Assange set to face extradition
UNITED STATES/BRITAIN: Wiki-Leaks has indicated that its founder Julian Assange is ready to face extradition, following US President Barack Obama’s decision to free a former soldier jailed for handing over classified documents to the anti-secrecy organisation.
The outgoing president used his final hours in the White House to allow Chelsea Manning to go free nearly 30 years early. The transgender former intelligence analyst, born Bradley Manning, said she had passed on government and military documents to raise awareness about the impact of war.
Assange, who has been living at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 for fear of being extradited to the US, praised campaigners for their role in the decision.
Manning’s planned release in May appears to pave the way for Assange’s self-imposed exile to come to an end.
The organisation last week tweeted: ‘‘If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of Doj (Department of Justice) case.’’
Assange was interviewed in the embassy in November in the presence of prosecutors from Sweden, where he faces a sex allegation. He denies the claims, but believes he faces extradition to the US for questioning over the activities of Wiki-Leaks if he leaves the embassy.
Melinda Taylor, a member of Assange’s legal team, insisted that previous comments made about the implications of the Manning case still stood. ’’Everything that he has said he’s standing by,’’ she said.
A White House official said there was no connection between Manning’s commutation and renewed US government concern about Wiki-Leaks’ actions during last year’s presidential election, or Assange’s promise to accept extradition if Manning was freed.
Manning has been a focus of a worldwide debate on government secrecy since she provided more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to Wiki-Leaks – a leak for which she was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Obama, in one of his final acts before leaving office, reduced her sentence to seven years, angering some Republicans.
‘‘This is just outrageous,’’ House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said, calling the decision a ‘‘dangerous precedent’’ for those who leaked materials about national security.
Manning twice tried to kill herself last year and has struggled to cope as a transgender woman in the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas men’s military prison.
She has accepted responsibility for leaking the material – a factor that fed into Obama’s decision, a White House official said.
He said the decision was based on Manning’s sentence being longer than sentences given to others who had committed comparable crimes. – PA, Reuters