suicide - appeared to the

exhacker

at the gates of the Belmarsh High Security Prison, in the southeast of the British capital.

But Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied him bail in order to guarantee that the US government - then Donald Trump's - could file an appeal in order to one day take the defendant back to its territory, where he is accused of 17 crimes of espionage and one of computer intrusion.

More than a month later, American lawyers are running out of time to argue their appeal to the British courts, while voices multiply asking the new tenant of the White House, Joe Biden, to back down.

The Democratic Administration has stated that it will continue to seek to have the UK extradite the detainee.

Among these voices that campaign for the release of Assange are those of more than twenty organizations that this Monday wrote a letter to the US Department of Justice calling for the withdrawal of the charges.

"The accusation against Assange," the letter said, "threatens freedom of the press because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists regularly engage in."

Among the signatories were Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders… But the recipient was a current position, Attorney General Monty Wilkinson.

The US Senate has yet to confirm Biden's choice for the job, Judge Merrick B. Garland.

And time is ticking.

As in any extradition request filed in the United Kingdom, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS, Crown Prosecution Service) acts as a sort of lawyer on behalf of the applicant State, in this case the United States - in the same way it did with Sweden's extradition request for Assange's alleged sexual abuse case, eventually shelved.

In contact with EL PAÍS, the CPS has confirmed that the appeal petition was filed in the British High Court on January 15.

That is the first step: they notify that they appeal the non-extradition.

From there, the attorneys for the prosecution have had a month to substantiate the appeal.

The US is expected to present its arguments later this week.

If the court judge admits them, the appeal would go on to be judged by a panel of several judges in a session with no date in sight.

Assange's stay behind bars, where he has spent more than 22 months, would be extended since Scotland Yard detained him at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019, after seven years in refuge.

If the court finally gave its approval to the extradition, Assange could appeal to the British Supreme Court or the European Court of Human Rights.

Like the twenty civil and human rights organizations that wrote to the US prosecutor Wilkinson on Monday, lawyers, writers, essayists and journalists have also urged that Biden drop the charges against the Australian.

The US appealed a few days before Trump gave the witness, although not physically, to the Democratic leader.

It was during the Administration of the New York tycoon, with Jeff Sessions in the Prosecutor's Office, when, in 2018, the accusation against the Australian publisher was formalized.

And that the great leaks that Wikileaks published - among them, the dissemination of tens of thousands of diplomatic cables, in which EL PAÍS participated - reached the Internet during the term of Barack Obama.

But with the Democrat in power, despite an open investigation against Assange, charges were never brought.

Fears spread that a bad precedent would affect the free exercise of journalism.

And it is this thread that the defenders of Assange pull, with his partner, the lawyer of South African origin Stella Moris, at the head.

Biden, vice president with Obama and who in 2010 called Assange a "high-tech terrorist", has not commented on the matter - the appeal can be withdrawn at any point in the process.

But a Justice Department spokesman, Marc Raimondi, did this Tuesday, who assured that Washington would continue "seeking his extradition."

The former

hacker's

team of lawyers

, led by Australian Jennifer Robinson, from the London law firm Doughty Street Chambers, prefers to remain prudent and not comment on the state of the process against Assange or the conditions in which he finds himself - Moris has denounced In the Network that the Australian is cold because the prison has not given him the winter clothes they sent him.

Since Judge Baraitser rejected Assange's extradition, the defense has been at the expense of the prosecution moving to prepare the arguments against a possible appeal.

Paradoxically, the process against Assange, linked to transparency and the right to information, has been tremendously opaque.

This is recognized in a telephone conversation by Rebecca Vincent, director of international campaigns for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), one of the people who has tried with the most effort to monitor the cause.

If the appeal and extradition are successful, there are two things at stake, Vincent says: Assange's health and the "future" of journalism.

"No journalist could be sure that they will not prosecute him for publishing information like the one published by Wikileaks," says the RSF spokeswoman.

For what may come, Stella Moris, with whom the Australian editor has two children, has opened a request for funds on the Net to attend his defense.

It has more than 62,000 euros collected.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-02-10

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-20T11:23:52.320Z

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.