The hunt is almost over after 14 years of relentless persecution, with the prey now just one step away from extradition to the United States: whose prisons – family members and supporters around the world say – could become his grave. For Julian Assange, the last hopes of a short-term green light from the British judiciary in the next few days will at least be used to examine a further substantive appeal as to whether or not he should be handed over to the foreign authorities.
The endgame in the trenches of the kingdom's courts ended today after two days of hearings before two judges at the High Court of London. Who took the time to evaluate the opposing arguments of the parties in the appeal against the first instance's refusal to reopen the proceedings.
A case on which the fate of a certain information idea depends, but also the personal one of the former Australian enfant terrible, co-founder of WikiLeaks and antagonistic model of online journalism: who has become a kind of public enemy number one in Washington because he has been hiding since 2010 had allowed to disclose around 700,000 confidential documents – authentic and not without embarrassing revelations, including on war crimes between Iraq and Afghanistan – stolen from the Pentagon or the State Department thanks to whistleblower symbols Chelsea Manning.
The preliminary outcome of the hearings was communicated to Assange in his cell, as he was not only unable to attend in person but also unable to assist via video transmission due to the deterioration in increasingly precarious health reported by the lawyers and his wife Stella after almost 5 years of preventive detention in the grim maximum security prison at Belmarsh (followed by seven years as a refugee in the walled enclosure of a room in the Ecuadorian embassy in London). The decline is reflected in the rest, the defiant look aside, in the latest image of a “political prisoner” leaked today by WikiLeaks, in which Julian appears almost like a clone of Dumas' Abbot Faria, at least 10 years older than his wife Register confirmed 53 office.
An outcome about which Stella Assange showed, however, that he has no great illusions when she addressed hundreds of demonstrators – including an Italian delegation from the 5 Star Movement – who gathered in London today under the banner of “FreeAssange “campaign gathered. People who Stella, a South African human rights lawyer, had invited to continue protesting “until Julian is free.” Also to “show the judges that the world is watching them” and warn them that moving to America is actually a matter of “life or death” for the husband: in his opinion, not much different than what is currently happening in What happened to Russia was Vladimir Putin to Alexei Navalny.
Tones that are supported, among others, by newspapers and journalist organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, UN experts and the current Labor government of Anthony Albanese in Canberra. And yet it is by no means certain that they will be enough to convince Justices Sharp and Johnson, who have the final say on behalf of London's High Court, against the backdrop of a trial that has so far been largely independent of the defense's arguments was.
Judges in front of whom Assange's lawyers Edward Fitzgerald and Mark Summers, as well as Clair Dobbin, responsible for representing the US Department of Justice, staged the final episode – apart from possible queues at the European Court of Human Rights – The Dove. With the first, which invokes the scenario of “persecution of the legitimate journalistic activity” of their client and the right to raise, in Assange's protection, not only the concerns about his health, but also the indiscretions that have occurred in recent years regarding the Plans discussed with the CIA were revealed during the administration of Donald Trump on the hypothesis of a kidnapping or murder of the damned. And Dobbin dismissed any suspicion of “political revenge,” ruling that Assange had “gone beyond the bounds of journalism,” endangering the lives of U.S. informants or “encouraging the activities of hackers like Manning.”
The Washington lawyer did not miss the opportunity to “assure” that the founder of WikiLeaks will not be sentenced in the United States to the maximum sentence of 175 years in prison feared by his defense lawyers, even though the indictment against him remains based on the deadly charge of WikiLeaks' violation is based on the Espionage Act of 1917, an old draconian law that previously only applied to spies or military traitors, certainly not to non-American citizens, and certainly not to events involving the publication of secret documents in the media.
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