LONDON – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is expected to fight for his release in a British court after a decade of legal drama while demanding situations in which US authorities attempt to extradite him for espionage after publication through secret US army documents.
Assange and U.S. lawyers are expected to face off in London on Monday in a late extradition hearing through the pandemic.
U.S. prosecutors have charged the 49-year-old Australian with 18 counts of computer espionage and misuse for a total of a maximum sentence of 175 years. His lawyers say the prosecution is an abuse of force for political reasons that will stifle press freedom and put hounds at risk..
Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, said the case “exclusively considers human rights and freedom of expression.”
“Journalists and whistleblowers who disclose illegal activities through corporations or governments and war crimes, such as publications for which Julian was accused, deserve to be prosecuted,” he said.
U.S. prosecutors say Assange is a criminal, a hero of lax discourse.
They allege that Assange conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and thousands of secret diplomatic cables and army archives on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.They also say he conspired with members of hacking organizations and tried to recruit hackers to provide WikiLeaks with classified information.
“By disseminating the documents in an unwrapped form, he exposed others (human rights activists, journalists, advocates, devoted leaders, dissidents and their families) to a threat of serious harm, torture or even death,” James Lewis, a British lawyer on behalf of the US government, said at a hearing in February.
Assange claims he is a journalist entitled to First Amendment coverage and claims that leaked documents revealed irregularities through the US military.But it’s not the first time Among the files published through WikiLeaks, a video of an Apache helicopter attack in 2007 through U.S. forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, adding two Reuters Journalists.
His lawyers argue that the lawsuit is an abuse of procedure through a Trump management who needs to make an example of Assange, say he would be arrested in inhumane situations and have a fair trial in the United States.
Journalism organizations and human rights teams have called on Britain to reject the extradition request.Amnesty International said Assange is “the target of a negative public crusade through U.S. officials at the highest level.”
“If Julian Assange is prosecuted, this can have a deterrent effect on media freedom, leading editors and journalists to self-censorship for fear of reprisals,” said Amnesty European Director Nils Mui-nieks.
The four-week extradition hearing is part of a twisted saga full of countered accusations of piracy, espionage and subterfuge. Assange’s lawyers say U.S. intelligence ordered a personal security company to spy on him while living at Ecuador’s embassy in London: a case lately being heard through a Spanish court.
Assange also alleges that Trump’s management granted her a pardon if she agreed to say that Russia was not concerned about the leak of Democratic National Committee emails that were published through WikiLeaks in the 2016 U.S. election campaign, something the White House denies.
Assange’s legal disorder began in 2010, when he was arrested in London at the request of Sweden, which then sought to question him about allegations of rape and sexual assault through two women.He refused Stockholm, saying he feared illegal extradition or restitution to the United States or the U.S. criminal camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In 2012, Assange sought refuge inside the Ecuadorian embassy, where he surpassed the success of the British and Swedish government, but was also a prisoner, unable to leave the small diplomatic project in London’s Knightsbridge domain.
The relationship between Assange and his hosts eventually deteriorated and he was expelled from the embassy in April 2019.La British police arrested him without delay for resigning his bail in 2012.
The extradition hearing opened in February, but was suspended when the UK entered a lockout in March to curb the spread of the coronavirus and resumes with social estating measures in court and video broadcasts so newscasts and observers can watch from a distance.
Assange is expected to be taken to the Old Bailey in a Belmarsh criminal van for the hearing, which is expected to last until early October.District Judge Vanessa Baraitser will likely take weeks or even months to issue her verdict, with the part most likely lost to appeal.
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