It’s been over four years since Julian Assange was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy and placed in a high security prison in the UK, where he is battling extradition to the United States. The Wikileaks co-founder is wanted on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse for publishing documents that exposed US war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military prison at Guantánamo.
Despite pressure from world leaders and United Nations experts to release Assange, the FBI’s case against him remains open and recent reports state it is “seeking to gather new evidence […] in an apparent effort to bolster their case against [him].”
Rights groups say the US government’s indictment poses a grave threat to global press freedoms, and his family believes extradition to the US would be tantamount to a death sentence.
In this episode of The Stream, we’ll look at what’s at stake for Julian Assange if he is extradited and convicted, as well as the international efforts to free him.
In this episode of The Stream, we are joined by:
Chris Hedges, @ChrisLynnHedges
Journalist
simonandschuster.com/authors/Chris-Hedges
Kristinn Hrafnsson, @khrafnsson
Editor-in-Chief, Wikileaks
wikileaks.org
Kathleen McClellan, @McClellanKM
Deputy Director, Whistleblower & Source Protection Program, ExposeFacts
exposefacts.org