Hundreds of people formed a human chain around the British Parliament on Saturday to demand the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is in preventive detention while his extradition trial to the United States is resolved in the United Kingdom.
Supporters of the 51-year-old journalist raised banners and posters asking the British government to disavow his delivery to the US Justice, considering that the case is a political persecution as a result of the revelations on his website.
The United States claims him for 18 alleged crimes of espionage and computer intrusion that he denies and that, according to his legal team, can lead to up to 175 years in prison in that country. Stella Moris, wife of Assange, greeted those present accompanied by their two children, born while the computer programmer was a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
In statements to the media, the lawyer said that the human chain shows "the great support that" her ex"hacker" has, from people who are "disgusted by the injustice of an illegitimate legal process", which, she said, "is not more than an instrumentalization of the law to keep him in prison indefinitely". The former leader of the British Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn, who was his spokesman for the Economy, John McDonnell and former union leader Len McCluskey, among others, participated in the protest.
After two years of house arrest in England at the request of the Swedish Government for a case of alleged sexual crimes (later archived), the Australian took refuge in June 2012 in the Ecuadorian embassy, after which in April 2019 he was arrested at the request of United States, after Quito withdrew his asylum.
Since then, he has been incarcerated in London's Belmarsh high-security prison, despite not having been charged with any crime, while Washington's extradition request is resolved. Assange's lawyers have appealed the decision of the former British Minister of the Interior Priti Patel, who on June 17 authorized his delivery at the end of a long judicial process that is now continuing in other directions.
