The fate of the hacker and head of Wikileaks,
Julian Assange
, who remains in the British high-security Belmarsh prison, is defined in the next 48 hours.
An appeal in the British courts will decide whether or not he is extradited to the United States to serve
a sentence, which can reach up to 175 years
, for having leaked secret American documents published on WikiLeaks.
It has been almost 12 years since the WikiLeaks founder, now 52, entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London to evade arrest.
This week marks
his latest attempt to lodge an appeal
in the UK.
Over the next two days, the High Court will hear his final appeal against his sending to the United States, where he faces charges for helping former military analyst Chelsea Manning download
top-secret intelligence files
, which WikiLeaks published online.
Assange's Spanish wife says he will "die" if he is extradited.
His legal team has also promised to file a final appeal to the European Court of Human Rights if this week's attempt fails.
Marches in defense of Julian Assange, this Tuesday in London.
Photo: EFE
The arguments
Julian Assange risks a “flagrant denial of justice” if he is tried in the United States, his lawyers said at a hearing on permission to appeal in London.
His failure could result in the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder within days if he is not successful.
Assange, who
published thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
, could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison – “an extremely disproportionate punishment” – if convicted in the United States, the US court heard on Tuesday. High Court.
His attorneys are requesting a full appeal hearing.
However, if the two judges refuse permission, all challenges in the UK courts will have been exhausted.
The last resort is an intervention by the European Court of Human Rights
(ECHR) as Assange's only hope to avoid extradition to the United States.
Sick
Outside the court, dozens of his supporters held banners and chanted for his release in London.
The WikiLeaks founder was granted permission to attend the two-day hearing.
But one of his lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald KC, said Assange "was not feeling well."
Fitzgerald told the court that if Assange was extradited there was "a real risk that he would suffer a flagrant denial of justice".
In his written arguments, Fitzgerald said: “This legally unprecedented prosecution seeks to criminalize the application of ordinary journalistic practices of obtaining and publishing true classified information of the most obvious and important public interest.”
He said Assange and WikiLeaks “were responsible for exposing criminality on the part of the United States government.”
The history of leaks
In 2010 and 2011, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has been repeatedly described as "one of the largest compromises of classified information in American history."
Prosecutors, politicians and the intelligence community say the disclosure endangered the lives of agents working in the field.
But WikiLeaks supporters say it helped expose
alleged wrongdoing
by the United States.
The leaked documents came from Chelsea Manning, who at the time was working as an analyst for the US military in Iraq.
At that time Chelsea was known as Private Bradley Manning.
But she now identifies as a woman who had changed her sex in prison.
According to the indictment, Manning "downloaded
four nearly complete databases
of United States departments and agencies."
They contained "approximately 90,000 reports of significant activities related to the Afghanistan War, 400,000 reports of significant activities related to the Iraq War, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment reports, and 250,000 U.S. State Department cables."
British police guard the headquarters of the Royal Court of Justice, in London, this Tuesday.
Photo: AFP
Among the
750,000 documents published
by WikiLeaks was a video from 2007, which showed a US helicopter shooting at a group of civilians in Baghdad.
The attack killed 12 people, including two wounded children and two Reuters photographers.
Hero or villain?
Fugitive or hero?
Julian Assange divides opinions.
Not all journalists who initially supported him support him today.
Many have chosen silence.
But they all
defend the right to freedom of expression.
“I don't like Assange.
He can be egomaniacal and misogynistic.
But today the founder of WikiLeaks represents freedom of expression and we must protect this,” wrote Suzane Moore, the columnist for the conservative
Telegraph
newspaper .
In its editorial, the British newspaper
The Guardian
, which initially published the documents, said: “Sending him to stand trial in the United States would be an unacceptable act against the founder of WikiLeaks and against journalism.”
“It's no secret that Julian Assange can divide opinion.
But now is the time to firmly put all those issues aside.
Now is the time to support Mr Assange, and do so on principle, for the sake of his (and our) freedom.
"There can be no division over the US attempt to extradite the WikiLeaks founder from Britain to face charges under the US Espionage Act, which reaches a critical stage in London this week," The
Guardian
argued in an editorial .
"The request does not just represent a threat to Assange personally. It is also, as this newspaper has consistently argued for many years, an iniquitous threat to journalism, with global implications. It raises the most fundamental questions about freedom of expression. Only for these reasons, he should strongly oppose Assange's extradition," the newspaper added.
The figure of Julian Assange divides opinions in Great Britain and the world.
Photo: EFE
The accusation
According to the indictment, around March 7, 2010, Manning and Assange discussed the value of evaluation reports on detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Prosecutors say they have court documents proving Manning said he was "throwing everything he had about the JTF (joint task force) GTMO (Guantanamo Bay) on Assange now."
Newspapers say he later told Assange: "After this burden, that's all I really have left."
To which Assange replied: "In my experience, curious eyes never dry out."
The next day, the indictment alleges that Assange "agreed to help Manning crack a password, stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to the secret Internet protocol."
"Manning was able to log into the computers with a username that did not belong to him," the indictment reads.
He adds that Assange provided special software to hack the system.
"Manning then used the computer to download everything that WikiLeaks subsequently published," the indictment concludes, between March 28 and April 9.
Chelsea Manning, formerly a US soldier, was Julian Assange's informant.
Photo: REUTERS
The Manning case
Manning was arrested, court-martialed in the United States and subsequently found guilty of several espionage crimes in 2013, and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Days before leaving office in 2017, President Barack Obama reduced her sentence and she was released.
But she was jailed again in 2019, after refusing to testify in a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and its involvement in the 2016 US election.
U.S. officials have said there was
Russian interference
in the vote.
But Assange has never been charged in connection with that allegation.
WikiLeaks published hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, prompting Democrats to sue the website, along with the Russian state and Donald Trump's 2016 campaign team.
When Assange was arrested inside the Ecuadorian embassy in May 2019, the US indictment against him was unsealed, revealing a single charge of "conspiracy."
Assange is Australian and his country demands that he be returned to their country.
He has two children with his Spanish lawyer, conceived when he was detained in the Ecuadorian embassy, until he lost the right to asylum that the Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa had granted him.
There he was handed over to the British authorities and since then he has been fighting for his release and to stop his extradition to the United States.
C.B.