America desperate to house Assange:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is making a last-ditch effort against extradition to the US. The US administration has approached the London High Court to demand his return to America. The US has charged him with espionage and leaking secret state information. Assange has been imprisoned in London since 2019. He is fighting a legal battle from there.
Julian Assange’s lawyers show no signs of dropping US charges or any other solution. A lawyer for Assange said this last Wednesday. According to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, the US Department of Justice is going to agree to a deal with Julian Assange’s lawyers. Under this, Assange must plead guilty. Instead, the charge of leaking secret documents against him will be dropped. The Wall Street Journal cited sources familiar with the report.
According to a report by The Guardian, the US Department of Justice plans to drop 18 charges against Assange under the Espionage Act. Assange must plead guilty to this. He can sign this agreement from a distance, i.e. sitting in London. If he signs this agreement, he will be released soon. Because he has already spent five years in a London prison.
However, Assange’s legal team said they were unaware of any change in strategy by the Justice Department.
Assange’s lawyer Barry Pollock said in an e-mail statement, “It is inappropriate for his lawyers to comment on this matter while the case is pending in the United States High Court.” But as far as we can tell, we have not been given any indication that the US Department of Justice intends to resolve the case. The US is still trying its best to extradite Assange from the UK on 18 charges against him. Assange may be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the US Department of Justice and Assange’s legal team have been in preliminary discussions over the past few months on a ‘guilty plea’.
In 2010, WikiLeaks leaked a large number of classified documents related to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between 2018 and 2020, Assange, an Australian citizen, was charged with multiple charges in the United States in connection with the leak of US secret documents. Assange was arrested by the London Metropolitan Police in 2019. Before this, he was sheltered at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years. The US has since sought Assange’s extradition.
90,000 documents and videos from the Afghanistan war, and 400,000 documents and videos from the Iraq war have been released on the WikiLeaks platform. In addition to this, WikiLeaks also released more than two and a half million secret documents sent from various US embassies. All those documents reveal the ugly face of the US administration.
Julian Assange took refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London from 2012 to 2019 to escape the wrath of the US administration. Ecuador expelled him in 2019. Since then, Assange has been in London jail.
Organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, United Nations Office of Investigation of Persecution Complaints Alice Gill, and Amnesty International have already moved to demand the dismissal of the extradition case against Julian Assange. Today there was a strong protest outside the London High Court demanding the release of Assange. Apart from London, there have been protests in various parts of the world demanding Assange’s release.
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