Assange has officially refused to be extradited to face a replacement charge issued by the U. S. government in June.
Dozens of supporters, as well as fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and Assange partner Stella Moris, piled up outdoors in court before Monday’s hearing.
Previously, Moris had filed a petition of 80,000 signatures opposing his extradition to Downing Street by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
In an interview with The Times, Moris, 37, said, “For Julian, extradition will be a death sentence. “
He said he feared that he would commit suicide, leaving his two young children, who had been conceived in his asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, without a father.
Journalist John Pilger told court Monday: “The extradition hearing in London that will begin this week is the last act of an Anglo-American crusade to bury Julian Assange. It’s not due process. We have to get even. America’s accusation. “it’s obviously manipulated, a demonstrable farce. So far, audiences have reminded their Stalinist counterparts of the Cold War. “
Assange made headlines in 2010 when WikiLeaks released a 2007 U. S. Army video showing a 2007 attack via Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, two reuters news crew members.
He then published vast treasures of US army documents. But it’s not the first time And diplomatic wires.
It has also generated a more recent report by WikiLeaks’ publication of stolen Documents from the Democratic National Committee that broke candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U. S. presidential campaign.
He denied the allegations through US investigators that WikiLeaks had received documents from Russian hackers. The factor is a component of the judicial process.
U. S. President Donald Trump’s “effective declaration of war against fugitives and journalists” whistleblower Donald Trump argued assange’s lawyers in court documents.
“It was an apparent symbol of everything Trump condemned, and it drew the world’s attention to American war crimes. “
Assange’s legal difficulties in the UK date back to 2010, when he began fighting to extradite him to Sweden to answer questions about allegations of sexual assault, which have since been dropped.
In June 2012, with imminent extradition, he sought safe haven at the Ecuadorian embassy.
After Ecuador revoked his asylum, he left the embassy in April 2019 and served a brief British criminal sentence for violating bail conditions.
It remains pending the final results of the U. S. extradition request.
The hearing is expected to last for weeks, until early October, with a resolution about a month later.