Australia will not challenge the extradition to the United States of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and expresses confidence in British justice, a minister said today.
A London court has formally ordered the extradition of Assange, an Australian national, to the United States to stand trial for leaking a series of confidential diplomatic and military documents about US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If convicted, Mr Assange could face up to 175 years in prison. He is still being held in the United Kingdom, in the Belmars High Security Prison.
“We have confidence in the independence and integrity of the British justice system,” Simon Birmingham, the finance minister in the government of right-wing Prime Minister Scott Morrison, told ABC television.
The Australian government will not object to the extradition, he added.
If no appeal is lodged – his attorneys have until May 18 – Julian Assange will be extradited within 28 days of a decision by British Home Secretary Pretty Patel.
Mr Birmingham also said Australia was providing consular assistance to its nationals.
An alliance of 25 human rights organizations – including Reporters sans Frontières and Human Rights Watch – has denounced the decision, calling it a “very serious threat to the free press in the United States and the rest of the world.”
Mr Assange has been trying to avoid extradition for more than a decade. He spent seven of them at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was charged with sexual abuse, which has since been dropped. He claimed that these accusations were in fact intended to be issued by the Swedish authorities in the USA.
The founder of WikiLeaks was arrested by British police in April 2019, after the then Ecuadorian government revoked the political asylum he had given him, and he was imprisoned.
SOURCE: AMPE
Source: Capital
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