According to a torture expert from the United Nations, Nils Melzer, Julian Assange has been put under prolonged exposure to psychological torture. The expert urged the U.K not to extradite Assange, saying that his human rights can be violated and that his condition makes him unable to stand a trial.
Melzer also accused several states of a concerted effort to break Assange’s will, to which the UK foreign secretary replied that Julian Assange chose to hide from justice, as he wrote in a tweet that Melzer should allow British courts to make their judgments without his interference of inflammatory accusations.
On this, Melzer said that Assange was about as free to leave as someone sitting on a rubber boat in a shark pool.
A spokesperson from the justice ministry of the UK said that the kingdom did not participate in torture and that the government disagreed with a number of Melzer’s findings. Judges were independent of the government and anyone convicted had the right to appeal.
The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange is fighting extradition to the United States, as he is charged for leaking top government secrets. He was living in the Ecuadorean embassy in the UK for seven years in order to avoid extradition to Sweden for a rape accusation. The investigation was closed but at the beginning of this month, the prosecutors in Sweden reopened the case.
Nils Melzer met Assange earlier this month and told the Washington Post that he was initially reluctant to get involved in the case, as he is not a fan of WikiLeaks and considered its founder to be a bad actor, BBC reports.
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