Peres Esquivel asks the UK to prevent the extradition of Assange

According to the campaign to extradite Assange, the Argentine intellectual sent a letter in English to Britain’s Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who has held the Australian journalist’s future in her hands since the London High Court ruled in April that an earlier ruling against him was issued. Transfer to the territory of North America.

After recalling that the first instance judge opposed the extradition of Assange for fear that his precarious mental health could lead to suicide in a US prison, Perez Esquivel Patel warned of the potential for dire consequences for the cyber activist if the UK decided to extradite him. to American justice.

The United States intends to prosecute the journalist for publishing classified files on the WikiLeaks site, in which war crimes committed by its army in Iraq and Afghanistan and thousands of documents affecting American diplomacy were revealed.

If Assange is tried and convicted by a US court, Assange, who has been held in a British maximum security prison since his arrest at the Ecuadorean embassy in London in April 2019, could be sentenced to 175 years in prison out of 17 charges against him. .

The 1980 Nobel Peace Prize-winning Argentine thinker, however, deemed Washington’s request illegal and arbitrary, and urged the Minister of the Interior to defend the rule of law and refuse to extradite.

He also reminded him that many international organizations, including the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, as well as dozens of former presidents and heads of state, have expressed concern about Assange’s situation and demanded his release.

I join and endorse the growing collective concern about violations of the human, civil and political rights of Mr. Julian Assange, added Perez Esquivel, who also warned that the persecution of the WikiLeaks founder sets a bad precedent for press freedom. Universal jurisdiction of the United States.

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