Ahmet Gurhan Kartal
18 February 2020•Update: 18 February 2020
LONDON
The extradition case against Julian Assange is a highly political case and it constitutes a great danger for the future of journalism, WikiLeaks’ editor Kristinn Hrafnsson said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a special press conference held by the Foreign Press Association, Hrafnsson described WikiLeaks co-founder Assange a “political prisoner”.
He said: “It is a highly political case. It was political in 2010 when the U.S. government wanted to take down the WikiLeaks. It was political when people were calling the assassination of Assange.”
The case was political when then-CIA chief and now U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service” or when U.S. Vice President Mike Pence travelled to Ecuador twice to convince the leaders of the Latin American country to have a deal of extradition of Assange in return of a $10 billion debt write-off from the IMF and the World Bank, Hrafnsson added.
He also said: “I say repeatedly that Julian Assange is a political prisoner… and therefore we need to rely on politicians to turn this around,” adding that he “would not be worried at all” if it was a normal case “but this is a political case and what’s at stake is not just life of Julian Assange who faces 175 years of in prison if extradited; it is the future of journalism.”
“This is the greatest attack on journalism… in the world,” he stressed.
The editor of WikiLeaks also said he saw Assange about 10 days ago and his situation has improved as his years-long isolation has ended but “he is trying to get ready for the most important case of his life in absurd circumstances.”
Also appearing at the press conference, Andrew Wilki, an independent MP from Australia, said the extradition of Assange would set a dangerous precedent.
“This will establish a precedent that if you are a journalist who does anything that offends any government in the world, then you face the very real prospect of being extradited to that country,” he added.
Echoing Hrafnsson, Wilki said the case is “about the future of journalism.”
Speaking at the conference, George Christensen, another Australian MP from Liberal Nationals, said he hoped that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson “withdraws this case that is before the courts.”
“I am a big fan of [U.S. President Donald] Trump, I am a big fan of Bojo [Boris Johnson] but I’ll tell you what I value more: free speech,” he said.
Christensen said Johnson had recently spoken about how he believed the extradition treaty with the U.S. was somewhat imbalanced, to the cost of the U.K.
One of the biggest extradition cases in British courts is expected to start next week.
The press conference came on a day when a letter by 117 physicians and psychologists from 18 different countries urged the British government to end “the psychological torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange”.
The letter published earlier on Tuesday by medical journal the Lancet said if Assange died in a U.K. prison, “he will have effectively been tortured to death.”
It said: “Much of that torture will have taken place in a prison medical ward, on doctors’ watch. The medical profession cannot afford to stand silently by on the wrong side of torture and the wrong side of history, while such a travesty unfolds.”
Also Tuesday morning, speaking to BBC, Julian Assange’s father John Shipton said: “The ceaseless anxiety that Julian’s been under for now 10 years, it has had a profoundly deleterious effect.”
“I can’t speculate onto his state of mind, but I imagine that he will be really worried because being sent to the U.S. is a death sentence,” he added.
Assange will face 18 counts of hacking the U.S. government computers, and violating the espionage law if he is extradited to the U.S., and a potential prison sentence for years.
He was dragged out of the Ecuador’s embassy building in London last year, where he took refuge for more than seven years.
British police said he was arrested for skipping his bail in 2012 and on behalf of the U.S. due to an extradition warrant.
Later, he was found guilty of breaking his bail terms in 2012 after failing to surrender to security services by the Westminster Magistrates’ Court and given a 50-week prison term.
Assange was due for a release on Sept. 22 last year, but he is being held for longer on “substantial grounds” that he would abscond.
