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The Journalist Support Committee in Geneva (JSC) reiterate its call for the immediate and unconditional release of Julian Assange, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, and for all charges and legal prosecutions to be dropped, as his trials pave the way for undermining press freedom globally and threatening the security of journalists and researchers in their quest to uncover the truth to local and international communities.

In review of the suspicious information contained in the Yahoo News report, which referred to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) discussing the issue of the kidnapping or killing Assange in 2017, before charges were brought against him and the planning of extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, according to the report also, the committee calls on the US Attorney Merrick Garland to  seek to dissuade the Justice Department from demanding Assange's extradition and trial, with a hearing in the case scheduled for next week.

The committee states that Assange has so far spent 3,963 days in illegal detention and 927 days in Belmarsh solitary confinement in London after his extradition from the Ecuadorean embassy. The British Court refused to release him on bail and also authorized the extension of his detention in solitary confinement in the maximum security prison in the British capital, London, despite his health conditions and the risk of suicide, despite the refusal to deport him. The most dangerous point about the British judge’s decision remains that it set a legal precedent in the history of the British and European judiciary, as it explicitly criminalized the essence of journalistic work, which is the right to receive information, contact and protect sources, and publish the information obtained, which may pave the way for the possibility of holding journalists accountable under national security considerations in law.

JSC

Thursday, October 21st, 2021