“We expect and demand that the German government and in particular the Foreign Minister, who has contacts with the US and Great Britain, and the Chancellor, take action and conclude Julian’s case so that he can go home to his children,” he said. his father John Shipton on Thursday in Berlin. He pointed out that Annalena Baerbock had previously shown support.
The German government must “support Julian’s release in every possible way,” said Julian Assange’s wife, Stella Assange. One way is to campaign for Assange to win the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize. “That would be very important next week,” she told the dpa. She also called for the matter to be raised with the US government.
The US demands Assange’s extradition. The US justice wants to try him on charges of espionage. If convicted, he faces up to 175 years in prison. He is accused of stealing and publishing classified material from US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with whistleblower Chelsea Manning, endangering the lives of US informants.
Supporters, on the other hand, see him as a courageous journalist who exposed war crimes. The government in London has approved the extradition, but the legal wrangling is not over yet. Assange’s relatives attended the Human Rights Film Festival Berlin on Thursday evening. There, at the opening, the documentary “Ithaka” about their common struggle was shown.
It was recently announced that Julian Assange has contracted the coronavirus in prison. His wife said he had been locked in his cell 24 hours a day since Saturday. You can’t visit him now. “And it’s always harder when he spends a lot of time alone.”
The two married in March at Belmarsh maximum security prison in London. The pair met during Assange’s years of asylum at the embassy in the Ecuadorian Mission in London. The two have two children.
(SDA)