WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who spent more than five years in a maximum-security British prison, is a political prisoner. This was reported on the website of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
88 people voted in favor of the PACE resolution, 13 against and 20 abstained. MPs from Britain and Poland mainly voted against. The document states that punishing Assange under the Espionage Act for his journalistic activities makes him a political prisoner.
The hearing was organized by the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee in the context of a PACE report from September in which the committee “expressed its deep concern about the disproportionately harsh treatment given to Assange”. PACE also called on the United States, which has observer status in the Council of Europe, to investigate alleged war crimes and human rights violations that became known through the work of Assange and WikiLeaks.
The day before, Assange, for the first time since his release, spoke about the years he spent in the maximum security Belmarsh prison in London, awaiting his extradition to the United States, where he faced up to 175 years in prison in related to the disclosure of the largest collection of classified information in the country’s history. On June 24, 2024, following a partial agreement with US prosecutors, Assange was sentenced to five years, which he had already spent behind bars. The hearing of his case took place on the island of Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands, which are not part of the United States, but are in the possession of Washington. This confession allowed him to be released.
Recall that the Australian Julian Assange gained world fame by founding the WikiLeaks website, where, in particular, there were hundreds of thousands of secret materials about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Guantánamo prison, diplomatic dispatches and personal correspondence of a candidate presidential. published. Hillary Clinton. In the United States, the founder of WikiLeaks was charged with 18 criminal charges.
