Assange: UN mocked for claiming jail term is harsh
THE United Nations has been ridiculed for claiming Julian Assange was punished too harshly after he skipped bail for nearly seven years.
The WikiLeaks founder – who lived in the Ecuadorian embassy in London from 2012 – is now in HMP Belmarsh in south-east London having been jailed for 50 weeks on Wednesday.
Yesterday, the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention condemned the ‘disproportionate sentence’. It said: ‘This treatment appears to contravene the principles of necessity and proportionality envisaged by the human rights standards.’ And it said it was ‘concerned’ Assange was being held in a high-security jail ‘as if convicted for a serious criminal offence’.
David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth, said the remarks were ‘beyond parody’. He said: ‘The UN contains a number of countries where people are routinely imprisoned without trial and harshly punished, yet they decide to home in on Britain.’
In 2016 the UN accused ministers of holding Assange ‘unlawfully’ – even though he was in the embassy by choice after losing an extradition battle to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault.