When he was president of the United States, Donald Trump asked the CIA to present several options to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, in London, but the plan was not carried out because the British authorities did not see it clearly. The Australian journalist’s lawyers alleged this Tuesday as an argument to prevent his imminent extradition to the United States.
The ability to hatch plots of this nature seems more typical of Vladimir Putin, who has poisoned former KGB agents turned British informants in England, than of an American president. But along those lines, Stella Morris, Assange’s wife, compared the case of her husband with that of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalni, and said that “if he is sent to the United States he will suffer the same fate, his life is at stake.” of the”.
Assange’s defense, on the first day of a hearing that will decide whether or not his extradition to Washington, claimed to have the testimony of a protected witness about Trump and the CIA’s plans to get rid of the controversial journalist. The alleged conspiracy is being investigated by the Spanish courts, because a security firm based in Spain would have been commissioned to spy on Assange during the seven years of his stay in the Ecuadorian embassy.
After the Supreme Court ratified the decision of a lower court authorizing the extradition of the founder of Wikileaks, and the former British Home Secretary Priti Patel signed the order, the hearing that concludes this Wednesday is Assange’s last appeal before the British justice to prevent him from being handcuffed and put on a plane to the United States, where he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison. He would only have to go to the European Court of Human Rights and have his case accepted.
Assange’s lawyers asked the judges to reopen the process, with the central argument that it is not an ordinary crime but rather political persecution, revenge by the United States for having plundered (with the help of Chelsea Manning) hundreds of thousands of confidential documents on murders of civilians, kidnappings and torture by American agents and soldiers, and for having divulged the names of its agents in the Middle East. If he is sent to Washington, he will in all likelihood suffer disproportionate punishment, he will be deprived of a fair trial and his human rights, the legal team noted.
In this Wednesday’s session the two judges will hear the allegations of the United States government, which says that they are not persecuting Assange for the publication of the documents, but for conspiring with Chelsea Manning to hack the computer systems of the Pentagon and the Department of State, which is a crime that – they claim – has nothing to do with freedom of the press and the exercise of investigative journalism.
From the early hours of the morning, several hundred people (including former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn) gathered in front of the High Court complex to support Assange with the noise of drums and whistles, while some cars honked their horns. “What is going to be resolved is the future of the press, and the ability to expose government crimes and cases of political corruption without fear of persecution, is the power of the people against the State,” declared Labor MP Apsana Begun.
The Wikileaks publication occurred when Barak Obama was president, but he did not press charges. On the other hand, Donald Trump did it after the fact, and Joe Biden has maintained them.
