The Australian has been detained in London for two years after being removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he spent seven years with asylum.
2021 did not change the situation of activist Julian Assange, who has been detained in London since 2019 and with the uncertainty of whether in the end he will have to face American justice in his territory or will end up avoiding extradition.
However, ten days ago the US government gained an advantage when an English appeals court annulled the previous decision not to surrender him.
Washington wants to judge the founder of the leaking website WikiLeaks for the publication as of 2010 of some 700,000 secret diplomatic and military documents, mainly related to the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The appeals court ordered that the case be sent to the Interior Ministry, which has the last word on any extradition.
This, after in the first instance Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked the extradition in January, considering that Assange, of fragile mental health, could commit suicide if he was handed over to the United States judicial system.
According to Carlos Poveda, Assange’s private lawyer in Ecuador, this first denial was endorsed by psychiatrists who said that due to the tension that imprisonment in severe conditions could generate, there was a danger of suicide.
Poveda mentions that after the second decision two appeals are pending, one before a higher instance in which it is indicated that after the first decision, when extradition was denied, only the risk of suicide was taken into account and not that matters are being criminalized. freedom of expression. The other appeal, which will be presented this week before the Supreme Court in London, is on the decision of December 10, so there is not yet a “green light” for extradition and it will still be subject to review.
“It is as if we were in a tie. One in favor (at the beginning of the year) and one against (December 10) … but there is also another way, the European Court of Human Rights, which is a simile of what the Inter-American Human Rights System is for Ecuador ”, Poveda says, adding that the US appeal has lasted almost a year and the new appeal in favor of Assange could last as long.
What the defense wants in the meantime is for Assange to get out of his detention, as he has no pending investigation or sanction, which is why his current deprivation of liberty in the highest security prison in London with isolation measures seems an excessive abuse, when In 2020 he had already finished the sanction imposed of 50 weeks in detention for violating his conditional freedom for several years while being in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
British authorities have said he is being held for fear that he will leave London or something similar will happen with the Ecuadorian embassy. Even Mexico has offered him asylum.
Poveda states that of the 18 charges for which he requests it, 17 -which are based on the espionage law of that country- violate freedom of expression and in that sense are situations that affect fundamental rights that almost all States have, and that in the US they have to do with the first amendment. Another charge for the law of computer fraud and abuse, especially for the dissemination of military records and other confidential documents leaked by Private Chelsea (then Edward) Manning, who has already been pardoned.
The US government claims that the release of unedited documents endangered the lives of its informants. If he is extradited, he could be sentenced to a maximum of 175 years, although the exact sentence is difficult to calculate.
For Poveda it would be an affectation for the people who bring to light the abuses of the States.
Amnesty International has questioned the guarantees of Washington and Reporters Without Borders “condemned” a decision with “dangerous implications for the future (…) of press freedom in the world.”
Health condition
Assange suffered a minor stroke in jail at the end of October, in the middle of a legal battle against his extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States, his partner Stella Moris recently declared.
The newspaper Mail on Sunday reported that Assange, 50, suffered a “transient ischemic attack,” during which blood flow to part of the brain was briefly stopped.
Poveda confirmed that he is quite deteriorated, he has a drooping right eyelid, concentration and memory problems, he has lost a lot of weight, a very complicated personal situation. With problems that come even from the last years in the embassy.
“I think this constant game of chess, battle after battle, this extreme stress, is what caused Julian this stroke on October 27,” Stella Moris said, adding that she feared her partner would be the victim of one more stroke. serious.
During the seven years that he lived in a room in the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange secretly had two children with Morris, a member of his legal team and soon his wife.
History of other cases
Juan Pablo Albán, professor at the College of Jurisprudence of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, comments that there are antecedents that can give an idea of what can happen in these types of cases, especially when the country requesting the extradition has the death penalty for those charges.
The State that is asked to surrender the person who is subject to the passive extradition process must obtain guarantees of a diplomatic nature to the effect that capital punishment will not be imposed in the event that he is found guilty after a due process of law.
It must also be remembered that whoever requests extradition cannot prosecute the detainee for something other than the crime for which he requested it, according to international law.
Another factor for the judgment of the judges (of this case) is that England has already been singled out and condemned internationally by the European Court of Human Rights in the framework of a case that is in fact a reference on extradition issues and its impact when the country to which he is extradited has the death penalty: Soering v. United Kingdom.
Jens Soering was a German student at the University of Virginia who with his Canadian girlfriend decided to kill her parents. After the murder they fled to England from where they were extradited to the US But in that double murder case the European Court considered that the diplomatic guarantees offered by the US had not been sufficient and that the mere fact that in that country There was a death penalty for the crime of which he was accused, it was constitutive of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and consequently there was a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention, the norm that protects personal integrity. And this, considering that in the end Soering was not given capital punishment but life imprisonment.
“I think there is a combination of factors that the judges will certainly take into account. The first is that the United Kingdom already has as a precedent an international conviction for granting bad extraditions in cases where the death penalty could be applied in the United States. Second, there are international law safeguards that there will be no prosecution for other crimes and that could motivate denial of extradition on suspicion that Assange could be prosecuted for other crimes later. Third, it will be necessary to see the level of guarantees offered, because the fact that the first level court has agreed to the possibility of extradition does not mean that the guarantees are sufficient, “says Albán, who recalls that there is also the analysis by the “Principle of non-refoulement”, which establishes that the person should not be handed over if it is feared that they will be subjected to human rights violations.
The lawyer also recalls that if indeed the United Kingdom promised to Ecuador not to extradite Assange when the latter gave him permission to arrest him at the embassy, that may be an important factor in the future. However, a document of that agreement has not been publicly seen.
Although the fact that Australia, Assange’s birth country, is against extradition would in the end have more weight than Ecuador because of its position and relationship with the United Kingdom and the United States. Not forgetting that the United Kingdom courts are not so pressurable as would be those of any Latin American country in this case that has a great political load.
Meanwhile, Poveda also affirms that Assange is still Ecuadorian and has never had consular assistance. As well as that his case was contested before the National Court of Justice. (I)
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
