Julian Assange is a ‘journalist of distinction’ & has to be set free, Jeremy Corbyn tells RT outside UK’s Belmarsh Prison
London, July 1 (RHC)-- Julian Assange’s case should have ended as soon as a UK judge denied his extradition to the United States, Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour leader, told RT as he joined other MPs to demand a meeting with the WikiLeaks founder in a London prison.
A group of British members of parliament have come to the walls of Belmarsh maximum-security prison in south-east London on Tuesday to protest the lack of transparency in Assange’s case. The MPs said their requests to meet with the founder of the WikiLeaks whistleblower website, who is wanted by Washington on espionage charges over the publication of classified documents on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay prison and others, have been denied repeatedly.
They also handed a letter that had the signatures of 20 deputies from four parties under it and detailed their demands to the prison authorities.
Corbyn insisted that he didn’t see any valid reasoning for their requests to talk with Assange to be rejected. “The governor is trying to claim there’s discretion on it. We don’t think there’s discretion,” he explained.
The politician, who led the Labour Party between 2015 and 2020, said that over the years he had visited inmates in many prisons, including Belmarsh, as a member of parliament. “It’s perfectly normal that MPs are granted with due process a facility of a visit,” he said.
“We now want a group of us to talk to Julian, probably via video link, in order that we can discuss his case and help to form our own opinions and encourage other members to understand their role in what I hope would be a very strong campaign to prevent his extradition away from this country.”
A UK court had refused Washington’s extradition request over Assange’s poor mental health in early 2021, and “at that point, the case has ended or should have done,” the 72-year-old socialist icon said. But the U.S. announced plans to appeal against the ruling, leaving Assange in Belmarsh and maintaining the possibility of him being “extradited to the US where he would face a minimum prison sentence of 125 years.”
“We have appealed to President Biden to not go ahead with this appeal; to drop the case, so that Julian can be free,” the former Labour leader added.
Corbyn described Assange as “somebody that has stood up for truth around the world. He’s helped us to understand what happened in Guantanamo Bay and so many places around in the world where the U.S. military has done terrible things. We think that he’s a journalist of distinction.”
