Assange’s wife urges EU to pressure US to secure release
STRASBOURG, France: The European Union must take a “firm stance” with the United States to secure the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, detained in Britain, his wife said on Tuesday.
The Australian publisher is the subject of a US extradition request to stand trial for leaking US military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a finalist for this year’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought – an award established in 1988 by the European Parliament.
“I hope that the European institutions now take a clear position. They have the legitimacy of their own parliament to adopt a firm position. And that is what it will take, because this is a political matter,” said Stella Assange.
“This requires political pressure on the European Union’s close ally, the United States,” she told a press conference at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The Sakharov Prize will finally be awarded on Wednesday in Strasbourg to the Ukrainian people.
Assange’s wife said that by making him one of the finalists for the accolade, Brussels had “signalled politically that this case is important for the European Union, European citizens and the European press”. “It is now up to the European institutions to understand that they have a clear mandate from the European Parliament to take charge of this case and advocate for Julian’s release.”
She added that Belmarsh Prison, the high-security facility where Assange is being held outside London, had refused her permission to give a statement via video link. The US Department of Justice charged Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 after the 51-year-old published in 2010 the first of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
He was arrested in London in 2019 after seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy. Stella Assange has said a decision from the High Court in London is expected at any time on her appeal against extradition to the United States. He could face decades in prison if convicted.