LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was sentenced on Wednesday to 50 weeks in a British prison for jumping bail.
His sentencing comes a day before an extradition hearing in London related to separate charges in the United States of conspiring to hack a government password.
Assange, 47, who appeared at London’s Southwark Crown Court wearing a black jacket and gray sweater alongside a throng of international journalists, had faced up to a year in a British prison for his bail violation — the maximum penalty for such an offense. He broke his bail conditions in 2012 when he fled to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London after Sweden requested his extradition in a case involving sexual assault allegations.
At the trial, his lawyer Mark Summers argued that Assange failed to surrender to a British court seven years ago and so violated his bail because he had a reasonable fear that if he were extradited to Sweden, he would then be extradited to the United States and even sent to Guantanamo Bay.
Assange further feared “kidnap by the United States” and was “living under overwhelming fear of rendition,” Summers told the court.
“It matters little whether his fears were reasonable or unreasonable,” he added, suggesting that those fears were, in fact, reasonable.
Summers then read aloud a handwritten letter in which Assange wrote that “I apologize unreservedly” for seeking refuge at the embassy.
“I found myself struggling with terrifying circumstances,” Assange wrote. “I did what I thought at the time was the best and perhaps the only thing that could be done.”
The letter continued: “I regret the course that this took. The difficulties were instead compounded and impacted upon very many others.”
Judge Deborah Taylor said Assange could have left the embassy and surrendered at any time, that he used his “privileged position” to insult the British judiciary, and that British police had spent 16 million pounds (nearly $21 million) securing the embassy.
“It’s difficult to envisage a more serious example of this offense,” Taylor said in her sentencing remarks.
“By entering the embassy, you deliberately put yourself out of reach, whilst remaining in the U.K.,” she told Assange. “You remained there for nearly seven years, exploiting your privileged position to flout the law.”
Assange’s actions, she said, “undoubtedly affected the progress of the Swedish proceedings” against him in the sexual assault case.
The courtroom was filled with journalists and about two dozen Assange supporters. After he was sentenced, some supporters shouted, “Shame!” Assange raised his fist in solidarity as he was led away.
His lawyer described Assange’s almost seven years in the Ecuadoran Embassy as a virtual incarceration, in cramped housing, with no access to a courtyard or garden and under constant monitoring — conditions he called “circumstances of pain and oppression.”
“He was a desperate man,” Summers said.
Sweden discontinued its sex crimes investigation against Assange in 2017. But after his arrest in London last month, Swedish prosecutors said they were considering reopening the investigation.
During his nearly seven years in the Ecuadoran Embassy, Assange occasionally received visitors, including actress Pamela Anderson. He was dramatically arrested on April 11 after Ecuador revoked its asylum. Hours later, U.S. prosecutors confirmed that they had charged Assange with conspiring to help Chelsea Manning to obtain secret U.S. government documents.
His lawyers have vowed to fight extradition to the United States.
Assange’s father, John Shipton, recently appeared on television calling for his son’s repatriation to Australia. He also suggested that his son was evicted from the embassy because the Ecuadorans had made a deal with the United States in exchange for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan.
Ecuador “uses the United States dollar,” Shipton told the “60 Minutes Australia” program. “It got an IMF loan, and you can’t get an IMF loan unless the United States approves it.”
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2019-05-01 11:22:36Z
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