London, 25 Jan 2020 – The choice of not considering Julian Assange a prisoner of conscience is not definitive, but is an ‘open position’ that Amnesty can change subject to the developments of the Australian journalist’s trial.
On the evening of the first hearing, held at the Woolwich Crown Court next to the Belmarsh prison where the co-founder of Wikileaks is held in sole confinement with treatment amounting to torture, Massimo Moratti, Deputy Director of Europe at Amnesty International, explains Talk Europe in an exclusive interview at the orgnisation’s Secretariat in London, that “if the US do not withdraw the charges, the UK is not under obligation to extradite him, as in US he could be exposed to torture, to inhumane treatment and also risk to face an unfair trial”.
“Amnesty retains – Moratti says – that those in possession of information of war crimes, like the ones contained in the Wikileaks files, have an obligation to disclose them. Whether Assange can be considered a prisoner of conscience is a research Amnesty should still consider”.
“At the moment he is not considered a prisoner of conscience; then we will have to see how the trial evolves, it’s quite complex and the amount of the information is quite huge”.
Talkeurope.org 