Julian Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told a TV audience that if the 50-year-old, Australian editor of Wikileaks were extradited to the United States, “he will most likely die.”
“Prisoners cannot be kept safe in [U.S.] prison,” Shipton said, according to the Washington Examiner.
“Even the most high-profile prisoners, like Jeffrey Epstein, couldn’t be kept safe in prison,” Shipton told Fox News. “So, what hope will Julian have? If he gets extradited, he will most likely die,”
Efforts to extradite & prosecute journalist Julian Assange exposes the hypocrisy of establishment’s mission to “spread democracy.” If Biden Admin truly believed in democracy (including freedom of the press), he would immediately drop the charges against Assange. #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/WC6Y7bL53j
— Tulsi Gabbard ? (@TulsiGabbard) December 13, 2021
Last week the U.S. won victory in a British court when a judge ruled that the extradition of Assange to the United States could proceed.
Stella Morris, Assange’s fiancé, said that it was unfair to try to extradite the founder of Wikileaks to the U.S.
“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?” Morris asked, according tot CNBC.
In September Yahoo News reported that U.S. officials had discussions about kidnapping or even killing Assange as he hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
“Assange is now housed in a London prison as the courts there decide on a U.S. request to extradite the WikiLeaks founder on charges of attempting to help former U.S. Army analyst Chelsea Manning break into a classified computer network and conspiring to obtain and publish classified documents in violation of the Espionage Act,” said Yahoo News.
Assange claims that at the time he stole classified secrets or attempted to steal them from the U.S. he was acting as a member of the press and thus should not be held as a spy.
The British court has agreed to the extradition provided that the U.S. gives assurances that Assange’s risk of suicide or other harm is mitigated by U.S. prison officials.
“That risk [of suicide] is in our judgement excluded by the assurances which are offered,” said Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett according to the BBC.
“It follows that we are satisfied that, if the assurances had been before the judge, she would have answered the relevant question differently,” Burnett concluded.
