REPORTAGE
There were several hundred of them to defend Julian Assange. This Saturday afternoon, two days before British justice examines the request for extradition of the United States from the founder of Wikileaks, nearly 300 people gathered in the heart of London to cry out their support for the whistleblower.
"Journalism is not a crime"
Waving banners and signs "do not extradite Assange", or "journalism is not a crime", the crowd gathered around the Australian Embassy, the country of Julian Assange, before parading in the streets of the British capital. Among the demonstrators, mobilized to prevent an extradition synonymous with a trial for espionage, we find Henrietta. "He did this for freedom of expression, for all of us!", She claims at the microphone of Europe 1. "He is accused of having revealed war crimes, but in fact he told us things everyone should know. "
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"The Angel of Democracy"
In the crowd, figures also beat the pavement, like the father of Julian Assange, the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, but also stars like the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, crown on the head. "It says 'Angel' because Julian Assange is the angel of democracy," she says. "This case is the most important in the history of the planet it will set precedent". If she intends not to let her 'angel' be extradited, Taric fears that the demonstration will not serve.
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"There are hundreds of people, that's good. But we had to be five times more. We have to show that we don't trust this judicial system, they will just obey orders." If British justice allows the extradition of the whistleblower, who had disclosed thousands of classified documents on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Julian Assange will risk up to 175 years in prison. Aged 48, he has been held in the Belmarsh high-security penitentiary complex, south of London, since his arrest in April 2019 at the Ecuadorian embassy where he had taken refuge seven years earlier.