Garzon, who has previo­usly descri­bed the case agains­t Assang­e as arbitr­ary and basele­ssMADRID: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, arrested in London on a US extradition request, is the target of “political persecution,” the man coordinating his defence said Thursday. “There is evident political persecution which started precisely with the massive publication by WikiLeaks in 2010 of cables and very serious information” which Assange had published, including a trove of classified Pentagon documents detailing alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Spanish lawyer Baltasar Garzon. British police arrested Assange at the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he had spent seven years as a recluse, claiming asylum and Ecuadoran nationality, both of which President Lenin Moreno revoked. A London court hours later found Assange guilty of jumping bail in 2012 while wanted in Sweden on charges of sexual assault which were subsequently dropped. The indictment alleges Assange conspired in March 2010 with Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, to crack a password stored on Department of Defense computers.

Source: The Express Tribune April 11, 2019 19:30 UTC