LONDON: WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on Friday moved a step closer to facing criminal charges in the United States for breaking spying law and conspiring to hack government computers after Washington won an appeal over his extradition in an English court.
US authorities accuse Australian-born Assange, 50, of 18 counts relating to WikiLeaks’ release of vast troves of confidential US military records and diplomatic cables which they said had put lives in danger.
His supporters cast Assange as an anti-establishment hero who has been victimized by the United States for exposing US wrongdoing in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The United States won an appeal against a ruling by a London District Judge that Assange should not be extradited because he would likely commit suicide in a US prison.
“The court allows the appeal,” Judge Timothy Holroyde said.
The judge said he was satisfied with a package of assurances given by the United States about the conditions of Assange’s detention including a pledge not to hold him in a so-called “ADX” maximum-security prison in Colorado and that he would be transferred to Australia to serve his sentence if convicted.
But further hurdles remain before Assange can be sent to the United States: the legal wrangling is likely to go to the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal.
Assange’s fiancée, Stella Moris, said his legal team would appeal the decision.
“How can it be fair, how can it be right, how can it be possible, to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him?” she said. “We will appeal this decision at the earliest possible moment.”
Judge Holroyde said the case must now be remitted to Westminster Magistrates’ Court with the direction judges send it to the British government to decide whether or not Assange should be extradited.
Assange, who denies any wrongdoing, was not in court. He remains in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, where he has been for more than two and a half years.
WikiLeaks came to prominence when it published a US military video in 2010 showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff. It then released thousands of secret classified files and diplomatic cables.
US prosecutors and Western security officials regard Assange as a reckless and dangerous enemy of the state whose actions imperiled the lives of agents named in the leaked material.
His admirers have hailed Assange as a hero for exposing what they describe as abuse of power by modern states and for championing free speech.
WikiLeaks founder Assange one step closer to extradition to United States
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WikiLeaks founder Assange one step closer to extradition to United States
- Assange, 50, is currently being held at London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
