The British Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, has ordered the extraction of Julian Assange in the United States. The final green light from the head of the Home Office, considered obvious, comes after the judicial procedure in the United Kingdom had been completed on the controversial affair of the Australian activist who risks serving a very heavy sentence in a US prison for having contributed to disseminate through the online platform Wikileaks confidential documents also containing information on war crimes committed by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“A black day” not only for freedom of information, but also for “British democracy”. This was reported by Stella Morris, a South African lawyer specialized in human rights who gave two children to Julian Assange during the years of his asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and then married him in recent months in the London prison of Belmarsh, sentencing him to unison with WikiLeaks the go-ahead by Priti Patel, interior minister of Boris Johnson’s government, for the disputed extradition of the Australian activist and journalist to the US: where he is in fact in danger of ending his days in jail.
“Anyone in this country who cares about freedom of expression should be deeply ashamed” of Patel’s approval of the extradition to the US, “a country that plotted to assassinate it,” Morris said. “Julian has done nothing wrong, he is a journalist and publisher punished for having done his duty to him” by revealing confidential documents and embarrassing information on acts committed by various states, including the US. “Priti Patel had the power to do the right thing, but she will be remembered as an accomplice of the United States, of their project to turn investigative journalism into a criminal enterprise,” he added. According to Morris, however, even if “the road to Julian’s freedom becomes long and tortuous”, the battle “does not end here”: starting with “the appeal that we will propose again to the High Court” in London and the organization of street protests. “You are not wrong – concludes the South African lawyer -, this has always been a political case, not a legal one. (A revenge for the fact that) Julian has published evidence on war crimes, torture, corruption of foreign officials committed by the country that is trying to have him handed over ”.
“This decision places Assange in great danger and sends a chilling message to journalists all over the world.” This was stated by Agnés Callamard, general secretary of Amnesty International.
