A group of British parliamentarians has asked to speak with Julian Assange ahead of a decision expected soon in the jailed WikiLeaks founder’s extradition case, the leader of the effort announced Thursday.
Richard Burgon, a member of the British Labour Party, released a letter addressed to the head of the U.K. Ministry of Justice requesting a video meeting with Mr. Assange before the decision set for Jan 4.
Sixteen other parliamentarians signed the letter, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, his former shadow home secretary, as well as more than a dozen colleagues from across parties.
Their request was made with mere weeks remaining until a British court decides whether to grant a request by the U.S. government to extradite Mr. Assange so that he can stand trial in Alexandria, Virginia.
Mr. Assange, 49, an Australian, faces charges in the U.S. related to WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling site he started, and possibly decades in prison convicted of all counts.
He was arrested in April 2019 inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and he remains jailed on remand at a nearby prison while awaiting a determination on the U.S. extradition request.
The parliamentarians do not explicitly condone Mr. Assange in the letter. But they do echo his defense that he acted as a journalist by releasing through WikiLeaks reams of secret material embarrassing to the U.S.
Among the material Mr. Assange faces charges for publishing, the parliamentarians noted, are documents “exposing U.S. war atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq,” which his site released a decade ago in 2010.
The parliamentarians told Robert Buckland, the U.K. secretary of state for justice, they believe Mr. Assange is wanted for conducting “journalist work” and called his extradition case “unprecedented.”
“This case has important implications for press and publishing freedoms in the U.K., for the U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty including its ban on extradition for political offenses and for wider human rights,” they wrote.
The parliamentarians also said they are concerned that a United Nations torture expert recently met with Mr. Assange at Belmarsh Prison where he is jailed and concluded his human rights are being violated.
“We would like to discuss these issues with Mr. Assange ahead of his extradition decision,” they wrote. The signatories are mostly members of the Labour members, although the Scottish National and Conservative Parties are also represented.
Mr. Buckland, a member of the Conservative Party, did not immediately respond to a message requesting comment.
The Department of Justice under President Trump charged Mr. Assange with violated of the U.S. Espionage Act involving the solicitation, receipt and publication of classified military and diplomatic material.
“Julian Assange is no journalist,” G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said when the Justice Department announced charges against Mr. Assange last year.
Prosecutors allege Mr. Assange endangered the lives of human sources on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq by publishing their names in documents among the material he faces charges for releasing.
Chelsea Manning, a former soldier who leaked that material, was previously ordered to spend 35 years in prison, but former President Barack Obama commuted most of that sentence before leaving office.
Allies of Mr. Assange are now pushing Mr. Trump to act similarly and pardon the recipient and publisher of that material before he is succeeded next month by Mr. Obama’s former vice president, President-elect Joseph R. Biden.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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