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London, AFP: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was sentenced Wednesday to 50 weeks in jail for breaching a British court order seven years ago, when he took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden.
The Australian whistle-blower, who was arrested on 11 April after Ecuador gave him up, will serve the nearly one-year sentence while fighting a separate attempt to transfer him to the United States.
The 47-year-old, his shaggy beard neatly trimmed, raised his fist to supporters in the public gallery at London’s Southwark Crown Court as he was taken down to the cells.
They responded by raising theirs and shouting “Shame on you!” towards the court.
Assange fled to Ecuador’s embassy in 2012 after a British judge ordered his extradition to face Swedish allegations of sexual assault and rape, which he strongly denied.
He claimed the allegations were a pretext to transfer him to the United States, where he feared prosecution over the release by WikiLeaks of millions of classified documents.
At the sentencing hearing, his lawyer Mark Summers said Assange had been “gripped” by “reasonable fears” that he would face rendition to the US.
“As threats rained down on him from America, they overshadowed everything as far as he was concerned,” the lawyer said.
In a letter read out on his behalf, Assange expressed regret, saying: “I did what I thought at the time was the best or perhaps the only thing that I could have done.” There is no longer an active investigation in Sweden and the extradition request has lapsed.
However, Assange is facing a US extradition request, which was only revealed following his dramatic arrest, when he was dragged shouting from the embassy by police.
Assange appeared in court within hours of his arrest, and a judge found him guilty of breaching his bail conditions. The biggest concern for his lawyers is the US extradition request. An initial hearing in the case has been scheduled for this Thursday.
The US indictment charges him with “conspiracy” for working with former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password stored on Department of Defence computers in March 2010.
Manning passed hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, exposing US military wrongdoing in the Iraq war and diplomatic secrets about scores of countries around the world.
Assange could face up to five years in jail if found guilty, although his team is fighting his extradition and the process could take years.
The charge has raised serious concerns among organisations advocating free speech, including politicians such as British opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
