WikiLeaks' Julian Assange sentenced to 50 weeks prison in bail-jumping case [View all]

Source: Washington Post



LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was sentenced on Wednesday to 50 weeks in a British prison for jumping bail. His sentencing comes a day before an extradition hearing in London related to separate charges in the United States for conspiring to hack a government password.

Assange, 47, who appeared in court at London’s Southwark Crown Court wearing a black jacket and gray sweater alongside a throng of international journalists, had faced up to a year in a British prison for his bail violation — the maximum penalty in Britain for such an offense. He broke his bail conditions in 2012 when he fled to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London after Sweden requested his extradition in a case involving sexual assault allegations.

At the trial, his lawyer Mark Summers argued that Assange failed to surrender to a British court seven year ago and so violated his bail because he had a reasonable fear that if he were extradited to Sweden he would be extradited to the United States and even onward to Guantanamo Bay.

Assange further feared “kidnap by the United States” and was “living under overwhelming fear of rendition,” Summers told the court. “It matters little whether his fears were reasonable or unreasonable,” he added, suggesting that those fears were in fact reasonable. Summers then read aloud a handwritten letter in which Assange wrote “I apologize unreservedly” for seeking refuge at the embassy.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/wikileaks-julian-assange-sentenced-to-50-weeks-prison-in-bail-jumping-case/2019/05/01/d83c0190-6b6c-11e9-bbe7-1c798fb80536_story.html