Australia will not challenge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to USand expresses confidence in British justice, said today a minister.
A London court formally issued the order yesterday to be extradited to the USA by Mr. AssangeAustralian national, to stand trial for leaking a series of confidential and secret diplomatic and military documents for US operations mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In case of conviction, Mr. Assange is in danger of being sentenced to 175 years in prison. He is still imprisoned in the United Kingdom, at the Belmars High Security Prison.
«We have confidence in the independence and integrity of the British justice system“Simon Birmingham, the finance minister in the government of right-wing Prime Minister Scott Morrison, told ABC television.
The Australian Government will not object to the extraditionhe added.
If no appeal is lodged – his attorneys have until May 18 to submit it – Julian Assange will be extradited within 28 days after the decision was made by the British Minister of the Interior, Pretty Patel.
Mr Birmingham also said Australia was providing consular assistance to its nationals.
Alliance of 25 human rights organizations –Among them Reporters sans Frontières and Human Rights Watch– stigmatized the extradition decisionin which they see “a very serious threat to the free press in the US and the rest of the world.”
Mr Assange has been trying to avoid extradition for more than a decade. He spent seven of them at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was charged with sexual abuse, which has since been dropped. He claimed that these accusations were in fact intended to be issued by the Swedish authorities in the USA.
The founder of WikiLeaks was arrested by British police in April 2019, after the then Ecuadorian government revoked the political asylum he had given him, and he was imprisoned.
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