Between 200 and 300 people demonstrated in London on Tuesday to demand the British government refuse to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is wanted in the United States for a massive leak of confidential documents.
After a long legal battle, the British justice formally authorized on April 20 the delivery of the 50-year-old Australian to the American justice, but it depends on the British Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, the signing of the extradition decree, which can be appealed .
Assange’s defense presented arguments to reject extradition on Tuesday, his wife, Stella Assange, tweeted.
"The political issue, the political persecution of Julian Assange is now formally in the hands of Priti Patel"said Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.
He noted that Assange, "imprisoned for a decade"it feels "comforted by the fact that the public and politicians around the world are joining their cause"and that "more and more people understand the importance of this case".
More than twenty organizations that defend human rights and freedom of the press support it.
For Amaru Narvaez-Reyes, a 25-year-old actor present at the demonstration, the extradition of Assange "would strike fear into the hearts of many journalists and would probably prevent much information from getting out to the public".
The founder of WikiLeaks is wanted by US justice for the publication, as of 2010, of more than 700,000 classified documents on military and diplomatic activities in that country, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. He exposes himself to 175 years in prison.
He was arrested in 2019 after spending more than seven years as a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
