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LONDON (Sputnik) – A bunch of UK lawmakers gathered on Tuesday exterior Belmarsh jail in southeast London to protest towards the continuing refusal to permit a gathering with WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange, a Sputnik correspondent reported.
Throughout the demonstration, Labour lawmakers Richard Burgon, Diane Abbot and former Labour chief Jeremy Corbyn handed in to jail authorities a letter signed by 20 of his colleagues in Parliament.
“We’ve been making an attempt to rearrange this assembly since final December. It’s being refused, so we have now no different possibility than to put in writing a letter and are available down right here to Belmarsh as we speak to current it to jail authorities”, Burgon instructed Sputnik.
The opposition lawmaker careworn that the cross-party group is in search of to fulfill the whistleblower not of their capability as non-public residents however of their public function as member of the UK Parliament.
“The thought is to fulfill Julian Assange even nearly with a view to focus on the regarding implications for press freedom, whistleblowing and different points arising from this case”, he added.
The demonstration was additionally attended by Assange’s fiancée Stella Moris and one in every of their two kids.
“Each time I see Julian in right here is troublesome for me to essentially perceive how this could nonetheless be occurring”, Moris instructed the group that gathered exterior Belmarsh jail to witness the presentation of the letter.
She claimed that her fiancé is a “political prisoner within the UK,” and identified that the final time Assange, who will flip 50 on Saturday, was a free man he was 39 years previous.
At the moment, Moris recalled, he got here to the UK invited by The Guardian newspaper “to publish proof of US warfare crimes in Iraq, abuse in Guantanamo Bay, the surplus of the Afghan warfare and the US diplomatic cables that proof US rendition and torture.”
Assange was arrested in London on 11 April 2019, and sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for leaping bail again in 2012, when he took refuge contained in the Ecuadorean embassy within the UK capital to keep away from extradition to Sweden, the place he was going through sexual assault costs that had been later dropped.
The whistleblower is needed by the US Justice Division on espionage and laptop fraud costs after WikiLeaks revealed 1000’s of secret recordsdata and categorised data that make clear warfare crimes dedicated by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He faces as much as 175 years in solitary confinement inside a high safety American jail if convicted within the US.
In January, UK district decide Vanessa Baraitser dominated to not extradite Assange to america, citing well being causes and the danger of suicide within the US jail system, however determined that he should wait in jail for the end result of an enchantment filed by US prosecutors.