“If he is extradited to the US, he will not survive”: warning from Assange’s wife

If he is extradited, “he will not survive.” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been trying since this Tuesday to get British justice of last resort against his extradition to the United States, which wants to try him for the massive leak of documents. As the hearing approaches, his supporters are warning of risks to the life of the 52-year-old Australian, who has been detained in the United Kingdom for nearly five years.

“If he loses, he will no longer have the opportunity to appeal” in the United Kingdom, his wife Stella Assange, with whom he had two children while he was sequestered in the embassy, ​​told the BBC on Monday from Ecuador. British capital. “We hope that we will have time to refer the case to the European Court of Human Rights” in order to intervene in time, she stressed. “If he is extradited to the United States, he will not survive,” repeated his wife, the mother of his two children.

Risk of suicide if extradited

In January 2021, British justice initially ruled in favor of the WikiLeaks founder. Citing the risk of suicide for the WikiLeaks founder, Judge Vanessa Baraitser refused to give the green light for extradition. But this decision was later overturned, and in June 2022 the British government accepted his extradition to the United States.

“The psychiatrists who examined Julian in prison all came to the same conclusion: he risks harming himself, committing suicide,” Stella Assange complained in an interview with Franceinfo. She said “isolation will be the trigger, and the US will undoubtedly put him in solitary confinement.”

A number of other supporters of the Australian claim that he is at risk of committing suicide. “Julian Assange suffered from recurrent depressive disorder for a long time. He was found to be a suicide risk,” the UN special rapporteur on torture said in early February. independent expert Alice Jill Edwards. She then asked the British government to suspend extradition proceedings.

She said: “The risk that he will be placed in prolonged solitary confinement despite his fragile mental health, and that his conviction may be disproportionate, raises the question of whether Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States would be consistent with the UK’s international obligations in the field of human rights.

“He could have been killed”

But Stella Assange also fears her husband will be killed on American soil. “He could have been killed, and this is not a personal delusion. According to some reports, Mike Pompeo, as head of the CIA, made and asked for specific proposals on how to kill Julian,” she assures franceinfo, meaning “discussions until the White House kidnaps him, kills him…” In 2021 Yahoo News published CIA discussions dating back to 2017 about the possible murder of Julian Assange. American intelligence has never confirmed this data.

In an attempt to reassure him about how he would be treated, the United States confirmed that he would not be incarcerated at the maximum security ADX prison in Florence, Colorado, nicknamed the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” and that he would receive the clinical and psychological care he needed. The Americans also suggested that he might ask to serve his sentence in Australia. These guarantees convinced the British justice system, but not Julian Assange’s supporters, who condemn political persecution.

Julian Assange faces up to 175 years in prison. He is being prosecuted for publishing more than 700,000 confidential documents since 2010 about American military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. The WikiLeaks founder was arrested by British police in 2019 after seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape charges, and fired in 2019. He is currently being held at Belmarsh maximum security prison in east London.

Expressions of support for Julian Assange have increased in recent days. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has himself criticized the US accusation, and the Australian parliament last week passed a motion calling for an end to it. “This issue cannot continue indefinitely,” he told parliament, ensuring he was raising Julian Assange’s case “at the highest level” in the UK and US.