Whistleblower: Julian Assange to see UK appeal hearing over US extradition
High profile whistleblower Julian Assange is due to have his UK appeal hearing, scheduled for 27 to 28 October, which could determine whether he will be extradited to the US.
Australia-born Assange’s US charges allege that he conspired with a whistleblower, army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, to illegally obtain classified information.
“Assurances by the US government that they would not put Julian Assange in a maximum-security prison or subject him to abusive Special Administrative Measures were discredited by their admission that they reserved the right to reverse those guarantees,” secretary general of human rights charity Amnesty, Agnès Callamard said on Monday.
Callamard’s comments follow an investigation by Yahoo News which claimed that US security services had considered kidnapping or killing Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, when he was staying in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The appeal hearing is expected to consider five grounds of appeal by the US, which includes the reliability of assurances offered by the US after a lower UK court ruled against Assange’s extradition in January.
The case, which has spanned nearly two decades, has prompted fears over investigative journalism freedoms.