Stella Assange in front of the Home Office, London    | Photo: Twitter/ @ActualidadRT

London, June 22 (RHC)-- In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Radio National, Stella Assange stated that journalist Julian Assange's health is rapidly deteriorating while he remains a prisoner in London's Belmarsh prison.

“It’s a nasty environment and it would deteriorate anyone’s health but he was already in a bad health situation when he entered the prison,” she said and recalled that the WikiLeaks founder suffered a minor stroke in October last year.

"So his health was in decline and we’re extremely worried that he will at any moment have a catastrophic health episode inside Belmarsh prison without the ability to get emergency treatment – because that’s the nature of prisons, basically,” she added.

On June 17, U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel signed an order to extradite Assange to the United States, where he is charged with 18 crimes related to espionage and computer intrusion.  Through these accusations, Washington intends to punish him for having revealed the human rights abuses and war crimes committed by the U.S. in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

From the date of the extradition authorization, Assange's attorneys have 14 days to appeal Patel's decision.  If the Australian journalist is taken to the U.S., he could face up to 175 years in prison.

Julian Assange has been confined in the United Kingdom for more than ten years without being convicted and has been in the Belmarsh high-security prison in east London since 2019.