INTERVIEW
Hours after his arrest, the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange was convicted Thursday by the British justice for violating the conditions of his provisional release, while he was a refugee for seven years at the Embassy of Ecuador in London . Juan Branco, his French lawyer, denounces on Europe 1 a "political affair" and calls to Emmanuel Macron.
"He has done great service to France"
"We will fight with all our strength, with all the legal tools that we can mobilize, but this is a political affair.It is clear that the end of his political asylum is the result of a negotiation between the Ecuadorian president. and the United States, "said the council, close to the insubordinate France and the far left. In his view, the United Kingdom "only acts as the factotum of the United States, without any autonomy of decision".
To avoid the extradition of the founder of WikiLeaks in the United States, Juan Branco calls on France and its president to exert "political pressure". According to him, Julian Assange should indeed "be the object of a reward on behalf of France".
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"He has done great service to France, revealing in particular how the personal and professional communications of our three former Presidents of the Republic and their entourage were spied on, and how any French company that participated in public procurement abroad was systematically plundered in his information by the NSA.This act, which he committed at the risk of his life, it has probably saved thousands of jobs, "says the lawyer.
The Australian has a special link with France, since there is a child. This is also where he created Wikileaks in 2006, says Juan Branco, who launches a final argument: "The values that are those of this man are those of our country."
"We punish whoever reveals the crimes, not those who committed them"
The cybermilitant became known in 2008 by revealing a video of the US military showing two Reuters photographers, killed by an Apache helicopter in Iraq, and then broadcasting hundreds of thousands of pager messages sent to the United States on September 11, 2001.
"We punish the one who reveals war crimes and crimes against humanity, not those who committed them", is still indignant Juan Branco. And to send a last message to the political authorities of the continent but also to the media in particular: "we are all responsible for the fact of having left this person abandoned".