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After almost ten years of the spread of "Collateral Murder" - the video of the Iraq war that put WikiLeaks in the eye of the hurricane - its founder, Julian Assange, finally appears before a British court in the extradition trial To united states. The appointment is this Monday, in the courts of Woolwich, next to the maximum security prison in Belmarsh, where Assange has been imprisoned since his arrest in April 2019 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The WikiLeaks founder will attend the trial in person and will be defended by a team coordinated by Baltasar Garzón, who will try to convince the judge that Assange (48 years old) is the victim of a "political persecution" and an offensive against press freedom . The Trump Administration will foreseeably argue that the First Amendment of the American Constitution is not applicable to foreigners and that Assange is neither more nor less than a spy , who deserves to be extradited and tried as such in a special court in Virginia.

"We are preparing conscientiously for a case in which the world's greatest superpower has been preparing for 10 years," warns Jen Robinson, a lawyer for Assange. The presentation of arguments will last one week and the second part of the trial, with the presentation of the evidence, will be held for three weeks in May.

The charges

The US authorities have filed 18 charges against Assange that could result in a penalty of 175 years in jail in total if he is found guilty. The central part of the accusation is the 17 charges related to the Espionage Act of 1917 for obtaining and publishing "classified information." To this is added a final charge (five years in jail) for "incitement to computer fraud", for helping Chelsea Manning (then known as soldier Bradley Manning) to enter with a false identity in the Administration databases North American.

Papers

WikiLeaks spread a total of 400,000 documents related to the war in Iraq, another 90,000 in the war in Afghanistan and 250,000 in the State Department (known as the "Cablegate"), plus hundreds of documents related to the Guantanamo prison. The defense of Assange has wanted to put on the table and input the leaked documents of the National Democratic Committee (DNC) during the 2016 US presidential campaign. According to Jen Robinson, Trump came to offer Assange the pardon if he declared that Russia did not It had nothing to do with the leaking of the DNC documents (something that the founder of WikiLeaks apparently refused, which has nevertheless maintained a privileged relationship with Russia during these dangerously lived years).

Politics

The case threatens to air Donald Trump's dirty rags again during his election campaign, and more specifically the role of his confidant Roger Stone, his alleged "link" with WikiLeaks, sentenced to 40 months in jail for lying to Congress and manipulating witnesses during the investigation of the 'Russiagate'. The trial will also test the relationship between Donald Trump and 'premier' Boris Johnson, who has suspended his trip to Washington because of growing tensions between the two since the British government granted part of the 5G infrastructure to the Chinese company Huawei. The leader of the Labor opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, has expressly asked the Government to block extradition. His spokesman for economic affairs John McDonnell has assured that the Assange case is " the Dreyfus case of our era " (in reference to the nineteenth-century legal persecution of the Jewish and French officer who was sentenced for treason in the midst of a climate of anti-Semitism) .

Precedents

In November 2010, after the dissemination of documents from Iraq and Afghanistan and the papers of the State Office, the Swedish prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant against Julian Assange, accused of sexual abuse and rape by two women. Assange turned himself in to the British police in December of that year, but was released on bail. In June 2012, he requested asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden. Following the departure of Rafael Correa and the inauguration of Lenín Moreno as president, Assange became an uncomfortable tenant . The defense of the founder of WikiLeaks will put on the table the case of espionage to which he was subjected in his last months at the Ecuadorian embassy on behalf of the Spanish company UC Global, investigated by the National Court. The Swedish Prosecutor's Office eventually dropped the charges against Assange, who always considered himself a victim of a plot to finally extradite the United States.

The jail

On April 11, 2019, British police entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrested Assange as soon as he lost asylum. That same day, the United States dusted an accusation against the founder of WikiLeaks for "computer intrusion." The founder of WikiLeaks was sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for violating his bail conditions and entered the maximum security prison in Belmarsh, where he was placed in an isolation cell. His physical and mental health deteriorated severely and his lawyers denounced the lack of access to his client. On May 23, the US Government charged him with another 17 charges under the Espionage law. The then Secretary of Interior Sajid Javid "certified" in June the US petition and the extradition process was launched.

Extradition

The extradition law between the United Kingdom and the United States has been questioned by the big parties over the "imbalance" in favor of Washington. In any case, the British judge instructing the case must determine whether the "offense" committed by the accused could have brought him to trial if it had happened in his territory. It will also consider the aggravating and mitigating factors of the case before deciding on the extradition request. Although the final decision will be political and will remain in the hands of the current secretary of Interior , the controversial Priti Patel. In any case, the parties may appeal the judicial decision: the fate of Assange could finally be left to the Supreme Court within one year.

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