Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in front of the Royal Courts of Justice earlier, tying golden ribbons reading: “Release Julian Assange now!” To the main fence as well as the gates and surrounding trees.
Many were waving Australian flags, holding signs reading “Free Julian Assange” and “Drop Charges” and chanting: “There's only one decision – no extradition” and “US and UK, hands off Assange.”
Assange, 52, faces what may be his final court hearing in London, which begins on Tuesday, as he tries to stop his extradition to the United States on charges related to the 2010 disclosure of a huge amount of secret government documents.
He is accused of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a US military whistleblower, to hack into a Pentagon computer and publish 90,000 reports related to the war in Afghanistan, 400,000 reports related to the Iraq war and 250,000 US diplomatic cables.
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His lawyers say that if Assange is convicted of the charges brought against him by the United States, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.
At the march, his wife, Stella Assange, stopped and spoke to the crowd. She added: “There is no possibility of a fair trial if he is extradited to the United States.” “It will never be safe.”
She said the case against her husband was “an admission by the United States that it now criminalizes investigative journalism.”
“It is an attack on the truth and the public’s right to know,” she said, adding that she believes what happened to Alexei Navalny in recent days “could happen to Julian.”
Gabriel Shipton, Assange's brother, said his brother was going through a “tremendous amount of suffering” while detained in prison, and said his health was “deteriorating.”
“He's suffering there. He's going through a tremendous amount of suffering. He's deteriorating, and his health is in a very delicate situation,” Shipton said before the hearing.
In a ruling in January 2021, then District Judge Vanessa Baraitser said Assange should not be extradited, but authorities in the United States later filed a successful appeal against that decision.
Assange has been detained in Belmarsh Prison in London since April 2019 when he was sentenced for skipping bail conditions. He had previously spent seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy after breaking bail in 2012 when he was due to be extradited to Sweden on unrelated sexual assault charges, which were later dropped. He was arrested by British police and forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in 2019.
