Ailing Assange braces for legal fight
Confinement should allow for medical care
it’s up to the justice system to determine if (julian assange) committed a crime. but we can’t allow ecuador to become a centre for piracy and spying. that period in our history is over. — ecuador interior minister maria paula romo
• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has exchanged a small room at the Ecuadorean Embassy in central London for a cell at Belmarsh Prison, a grim institution in the southeast part of the city where he nevertheless has certain advantages he didn’t have when he was holed up, hiding from the law.
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said Friday that the ailing Assange should finally be able to receive medical care and will be able to meet with his lawyers more easily than he could in the embassy, where a feud with Ecuadorean authorities had led to a ban on most guests.
The 47-year-old Assange has extreme shoulder pain and tooth pain, Hrafnsson said.
For nearly seven years, Assange lived in the embassy without taking a step outside for fear of being arrested and sent to the U.S. to be prosecuted.
On Thursday, British authorities dragged the Australian native from the embassy, and U.S. authorities announced charges against him of conspiring to break into a Pentagon computer, setting up what is expected to be an epic legal and political battle over whether to extradite him to the U.S.
His arrest became possible after Ecuador revoked his political asylum, complaining that he was an obnoxious house guest who didn’t clean up after his cat, and that WikiLeaks was plotting to blackmail the Latin American country’s president.
At the prison, where he is being held while the extradition process plays out, “there are medical facilities there, access to dental care I would assume, and a garden to go out into,” Hrafnsson said.
“But comparing one prison to another and giving a star rating is not really what’s on my mind,” he said. “What’s on my mind is there’s an innocent man in prison for doing his job as a journalist, and that’s an outrage.”
He said Assange is in relatively good mental condition considering the stress of recent days.
The political debate over whether to extradite Assange is already taking shape, with Britain’s opposition Labour Party urging the government not to hand him over to the Americans. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted that the U.S. is prosecuting Assange because he exposed “evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Diane Abbott, Labour’s spokeswoman for domestic affairs, told Parliament: “It is this whistle-blowing into illegal wars, mass murder, murder of civilians and corruption on a grand scale that has put Julian Assange in the cross hairs of the U.S. administration.”
The politicization of the case reflects the clashing views of Assange as either a heroic whistleblower standing up to the mighty United States or a willing stooge who helped the Russians boost Donald Trump’s presidential campaign by publishing hacked emails that embarrassed his rival, Hillary Clinton.
Assange’s bid to fend off extradition could take years and involve several layers of appeal. He could also face a second extradition request if Sweden decides to pursue a rape case against him that was suspended in 2017, when he was in the embassy, beyond the reach of the law.
If found guilty of the U.S. charges, Assange could get five years in prison. His next court appearance is set for May 2 via a prison video link.
Extradition lawyer Ben Keith said the court will not assess the evidence against Assange to determine his guilt or innocence but will scrutinize whether the offence he is accused of in the U.S. would be a crime in Britain.
“The most likely outcome is that he will be extracted to the United States,” he said.
If Assange loses in extradition court, he could appeal several times and ultimately try to have his case heard at the European Court of Human Rights — unless Britain has left the European Union by that time.
In Ecuador meanwhile, an ace Swedish programmer who was an early, ardent supporter of WikiLeaks has been arrested in an alleged plot to blackmail President Lenin Moreno over his abandonment of Julian Assange.
But friends of Ola Bini say the soft-spoken encryption expert is being unfairly tar
there’s an innocent man in prison for doing his job.
geted for his activism on behalf of digital privacy.
Bini, 36, was arrested Thursday at the airport in the Ecuadorean capital of Quito as he prepared to board a flight to Japan. The arrest came just hours after Assange was evicted from the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Bini was carrying at least 30 electronic storage devices.
Bini’s lawyers said they have not been notified whether he’s been charged. Authorities said the plot hatched with two unidentified Russian hackers living in Ecuador involved threatening to release compromising documents about Moreno as he toughened his stance against the WikiLeaks founder.
“It’s up to the justice system to determine if he committed a crime,” Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo said Friday. “But we can’t allow Ecuador to become a centre for piracy and spying. That period in our history is over.”
Romo said Bini had travelled at least 12 times to meet with Assange at the London embassy. She said he was also in Venezuela earlier this year around the same time as a close aide to Moreno’s former mentor turned arch enemy, Rafael Correa.
The former president granted Assange asylum in 2012 and has been leading a campaign cheered on by WikiLeaks to expose corruption by Moreno that has included the release of damaging personal documents and photos, including several that showed him eating lobster in bed.