WikiLeaks’ Assange facing hearing on US extradition request

Agencies

May 2, 2019

London, May 2: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was facing a court hearing Thursday over a US request to extradite him for allegedly conspiring to hack a Pentagon computer.

Assange, who is fighting attempts to send him to the United States, is expected to appear by video link from prison for the hearing at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

A few dozen supporters holding signs reading “Free Assange” and “No extradition” gathered outside the courthouse before the hearing. It’s an early stage in what is likely to be a months- or years-long extradition process.

The 47-year-old Australian was sentenced Wednesday to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012 and holing up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. At the time, he was facing extradition to Sweden for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations made by two women.

Assange says he feared being sent to the US to face charges related to WikiLeaks’ publication of classified US military documents.

Assange was arrested last month after his relationship with his embassy hosts went sour and Ecuador revoked his political asylum.

Lawyers say Assange will fight extradition to the US, where authorities have charged him with conspiring to break into a Pentagon computer system.

He is accused of scheming with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break a password for a classified government computer.

Manning served several years in prison for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. She was jailed again in March after refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said Wednesday that the extradition battle was “a question of life and death” for Assange.

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Cut all ties with Israel and impose arms, trade embargo; history will record our action: Iran to Muslim countries

News Network

May 5,2024

Iran has urged Muslim countries to cut all relations with the Israeli regime as means of pressuring Tel Aviv to end its ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks on Saturday, addressing the 15th Heads of State and Government Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Gambia’s capital Banjul.

“Beyond doubt, this time period will also pass by, despite all its hardships and adversities for the Palestinian nation,” he said.

“However, the manner and quality of the role that is played by us, Muslim states, in the face of this crisis will go down in history,” the top diplomat added.

“Undoubtedly, severance of diplomatic and economic ties and [imposition of] practical arms and trade embargo [on Israel] serves as an important means of cessation of its genocide in Gaza and atrocities in the West Bank and the Noble al-Quds.”

At least 34,654 people have died in Gaza since October 7, when the Israeli regime began the war in response to al-Aqsa Storm, a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.

Despite the unabated campaign of bloodshed and destruction, the regime has so far fallen short of realizing its goals, including defeating Gaza’s resistance, causing forced displacement of the territory’s entire population to neighboring Egypt, and enabling the release of those who were taken captive during al-Aqsa Storm.

Amir-Abdollahian said Gaza’s developments proved that elimination of the Palestinian resistance “was nothing but an illusion.”

“Because the Israeli regime is not a legitimate government. It is only an occupying apartheid power,” he said, adding, “Passage of time is not going to lend legitimacy to an occupying power.”

The foreign minister asserted that realization of sustainable peace and security in the region was only possible through cessation of the regime’s occupation of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland, and manifestation of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

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