If he is extradited, “he will not survive”.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is trying from this Tuesday to obtain from British justice a last resort against his extradition to the United States, which wants to try him for a massive leak of documents.
As the hearing approaches, his supporters warned of the risks weighing on the life of the 52-year-old Australian, detained for almost five years in the United Kingdom.
“If he loses, there is no longer any possibility of appealing” in the United Kingdom, his wife Stella Assange, with whom he had two children when he was secluded in the embassy, told the BBC on Monday. from Ecuador in the British capital.
“We hope to have time to refer the matter to the European Court of Human Rights” to intervene in time, she stressed.
“If he is extradited to the United States, he will not survive,” repeated his wife, mother of two of his children.
“If he’s extradited to the US, he won’t survive it.”
Stella Assange, wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaks to @MishalHusain ahead of his final appeal in a UK court tomorrow.#R4Today
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) February 19, 2024
The risk of suicide in the event of extradition
In January 2021, British justice initially ruled in favor of the founder of WikiLeaks.
Citing a risk of suicide for the founder of WikiLeaks, judge Vanessa Baraitser refused to give the green light to extradition.
But this decision was later overturned and his extradition to the United States was accepted in June 2022 by the British government.
“The psychiatrists who examined Julian in prison all reached the same conclusion: he risks self-harm, suicide,” lamented Stella Assange in an interview with franceinfo.
According to her, “the trigger would be isolation and the United States would undoubtedly place him in solitary confinement.”
Several other supporters of the Australian assure that he risks ending his life.
“Julian Assange has long suffered from periodic depressive disorder.
It has been assessed that he presents a risk of suicide,” declared the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, independent expert Alice Jill Edwards, in early February.
She then asked the British government to suspend the extradition procedure.
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 may be disproportionate raises the question of whether the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States would be consistent with the UK's international human rights obligations.
“He could be murdered”
But Stella Assange also fears that her husband will be assassinated on American soil.
“He could be murdered and it’s not a personal delusion.
According to certain reports, Mike Pompeo, while he was head of the CIA, made and asked for concrete proposals on how to assassinate Julian,” she assures franceinfo, referring to “discussions until the White House to kidnap him, kill him…” In 2021, the Yahoo News site revealed discussions within the CIA, dated 2017, on a possible assassination of Julian Assange.
The American intelligence agency has never confirmed this data.
In an attempt to reassure him about the treatment that would be inflicted on him, the United States affirmed that he would not be incarcerated at the very high security ADX prison in Florence (Colorado), nicknamed "the Alcatraz of the Rockies" and that he would receive the necessary clinical and psychological care.
The Americans had also raised the possibility that he could ask to serve his sentence in Australia.
These guarantees convinced the British justice system, but not the supporters of Julian Assange, who denounce political prosecutions.
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Julian Assange faces up to 175 years in prison.
He is being prosecuted for having published since 2010 more than 700,000 confidential documents on American military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The founder of WikiLeaks 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 Belmarsh high security prison in east London.
In recent days, expressions of support have increased for Julian Assange.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese himself attacked the US prosecution and the Australian Parliament passed a motion last week calling for an end to it.
“This matter cannot continue indefinitely,” he declared in Parliament, ensuring that he had raised the case of Julian Assange “at the highest level” in the United Kingdom and the United States.