The position of the administration of US President Joe Biden in relation to the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange is similar to the position of ex-President Donald Trump, the extradition of the founder of WikiLeaks to America will be the loudest political reprisal of the 21st century, Elena Panina, a member of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, told RIA Novosti.
Earlier in the New York Times, citing a spokesman for the US Department of Justice Mark Raimondi, it was reported that the administration of US President Joe Biden would continue to seek the extradition of Assange from the UK.
According to Panina, the positions of the Trump and Biden administrations regarding Assange are no different: “under Trump, they wanted revenge for exposing war crimes in Iraq, under Biden, they want to get even for the defeat of the Democrats in the 2016 presidential elections.” According to her, “we are dealing with political persecution, with the settlement of political scores.” Panina called Assange “the ideological enemy of the American globalists.”
“If London hands him over to the American authorities, this act will become the loudest political massacre of the twenty-first century,” Panina said.
Assange, accused of sexual harassment and rape in Sweden in 2010, has been hiding since June 2012 at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, fearing extradition. On the morning of April 11, 2019, he was detained at the request of the United States. Since that time, Assange has been held in the Belmarsh maximum security prison. The extradition hearing began on May 2, 2019. Shortly thereafter, the US authorities announced that they had brought new charges against Assange for 17 counts of violations of the espionage and secret information disclosure laws. If extradited to the United States, Assange could face up to 175 years in prison.
On January 4, the judge of the Central Criminal Court of London Vanessa Baraitser unexpectedly refused to extradite Assange to the US authorities, the lawyers of the American side said they would challenge this decision.