The rain this Wednesday threatened to weaken the spirit of those who are demonstrating in London these days in defense of Julian Assange and freedom of the press, but at 10:30 a.m. (11:30 a.m., Spanish peninsular time) the second session of the trial begins , which must decide the fate of the former Wikileaks editor, the short area of pavement in front of the main entrance to the Royal Courts of Justice building was once again full of dozens of people supporting the prisoner.
The two justices, Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson, could announce their decision late this afternoon, although the legal complexity of the matter – and its political sensitivity – could lead both justices to take a few days before it is announced Verdict. In any case, at the end of the hearing, protest organizers called on participants to march through the streets of London, ending at the doors of Downing Street, home of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. .
The second day of the hearing was dominated by the arguments and claims of the US government's legal representatives, who are calling on the British executive to extradite Assange.
Lawyer Clair Dobbin has tried to undermine the main argument of Assange's defense. This means that the charges against the prisoner are based on “political motivations”. The U.S. Attorney's Office plans to charge the former hacker with 17 felony counts of the Espionage Act of 1917 and another count of computer intrusion. Lawyers for the former Wikileaks editor have defended that the nature of the offenses envisaged in such an anachronistic law are political in nature – which, they claimed, is an act of espionage – and that it is therefore not provided for in the UK extradition treaty and the United States.
Although there are few precedents for the purpose pursued by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Dobbin asserted, “it is based on principles established over time,” such as that “journalists have no immunity when they break the law.”
The decision to give the green light to Assange's extradition was adopted in 2022 by then British Home Secretary Priti Patel after the Supreme Court accepted the guarantees offered by Washington for the prisoner's safety and the measures to be taken to prevent him from doing so. to end his own life.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
But the insistence on prosecuting the Wikileaks founder came from Donald Trump's administration. Former United States President Barack Obama had already commuted the sentence of soldier Chelsea Manning, the main source of secret US security documents published by the portal that revealed serious episodes of dirty wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Julian Assange's wife Stella Assange leaves the High Court of Justice in London this Wednesday. Carl Court (Getty Images)
Life in danger
Dobbin constantly referred to Manning as Assange's necessary accomplice and accused both of endangering the lives or physical safety of US intelligence officers. “The complainant [Assange] “There is a serious and imminent danger” that these people “will suffer physical harm or danger,” he said, and Wikileaks and Assange himself “are thereby damaging the capabilities of U.S. forces and also jeopardizing the interests of the United States.” endangered,” he claimed.
The lawyer has also sought to refute the idea that acts of espionage are political in nature or that British law itself provides for this exception.
“The starting point must, as always in these cases, be a fundamental presumption of good faith on the part of those countries with which the UK has long-standing relations,” the lawyer told the judges.
The US government's legal team has also tried to convince the judges of two things: that Assange should not be considered a journalist, nor that there is evidence to support the defense's statement the previous day that the CIA had planned to kill Assange murder hackers.
The global campaign to defend Assange goes beyond the legal details of the case to put political pressure on the British and American governments to stop prosecuting the former WikiLeaks editor and release him. Not only was he imprisoned under diplomatic protection in the short space of the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years, but he also spent the last five years in the British high-security Belmarsh prison.
The demand for their freedom is also the defense of freedom of the press, which would be seriously threatened in the future by a precedent of this kind: if the government of Rishi Sunak extradites the publisher of WikiLeaks to Washington for exposing war crimes and questionable actions by the US government that deserves to be revealed in the public interest.
Protesters in defense of Julian Assange, outside the High Court of Justice in London this Wednesday.HANNAH MCKAY (Portal)
Follow all international information on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_