Assange ‘too ill’ for court date

JULIAN Assange failed to appear for his latest court hearing yesterday after being moved to a prison medical ward.

The Wikileaks chief, 47, was expected to appear via video link from Belmarsh Prison in south-east London in his fight against extradition to the US.

But he was not there for yesterday’s five-minute hearing and chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot announced that he was ‘not very well’.

WikiLeaks says it has ‘grave concerns’ for its leader, who is accused with others of hacking into a Pentagon computer. Assange spent seven years at London’s Ecuadorian embassy, where he claimed asylum after being accused of rape in Sweden. That case has been resurrected and a hearing is set for next week.

WikiLeaks said: ‘His health has continued to deteriorate and he has dramatically lost weight. The decision of the prison authorities to move him into the health ward speaks for itself.’

His lawyer Per Samuelson said his health last Friday was so bad ‘that it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him’.

Assange is currently serving a 50-week sentence for bail violations after Ecuador ended his asylum and he was dragged out of the embassy by police.

Among supporters who packed the public gallery at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday was veteran journalist John Pilger, who said of Assange: ‘He’s in the prison hospital. When I saw him a couple of weeks ago he wasn’t very well. But then he’s been in an embassy in a confined space without natural light for almost seven years. He’s gone through an extraordinary physical and mental ordeal.

‘This is so shameful that we are even here today to consider the extradition of a journalist for trying to protect his sources.’