Assange ‘risked people’s lives’, hearing is told

COURT: WikiLeaks founder accused of ‘criminality’ as he fights extradition to US

Sources revealed by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “disappeared” after he put them at risk of torture and murder, a court has heard.

Opening his extradition hearing yesterday, James Lewis QC said the 48-year-old is guilty of “ordinary criminality” by stealing from and hacking into US government computers.

He told District Judge Vanessa Baraitser that the dissemination of specific classified unredacted documents put dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq at “risk of serious harm, torture or even death”.

He told Woolwich Crown Court, which is sitting as a magistrates’ court, that the US identified hundreds of “at-risk people” around the world and made efforts to warn them.

Assange is fighting extradition to the US where the Australian is wanted to face 18 charges in the Eastern District of Virginia over “one of the largest compromises of classified information” in the country’s history.

Representing Assange, Edward Fitzgerald QC said: “This extradition should be barred because the prosecution is being pursued for political motives and not in good faith.”

The extradition hearing will be adjourned at the end of this week of legal argument and continue with three weeks of evidence scheduled to begin on May 18.

Assange has been held on remand in Belmarsh prison since last September after serving a 50-week jail sentence for breaching his bail conditions while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.