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The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, was absent this Wednesday from the second and final session of the trial in which a London court is considering his appeal to prevent extradition to the United States.
Assange was also not present at the start of the hearing at the High Court of Justice in London on Tuesday, where the Australian left the UK as a last resort to avoid extradition to the US, where he is accused of espionage.
“He was not feeling well and is not present,” his lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said Tuesday when announcing his client's illness.
Assange's lawyer on Tuesday defended freedom of information to prevent his extradition to the United States, arguing that the lawsuit has “political motivations.”
Two judges will soon decide whether the UK will extradite the founder of WikiLeaks to the US, which wants to put him on trial over the massive leak of confidential documents.
If extradited, he could face up to 175 years in prison in the USA.
“My client is being prosecuted for the normal journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information, information that is true and of obvious and important public interest,” Fitzgerald told the High Court of Justice in London on Tuesday.
Assange is accused in the US of having published more than 700,000 confidential documents since 2010 about the North American country's military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Wednesday, US lawyers asked the court to reject Assange's appeal.
Clair Dobbin, a lawyer representing Washington, told the court that the charges were “based on the rule of law and the evidence” against Assange.
“They indiscriminately and deliberately published to the world the names of people who served as sources of information for the United States,” he said, adding that this distinguished them from other media outlets.
“It is these facts that set him apart, not his political views,” Dobbin said.
On Tuesday, another of Assange's defense lawyers, Mark Summers, spoke of a US plot to kill or kidnap his client in 2017, according to a 2021 Yahoo News article.
Should Assange emerge successfully from this Wednesday's trial, he is likely to face another hearing in the UK at a date to be determined, at which it will be necessary to confirm that he will not be extradited.
If the London court confirms his extradition on Wednesday, Assange's last resort would be the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), his supporters noted in December.
In the days before the trial, his wife had warned about the 52-year-old Australian's fragile health.
“His health is deteriorating both physically and mentally. His life is in danger every day in prison and if he is extradited he will die,” he said on Thursday.
The WikiLeaks founder was arrested by British police in 2019 after being held for seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought refuge to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges. The charges were later dropped.
In January 2021, a British court initially rejected the US extradition request.
The North American appeal led to the British judiciary annulling the first decision in December 2021, paving the way for his extradition.
Assange's appeal was unsuccessful and in April 2022 a British court approved the extradition, which was accepted by the British government two months later.
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