A half-hearted decision for Assange

The ambiguous decision adopted by a British court regarding the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States is proof that the case against the co-founder of Wikileaks has a high component of political persecution and little legal solidity.

Judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson have decided to buy time, probably convinced that, as some information has suggested, an extrajudicial agreement is still possible between the US Attorney's Office and the publisher's lawyers that would save Washington's face and prevent the handover of the most famous prisoner of recent years.

Assange's cause has become the global cause in defense of press freedom.

The campaign demanding her freedom has had the support of governments such as Australia - a country of which the editor is a citizen -, institutions and hundreds of thousands of activists or people concerned about the case.

EL PAÍS was one of the newspapers that participated in the concerted effort to publish the Wikileaks papers, an essential source of information to expose illegalities and state crimes that governments wanted to hide.

The justices have demanded guarantees from Washington that its courts will respect Assange's right to freedom of expression, contemplated in the First Amendment of its Constitution, and demand that the prisoner receive the same procedural guarantees as any American citizen, and not be discriminated against. be a foreigner

Finally, they demand a formal commitment that he will not be sentenced to the death penalty.

The court, which demands more guarantees from the judicial system of the world's leading economic and regulatory power, gives a period of three weeks for a response.

If the United States does not accept these three conditions, the Wikileaks co-founder may file an appeal against his extradition in the British courts.

Assange has been locked up in Belmarsh maximum security prison, north of London, for five years.

Before him, he spent almost seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in the British capital, confined in a minimal room and unable to go outside.

He is seriously ill and his mental health has deteriorated.

His wife, Stella Assange, is right in denouncing an incomplete sentence, which delays the case without definitively solving it.

And she has it by demanding that the Government of Joe Biden withdraw the accusation and abandon the persecution.

Barack Obama decided to pardon soldier Chelsea Manning, the main source of the leak, after she spent seven years in prison.

The current accusation of espionage against the editor, and the claim that he be sentenced to 175 years in prison, is just the political revenge promoted at the time by former President Donald Trump.

And if it is not definitively remedied, Assange's extradition will be the most serious blow to press freedom in recent decades.