Deutsche Welle :
A grand total of 1,776 days: That’s how long Julian Assange will have been detained in Britain’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison by Tuesday, when he faces what could be the final hearing in the tug-of-war over his extradition to the US.
Before that, the 52-year-old founder of the whistleblowing platform Wikileaks had spent seven years under diplomatic asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. And if US prosecutors have their way, he will soon be facing another 175 years in prison.
The hearing before the High Court in London will take up the question: Has Assange already exhausted all legal options for preventing his impending extradition to the US? Or can he continue to fight it in the British courts?
If the High Court clears the way for extradition, Assange could be charged and sentenced in the US under the Espionage Act.
The law was passed over 100 years ago to convict traitors and spies during World War I. Never before has it been used against a journalist.
The charge: Stealing and publishing classified information about US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with the help of whistleblower Chelsea Manning. According to US authorities, Assange and Manning’s actions also endangered the lives of US informants. In 2010, former Vice President and current US President Joe Biden even referred to Assange as a “high-tech terrorist.”
It was not Julian Assange’s fault, however, that the documents were published in their entirety and without redactions. In 2010, Wikileaks collaborated with leading media organizations – The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El Pais – to prepare the leaked information for publication. The password to the protected dataset was published in a book by one of the journalists. Wikileaks published the information only once it had already been made available. Furthermore, the US government has yet to provide any evidence that anyone has actually been harmed by the disclosures.
