May 23, 2022- 3:39 p.m.
Pressure Mounts on Patel Over Assange Decision
At some point during the next nine days, British Home Secretary Priti Patel will decide whether or not to extradite imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to the U.S. to face espionage charges for publishing accurate information revealing U.S. war crimes.
Pressure is building from both sides on the home secretary.
Press freedom and human rights organizations, a Nobel laureate, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, journalists and Assange supporters have appealed to Patel to let Assange go.
While it would be deemed improper for outside influence to be brought on judges, it would not be fanciful to imagine that behind the scenes Patel is getting the message from the U.S. Department of Justice and possibly from U.S. and U.K. intelligence services about what is expected of her.
The home secretary should know without prodding what the U.S. and British governments want her to do.
Patel is a highly-ambitious politician who no doubt will calculate how her decision will impact her career.
“Politicians think about their next election, they think about their voters … that’s what makes them tick,” Kristinn Hrafnnson, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, told Consortium News at a protest outside the Home Office in London last Wednesday.
“For the first time it’s in the hands of a politician, and Priti Patel, if she wants to think about her legacy … she should do the right thing.”
“Politics is a strange beast,” Hrafnsson said. “Anything can happen. I’m hoping this is something that will be taken up in the Cabinet here. Let’s not forget that Boris Johnson was a journalist.
He was part of the media community and should have better understanding of this case than many others
