LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd September, 2020) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is at a high risk of committing suicide if extradited to the United States, where he would face espionage and computer misuse charges amounting to an end sentence of 175 years in prison, psychiatrist Michael Kopelman said on Tuesday at the UK criminal court deciding on the whistleblower's extradition to the US.
Kopelman, a witness for Assange's defense, testified in person at the London court of Old Bailey, where he said that the risk emerges from Assange's psychiatric disorders.
According to the emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at the King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, Assange has "a genetic disposition for clinical depression," as several members of his family have committed suicide.
"It's the imminence of extradition and an actual extradition that will trigger the attempt,'' Kopelman said.
Upon resuming Tuesday's hearing, defense lawyer Edward Fitzgerald requested the media following the extradition process via a remote link to use caution when reporting on the details presented by the psychiatrist, who has visited Assange multiple times at London's Belmarsh prison where the whistleblower is being kept since his arrest at the Ecuadorean embassy in April, 2019.
When asked to make a "mathematical prediction" of the suicide risk, Kopelman said that "all we can do is note there are abundance of known risk factors in Mr. Assange's case."
The hearing to decide whether Assange should be sent to the United States resumed on September 7 at the London Central Criminal Court, after six months of delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The US Department of Justice is seeking the whistleblower's extradition on 17 espionage and one count of computer misuse for the publication of classified information on the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and thousands of US diplomatic cables in 2010 and 2011.
Assange's fiancee Stella Morris wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that "the next three days will be very difficult for us. The court will hear medical evidence of Julian's physical and mental condition and his likelihood of survival if he is extradited to face 175 years in a US prison."
The 2003 UK Extradition Act states that if the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him, the judge must order the person's discharge or adjourn the extradition until it appears to him or her that the condition is no longer satisfied.
