The worry grows.
Julian Assange's wife, Stella Assange, warned on Thursday that the Wikileaks founder would die if extradited to the United States, where he is being prosecuted for a massive leak of documents, before a new appeal is considered in London.
“His health is declining, physically and mentally.
His life is in danger every day he remains in prison and if he is extradited he will die,” she told a news conference in London.
According to his supporters, Julian Assange, 52, faces a hearing in what could be one of his last appeals against his extradition.
Two British magistrates will examine on February 20 and 21 the decision of the High Court of Justice in London, taken on June 6, 2023, to refuse Julian Assange authorization to appeal his extradition to the United States accepted in June 2022 by the British government.
If he succeeds, his appeal will be examined on the merits.
If he fails, he will have exhausted all avenues of appeal in the United Kingdom, but his supporters have indicated that he will take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights.
Julian Assange, an Australian national, imprisoned in London since April 2019, faces decades in prison in the United States where he is being prosecuted for having published more than 700,000 confidential documents on American military and diplomatic activities since 2010, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among them was a video showing civilians, including two Reuters journalists, killed by fire from a US helicopter gunship in Iraq in July 2007.
“A hole so deep we will never see it again”
British justice has given the green light to the extradition of Julian Assange after the United States provided assurances that he would not be incarcerated at the high security ADX prison in Florence (Colorado), nicknamed the " Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
But the warnings are such that this commitment “is not even worth the paper it is written on,” said Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.
In the event of extradition, “Julian will be put in a hole, so deep that we will never see him again,” said Stella Assange.
As the hearing approached, Julian Assange saw expressions of support multiply.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese denounced the prosecution of Julian Assange by the American justice system, while the Australian Parliament adopted a motion on Wednesday calling for an end to it.
“This matter cannot continue indefinitely,” Anthony Albanese told Parliament, adding that he said Australians on all sides agree that “enough is enough”.
He said he had raised Mr Assange's case "at the highest levels" in Britain and the United States.
“Risk of suicide”
Julian Assange was arrested by British police in 2019 after seven years confined in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation, dismissed in 2019. He is currently detained in prison high security facility in Belmarsh, east London.
In early February, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, independent expert Alice Jill Edwards, called on the British government to “suspend the imminent extradition of Julian Assange”.
“Julian Assange has long suffered from periodic depressive disorder.
He has been assessed to be a suicide risk,” Ms Edwards said.
According to her, “the risk that he will be placed in prolonged solitary confinement despite his precarious state of mental health, and that his conviction could be disproportionate raises the question of whether the extradition of Mr. Assange to the United States United Kingdom would be consistent with the UK's international human rights obligations.
In a joint statement Thursday, the International and European Federations of Journalists argued that “the ongoing prosecution of Julian Assange undermines press freedom around the world.”