WikiLeaks’ Assange to fight US attempt at extradition in UK
LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to fight for his freedom in a British court after a decade of legal drama, as he challenges American authorities’ attempt to extradite him on spying charges over the site’s publication of secret U.S. military documents.
Lawyers for Assange and the U.S. government are scheduled to face off Monday in London at an extradition hearing that was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
American prosecutors have indicted the 49-yearold Australian on 18 espionage and computer misuse charges adding up to a maximum sentence of 175 years. His lawyers say the prosecution is a politically motivated abuse of power that will stifle press freedom and put journalists at risk.
Assange attorney Jennifer Robinson said the case “is fundamentally about basic human rights and freedom of speech.”
“Journalists and whistleblowers who reveal illegal activity by companies or governments and war crimes — such as the publications Julian has been charged for — should be protected from prosecution,” she said.
American prosecutors allege that Assange conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
sThey also say he conspired with members of hacking organizations and sought to recruit hackers to provide WikiLeaks with classified information.
“By disseminating the materials in an unredacted form, he likely put people — human rights activists, journalists, advocates, religious leaders, dissidents and their families — at risk of serious harm, torture or even death,” James Lewis, a British lawyer acting for the U.S. government, told a hearing in February.
Assange argues he is a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection, and says the leaked documents exposed U.S. military wrongdoing. Among the files released by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
Journalism organizations and human rights groups have called on Britain to refuse the extradition request.
Typhoon warning: Japanese authorities Sunday ordered more than 1 million residents of western Japan to seek shelter as a major storm lashed the coast with high winds and threatened record-breaking flooding.
Typhoon Haishen sat off the coast of the western island of Kyushu gathering power and creating chaos in the region, where it knocked down power lines and disrupted flights and trains.
Local officials ordered 1.8 million people to evacuate seven prefectures across the region and recommended that 5.6 million others across 10 prefectures seek shelter before the storm, which was expected to pass by Japan without making landfall and head toward South
Korea.
The Japan Meteorological Agency issued its highest-level warning for the storm, cautioning that it would bring record-high tides and that residents should be prepared for “large-scale flooding.”
Hurricane deaths: Two additional deaths tied to Hurricane Laura were reported by the Louisiana Department of Health, bringing the storm’s total death toll in the state to 25.
The Health Department said a 52-year-old Grant Parish man who died of a heat-related illness while removing storm debris and a 25-year-old man in Natchitoches Parish died of electrocution after coming into direct contact with a power line.
The coroner has confirmed this death is stormrelated.
The Category 4 storm roared ashore in southwest Louisiana on Aug. 27. Five deaths in Texas were also attributed to the storm.
Hurricane Laura also killed nearly two dozen people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic en route to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Protest in Hungary: Thousands of students, faculty and supporters of Hungary’s University of Theater and Film Arts formed a human chain Sunday between their institution and parliament to protest government steps seen diminishing its autonomy.
Those at the protest passed from hand to hand a document declaring the school’s principles and goals, which was to be presented to lawmakers in Budapest. Organizers asked participants to wear masks and gloves because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the past few years, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s nationalist, conservative government has transferred several key universities to private foundations ruled by boards of directors loyal to the government.
While the government says the new structure will increase educational quality and make the institutions financially independent, critics see the reforms as efforts to limit the schools’ autonomy and bring them ideologically closer to the nationalist government.
Students at the University of Theater and Film Arts have barricaded themselves inside the building since Tuesday. A school official said Sunday that the start of classes would be postponed by a week.
Manhunt in England: British police were hunting a male suspect Sunday after one man was killed and seven people injured in late-night stabbings in a busy nightlife district in the central English city of Birmingham.
Police said the victims seemed to have been chosen at random in attacks that took place over a twohour period.
Chief Superintendent Steve Graham of West Midlands Police said detectives were investigating the motive but “there is absolutely no suggestion at all that this is terror-related.”
West Midlands Police said officers were called to reports of a stabbing shortly after midnight. That was soon followed by reports of other stabbings across the city center.
Graham said two of the seven injured people, a man and a woman, were in critical condition in hospitals. Five others received “relatively minor” injuries.
Birmingham is England’s second-largest city, 120 miles northwest of London.
Fort Hood deaths: The Navajo Nation has joined calls for an accounting of the deaths at Fort Hood after one of its members became the latest soldier from the U.S. Army post to die this year.
Pvt. Corlton L. Chee, 25, of Pinehill, New Mexico, died Wednesday after he collapsed following a physical fitness training exercise five days earlier, according to officials at the central Texas post.
He was the 28th soldier from Fort Hood to die this year, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.