The UN special rapporteur on torture called on London yesterday Tuesday not to proceed with his extradition Julian Assange in the US, where he has been prosecuted for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified Pentagon and State Department documents, citing the risk that the WikiLeaks founder would suffer treatment that would amount to torture or “ill-treatment”.

In a statement released by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Alice Jill Edwards calls on the British government to “stop the possible extradition of Julian Assange”, which London had agreed in principle to proceed with in June 2022.

On February 20 and 21, two British judges are to review the June 6 decision by a single judge not to allow the WikiLeaks founder to appeal.

“Julian Assange suffers from chronic depression and relapses. It has been assessed that there is a risk of suicide”, the special rapporteur pointed out in the text. “If extradited, he may be held in solitary confinement for an extended period of time pending his trial (…) If convicted, he may be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison,” he reminded.

According to Alice Jill Edwards, “the risk of being held in solitary confinement for a prolonged period despite his precarious mental health and the imposition of a potentially disproportionate sentence raise questions about whether Mr Assange’s extradition to the US would be compatible with UK’s international human rights obligations’.

“Diplomatic assurances provided by the US government that he will be treated humanely are not a sufficient guarantee,” notes the expert, who has been named by the High Commission but is not speaking on its behalf.

The two-judge appeals court will review within the month the single-judge court’s decision on June 6, denying him the opportunity to appeal, and will decide whether Julian Assange has further “opportunities” to defend his case in British justice or whether he has “exhausted ” his legal remedies, he now has “no further appeal” in the UK court system and so “extradition proceedings” will be initiated, supporters of the Australian citizen explained in December.

The 52-year-old is being prosecuted in the US for the disclosure since 2010 of more than 700,000 confidential and classified documents about US military and diplomatic activities, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If convicted, he faces decades in prison.

After being arrested by British police in April 2019 after seven years locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault charges that have since been dropped, he has been held for the past four years at Belmars maximum security prison in south-east London.

The Australian’s supporters consider him a martyr of press freedom.