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by riley stuart London, ABC
[xh ]People ‘disappeared’ after Assange published hacked documents, court hears
Police monitor protesters outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London ahead of a hearing on Wednesday as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s wife Stella Assange (bottom left) addresses supporters and the media.
photograph: AFP/Justin Tallis
People living under dictatorships “disappeared” after Julian Assange combined hacking and reporting to “steal a huge amount of classified documents” and publish them on his WikiLeaks website. said the court.
Assange, an Australian, is fighting extradition from Britain to the United States, where he faces numerous charges of espionage.
He has been in London’s Belmarsh Prison since 2019 and has no legal recourse to avoid extradition to the United States, where he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted. It’s disappearing.
On Wednesday, a hearing at Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand was told that Assange had “revealed to the world the unredacted names of human intelligence sources” who had assisted the US.
He has been charged in the United States with 18 criminal offenses, including obtaining, receiving, and disclosing classified information.
The charges all relate to material published on Assange’s WikiLeaks website in 2010, which included detailed evidence of war crimes committed by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is.
This information was provided by Chelsea Manning, a soldier turned whistleblower who was later imprisoned for 35 years. Her sentence was commuted to seven years by then-US President Barack Obama and she was released in 2017.
Mr. Assange’s lawyers have previously argued that the Espionage Act was never used to prosecute the publisher.
But on Wednesday, barrister Claire Dobbin KC, acting for the US, told the court that Mr Assange and his WikiLeaks platform were not “ordinary journalists and publishers”.
He said Mr Assange had encouraged Mr Manning to “steal” classified documents and that the Australian’s decision to “deliberately publish material without redacting his name” had put his life at risk.
“These are people who had to leave their homes and flee their homelands because they were identified on State Department cables,” Dobbin said in court.
He said there were “people who have disappeared since the release of the cables”, adding: “Many of them were living in war zones or under repressive regimes.”
Assange is running out of options
This week’s hearing will be Assange’s last chance to challenge extradition in the British justice system.
He is seeking permission from the High Court of England and Wales to appeal against the sentence, which would hand him over to US authorities.
The two judges who heard the case reserved judgment for a later date.
If Assange wins his case, he will remain in custody while the High Court hears his appeal at a later date.
If not, his lawyers have threatened to take legal action to the European Court of Human Rights, but legally British authorities could extradite the 52-year-old to the United States before that happens.
Mr. Assange’s lawyers argued earlier in the hearing that he was being punished for leading a global movement against the United States.
But on Wednesday, Dobbin KC made it clear that the United States was keen to extradite the suspect, noting that the extradition effort spanned two different White House administrations.
“Nevertheless, the prosecution of the appellants continues to be carried out on foot,” she said, because it is “based on the law and the evidence, not on political motives.”
Assange has been imprisoned since April 2019, when he was arrested by police inside the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had been held for seven years after claiming political asylum.
Seventeen of the 18 charges Assange faces fall under the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917.
On Tuesday, Assange’s team said in court that their client is not an American citizen and was not living or working in the United States at the time of the charges.
He had permission to attend the hearing in person and via video link, but is too unwell to participate.
Independent federal lawmaker Andrew Wilkie was in London for the second day of hearings.
He has long campaigned for Mr Assange’s return to Australia and said outside court that it would be a “death penalty” if he were sent to the US.
“The person I wanted to meet but couldn’t meet was Julian Assange himself. He was too ill to attend,” Wilkie said.
“He is not currently well enough to be in Belmarsh Prison, much less to be extradited.”
The two-day trial has ended, but no sentencing date has been set.
– This story was first published by [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-21/julian-assange-extradition-challenge-court-hearing-continues/103496312
ABC]
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