Amnesty International on Tuesday called on US President Joe Biden to lift all the charges from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, ahead of the preliminary appeal hearing
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th August, 2021) Amnesty International on Tuesday called on US President Joe Biden to lift all the charges from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, ahead of the preliminary appeal hearing.
In early July, London's High Court allowed Washington to appeal the January decision by a UK district court not to extradite Assange to the United States. The preliminary hearing is said to be held on Wednesday.
"This disingenuous appeal should be dismissed by the court and President Biden should take the opportunity to drop these politically motivated charges which have put media freedom and freedom of expression in the dock," Nils Muiznieks, the European director at Amnesty International, said in a statement.
Assange was arrested in London on April 11, 2019, and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail back in 2012, when he took refuge inside the Ecuadorean embassy in the UK capital to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was facing sexual assault charges that were later dropped by the Swedish court.
The whistleblower is wanted by the US Justice Department on espionage and computer fraud charges after WikiLeaks published thousands of secret files and classified information that shed light on war crimes committed by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He faces up to 175 years in solitary confinement inside a top security American prison if convicted in the US.
In January, UK district judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled not to extradite Assange to the United States, citing health reasons and the risk of suicide in the US prison system, but decided that he must wait in prison for the outcome of an appeal filed by US prosecutors.
