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Today, Wednesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was absent from the second and final session of the trial in which a London court is considering his appeal to avoid extradition to the United States.
Assange was also not present on Tuesday at the start of the hearing at the High Court of Justice in London, the last resort the Australian left in the United Kingdom to avoid extradition to the United States, where he stands accused of the charges against him. to spy.
“He was not feeling well and was not present,” his attorney, Edward Fitzgerald, said Tuesday when he announced his client's illness.
On Tuesday, Assange's lawyer argued for freedom of information to stop his extradition to the United States, and said there were “political motives” in the lawsuit.
Two judges will soon decide whether the UK will extradite the WikiLeaks founder to the US, which wants to try him for a massive leak of secret documents.
If extradited, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison in the United States.
“My client is being prosecuted for engaging in a normal journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing confidential information, information that is true and of clear public importance,” Fitzgerald said on Tuesday at the High Court of Justice in London.
The United States accuses Assange of publishing more than 700,000 secret documents since 2010 about the military and diplomatic activities of the North American country, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Wednesday, American lawyers urged the court to reject Assange's appeal.
Claire Dobbin, the lawyer representing Washington, told the court that the charge was “based on the rule of law and the evidence” against Assange.
“It randomly and intentionally published to the world the names of people who served as sources of information for the United States,” he said, adding that this fact distinguishes it from other media outlets.
“It is these facts that define him, not his political views,” Dubin said.
On Tuesday, Mark Summers, one of Assange's defense lawyers, spoke of a US plan, according to a 2021 Yahoo News article, to kill or kidnap his client in 2017.
If Assange emerges successful from Wednesday's trial, he will likely face another hearing in the UK, at a date to be determined, which must confirm that he has not been extradited.
His followers indicated last December that if a London court confirmed his extradition on Wednesday, Assange would resort to the European Court of Human Rights as a last resort.
During the days before the trial, his wife warned of the fragile health condition of the 52-year-old Australian.
He said Thursday, “His health is deteriorating physically and mentally. His life is in danger every day he remains in prison, and if he is extradited, he will die.”
British police arrested the founder of WikiLeaks in 2019, seven years after he was detained in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought refuge to avoid being extradited on charges of sexual assault to Sweden, charges that were later dropped.
In January 2021, a British court initially rejected the extradition request submitted by the United States.
The appeal in North America, in December 2021, caused the British judicial system to cancel the first decision and open the way for his extradition.
Assange's appeal was unsuccessful, and in April 2022, a British court authorized extradition, which the British government accepted two months later.
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