... Australian journalist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks made the Big Time in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by then Bradley, since Chelsea Manning. After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and asked allied nations for assistance. U.S. officials are seeking to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act, blaming him for directingpublication of a huge trove of secret documents that disclosed the names of people who provided confidential information to American and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan....isn’t mentally ill and his psychological problems are solely the result of the abuse he suffers in isolation, Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has told RT’s Going Underground.
It would be a "tragedy" if Assange died in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison due to his poor health, Melzer replied when asked about such an unsettling scenario by host Afshin Rattansi.
If he should die in prison he's effectively been tortured to death. That’s the reality of it, and I’m not exaggerating.
The official said he had visited Assange behind bars in May 2019 together with a team of medical experts and "we all independently from each other came to this conclusion at that time that his life was in danger." The publisher’s mental and physical condition has entered a "downward spiral" since then, he added.
The WikiLeaks co-founder has been held in Belmarsh since April 2019 over breach of bail. Before that, the 50-year-old spent seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the British capital, where he sought refuge after an arrest warrant was issued over sexual assault allegations that he had always denied. The investigation against him was eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence. Assange’s supporters insisted he was actually being persecuted over his legitimate journalistic activities.
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Julian Assange: 2021-10-07 Key witness in FBI case against Assange held in custody to stop his ‘crime spree' in Iceland
Julian Assange: 2021-09-26 Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks
Julian Assange: 2021-06-28 Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment