Assange's fiancée urges Biden to free WikiLeaks founder to show U.S. has changed

Record ID: 1623330

  • Title: Assange's fiancée urges Biden to free WikiLeaks founder to show U.S. has changed
  • Date: 25th June 2021
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (JUNE 24, 2021) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PARTNER OF WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE, STELLA MORIS, SAYING: "You know, any robust democracy has to accommodate, has to count on there being internal dissent, and that those dissenters will not be persecuted. And what's happened here is a very disturbing development within the world's greatest superpower, of a crackdown against the press."
  • Embargoed: 9th July 2021 10:10
  • Keywords: Julian Assange Stella Moris WikiLeaks extradition prison
  • Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,Europe
  • Reuters ID: LVA003EIWF613
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: President Joe Biden must let Julian Assange go free if he wants the United States to become a beacon for a free press once again and put the legacy of Donald Trump behind it, the fiancée of the WikiLeaks founder told Reuters.
    Washington has sought the extradition of Assange over his role in one of the biggest ever leaks of classified information, accusing him of putting lives in danger by releasing vast troves of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables.
    He has now spent nine years in jail or self-incarceration in Britain, and both Assange's fiancée Stella Moris and the British judge overseeing the extradition request have warned he may not survive a process to send him across the Atlantic.
    U.S. prosecutors and Western security officials regard Assange as a reckless enemy of the state whose actions threatened the lives of agents named in the leaked material.
    Supporters pit him as an anti-establishment hero who exposed U.S. wrongdoing in Afghanistan and Iraq and say his politically-motivated prosecution is an assault on journalism that gives a free pass to oppressive regimes around the world.
    WikiLeaks came to prominence when it published a U.S. military video in 2010 showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff.
    The Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president, opted not to prosecute over concerns about the precedent the case could set for free speech and journalists.
    But an effort to extradite Assange was launched in 2019 after he was bundled, head first, out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London where he had been living for seven years, for fear that he would be sent to the United states.
    British judge Vanessa Baraitser said in January that although she accepted the U.S. legal arguments in the case, she said Assange's mental health issues meant he would be at risk of suicide if extradited, leading to her rejecting the request.
    The U.S. Justice Department said in February it planned to continue to seek the extradition for Assange to face hacking conspiracy charges.
    Moris, who has two young boys with the Australian-born Assange, said the 49-year-old was very low but still fighting.
    She described his time in the top-security Belmarsh prison as akin to the way some journalists are treated in China and Saudi Arabia.
    "I think there's no doubt that Julian wouldn't survive an extradition," she said.
    Any robust democracy had to accommodate internal dissent without threatening persecution, she argued.
    She said she is hopeful that the case will be viewed differently under a Biden administration, but refused to say if his legal team had held talks with U.S. officials.
    Despite that hope, she said the couple are likely to marry soon inside Belmarsh rather than wait to hear his fate, after spending years with their "lives on hold."
    She said Assange had been given a huge lift last weekend when she was allowed to take her two sons to visit him in Belmarsh, allowing him to touch his children for the first time in over a year.
    (Production: Ben Makori)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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