The wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has filed a new petition for review against the British government’s decision to extradite him to the United States, appealed on Monday for clemency from the American president.
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“Biden could end this at any time. It is not in the interest of the (American) administration that Julian be judged during an election period,” declared Stella Assange, during a conference at the Swiss Press Club in Geneva.
Photo: AFP
“The UK is sending signals that it is stepping up and wants to see Julian extradited. So Julian could very well be extradited by the end of the summer (…). The Biden administration will then have to deal with it and I don’t think it’s in their best interest,” she said.
The 52-year-old Australian national is being prosecuted in the United States for having published from 2010 more than 700,000 confidential documents on American military and diplomatic activities, in particular in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As such, he faces decades in prison.
Arrested by British police in 2019 after seven years confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden on sexual assault charges, he has been held for four years at the high prison. security in Belmarsh, east London.
According to Ms Assange, “the smartest thing for Biden to do would be to end all of this.”
The issue of her extradition is a legacy of the Trump era and poses a threat to democracy and the press, she told AFP.
His supporters present him as a martyr of press freedom.
Ms Assange, who is a lawyer, estimated that he could be extradited within weeks. The British government accepted his extradition in June 2022, but Julian Assange appealed.
During the press conference, his wife explained that this appeal was rejected about a month ago but that a new request for review has been filed.
“So there is one last chance,” she said. If the petition is successful, the case could go to a public hearing before two new High Court judges.
Otherwise, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) could be the last option to save Assange from extradition.
According to his wife, the state of health of the founder of WikiLeaks “is deteriorating”, recalling that he had suffered in 2021 from a “micro stroke”.