The founder of WikiLeaks, who is accused of espionage by the United States for having broadcast hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010, risks a sentence of a hundred and seventy-five years in prison. For three years, he has been detained in the United Kingdom. The country gave its approval to an extradition of the whistleblower last June.
mo12345lemonde with reuters
He faces a hundred and seventy-five years in prison. The founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange, who tries to avoid extradition in the United States for the broadcasting of thousands of classified documents, formed an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), confirmed Friday, December 2 European jurisdiction with the Reuters agency.
This appeal aims to contest the decision, taken by the British authorities at the end of June, to approve his extradition to the United States, claimed for more than ten years by Washington. The 51 -year -old Australian is on British soil, where he spent more than seven years reclusive in the Equator Embassy in London, before being arrested in 2019.
He is prosecuted by the American justice for eighteen charges linked to the publication by Wikileaks, from 2010, of more than 700,000 classified documents relating to American military and diplomatic activities, in particular in Iraq and In Afghanistan.
Heads of State and the media require the continuation of proceedings
On Wednesday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that he had personally asked US officials to end legal proceedings against the Australian national. “Some time ago, I asserted my point of view according to which too much, it is too much. It is time that this affair was completed at its end,” said Albanese in front of the Australian Parliament.
Two days earlier, Mo12345lemonde and four other international media (The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais and Der Spiegel) also called on the US government to abandon the prosecution against the founder of Wikileaks, arguing, in a column common, that “publish is not an offense”.
The Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, was also said on November 22, said in favor of the liberation of Mr. Assange, saying “to support the world struggle for the freedom of the journalist Julian Assange”, in a Message posted on twitter , supported by a photo from his meeting with two wikileaks delegates the day before.
“I will ask President Biden with other Latin American presidents not to charge a journalist simply for having said the truth,” added the first leftist president in Colombia history, elected in June.
To contest his extradition in the United States, Julien Assange also seized the High Court of London several months ago, which had to make its decision at the beginning of 2023.