Where is Julian Assange? Will the U.S. extradite the WikiLeaks founder?
You’ve heard of WikiLeaks, right? It is a multinational media organization and library, founded by the publisher Julian Assange back in ‘06. They concentrate on the analysis and publication of major datasets of censored or restricted official materials that involve spying, war, and corruption. So far, they’ve published more than ten million analyses and documents.
Basically, “WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more.” Said Julian Assange in a Der Spiegel Interview.
They’ve built relationships based on contracts and safe communications with more than one-hundred prominent media organizations from all over the world. It provides them with sources for negotiations and changes to technical protections that would otherwise be practically impossible to obtain.
It’ll be an unrealistic hope for an organization to remain perfect forever. After all, they’re all crafted by imperfect human beings. But so far, WikiLeaks holds a flawless document authentication system. They have fought off any and all attempts at censorship. But where is Julian Assange now?
Julian Assange
Before we forget, WikiLeak’s publisher and journalists have won several awards, including The Economist New Media Award of 2008, Time Magazine Person of the Year, People’s Choice (highest global vote) of 2010, The National Union of Journalists Journalist of the Year of 2011, The Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal of 2011, The Global Exchange Human Rights People’s Choice Award of 2013.
But what happened to Julian Assange and what’s going on with him right now?
On April 11, 2019, Assange was arrested by the London Metropolitan Police. The reason being, he failed to make his appearance in court. Naturally, his arrest caught the attention of the media and the news went viral on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Julian was facing possible extradition to the United States, although Assange himself did not consent to it.
What is happening to Assange?
Julian was found guilty of breaching the Bail Act. (The Bail Act was created as a right to be granted bail before conviction, though there are exceptions.) Consequently, Assange was sentenced to fifty weeks in prison.
The United States government released a serious accusation against Assange which had something to do with the leaks provided by Chelsea Manning on May 23, 2019. Furthermore, Assange was charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917.
Resist suicide
The U.S. government has just won the right to expand its appeal for Julian Assange’s extradition. Representatives argue that he would be able to “resist suicide” in a U.S. prison.
See, the District Judge Vanessa Baraitser talked about there being a real risk of suicide. The U.S.,however, is aiming to have the medical evidence neuropsychiatry expert Michael Kopelman minimized and subsided. Professor Kopelman ruled that Assange had autism and chronic depression and thus was at a greater risk of suicide. But the U.S. has permission to question this.
Lord Justice Holroyde is saying it’s “. . . very unusual for an appeal court to have to consider the evidence of an expert who had been found to have ‘misled’ the court and added that it was ‘at least arguable’ that the judge erred in basing her conclusions on the professor’s evidence,” as stated in Independent.
Washington will make its full appeal come October. The High Court in London was informed that there is a “need for anxious scrutiny” of Julian’s reported mental health. “It requires a mental illness of a type that the ability to resist suicide has been lost.” She added that “Part of the appeal will be that Mr. Assange did not have a mental illness that came close to being of that nature and degree.”
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Juilan Assange is still in prison but is there more information yet to be discovered on this case? What do you think about the state of his mental health? Let us know down below!
