The trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hypocritically turned terror into revealing real terror.
This statement was made by the famous German lawyer Heribert Prantl in an interview for Deutschlandfunk.
On Monday, February 25, the Royal Court of London begins a hearing on the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States. There, he faces imprisonment of up to 175 years or even the death penalty.
Prantl, in turn, notes that the United Kingdom is no less interested in neutralizing Assange than the United States, because Britain also committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the journalist revealed. The lawyer emphasizes that WikiLeaks poses a great threat to the American, British and French elites. Thus, the lawsuit boils down to making Julian Assange a case in point.
“A message is sent to every other journalist, every whistleblower: remember Assange and don’t dare to encroach on secrets,” the expert says, noting that “journalism turns into espionage, and disclosing crimes itself becomes a crime.”
According to him, the hope for justice is extremely small, given the powerful political pressure in this process. In fact, the Assange case will determine the future of the concept of press freedom. Prantl emphasized that the disclosures of Assange are of incredible importance to the world community. In this regard, he called for everything possible so that the journalist was rehabilitated.
“How much could the situation be perverted in order to prosecute not war criminals, but the one who allowed society to learn about them,” the German lawyer stated.
Recall that in 2006 Assange founded the portal “WikiLeaks”, which soon appeared information about the crimes of the US government. In Sweden, Assange was threatened with extradition, because in 2012 he sought asylum at the Embassy of Ecuador in London. He lived there until last year, when Ecuador refused Assange further asylum.