London (AFP)

The defense of Julian Assange accused Washington on Tuesday of basing the espionage lawsuit targeting the founder of Wikileaks on "lies", on the second day of the examination by the British justice of the request for American extradition.

The 48-year-old Australian is being prosecuted in the United States for having disseminated from 2010 more than 700,000 classified documents on American military and diplomatic activities, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prosecuted under the anti-spy laws of 1917 and for hacking, he faces up to 175 years in prison.

But the 18 heads of prosecution against Assange, arrested in April after seven years reclusive at the Embassy of Ecuador, are based on "lies, lies and more lies," accused one of the lawyers for the founder of Wikileaks, Mark Summers.

"It is difficult to imagine such an obvious example of an extradition request which so distorts the facts as known to the United States government," he said in a courtroom in the court of Woolwich (South East London).

"You will have the time to determine whether" this request is "fair, exact and correct," he pleaded.

In order to rule on the extradition request, the examination of which takes place this week and then three weeks from May 18, the British courts must in particular ensure that it is not disproportionate or incompatible with human rights. Man.

In his box, Assange, gray jacket on the shoulders, listens impassively, while outside manifest dozens of supporters to the one they consider a champion of freedom of expression.

Wikileaks initially worked with reputable newspapers to publish the leaks from the US State Department and the Pentagon, which caused a stir and scandalized Washington.

According to the lawyer, this partnership with the media had led to a rigorous editorial process, including work with American officials to ensure that the identity of the sources was not published.

Mark Summers said that in a book published in 2011, a Guardian reporter disclosed the password to access an unredacted source name database.

- "If you don't act ..."

He said Assange had called the White House to alert US officials of the impending publication on various sites, telling them, "If you don't act, people's lives will be put in jeopardy."

Thus, to say that Assange "deliberately endangered lives by dropping an unexpurgated database is knowingly incorrect," he argued.

On its website, the Guardian, "opposed to the extradition of Julian Assange", said that it was "entirely false" to say that the book "led to the publication of unredacted American records". "The book contained a password which Julian Assange had told the authors was temporary and would expire within hours," said the daily.

Lawyer John Lewis said on Monday that Assange's publications have put the lives of sources at risk.

At the start of the hearing on Tuesday, the defense protested the treatment inflicted on it. "Yesterday (Monday), Mr. Assange was handcuffed eleven times, exposed twice" at Belmarsh prison where he is being held, protested one of his counsel, Edward Fitzgerald.

Such treatment could "affect this procedure", the lawyer warned, asking judge Vanessa Baraitser to instruct the prison authorities to relax the measures around Assange.

The magistrate replied that her powers in this regard are "limited", and that she cannot order the prison authorities how to treat detainees, adding that she is waiting for Julian Assange to be treated fairly, like anyone else. else.

The US government lawyer supported the defense observations, stressing that he did not want Assange's treatment to "jeopardize" the proceedings.

© 2020 AFP