Julian Assange asks UN special rapporteur to ‘Please save my life’
by Personal Liberty News Desk
September 16, 2019
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, resides in cell No. 37 in “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay.” His cell is a single-occupancy cell, “furnished” with a plastic chair, a metal bed and steel toilet. It’s been Assange’s residence for more than 150 days. Last week a British judge ruled he’s to remain there even after he jail sentence is over.
The crime for which Assange is being punished is a bail violation. He’s been sentenced to 40 weeks in prison. The maximum sentence for the crime in Britain is 52 weeks. Typically, British bail violators get no time and a small fine.
Assange, scheduled to be extradited to the U.S. for telling the truth, may not live until the end of his sentence, according to Professor Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.
According to the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, Assange’s lawyers convinced Melzer to investigate the conditions Assange is living under after preventing “credible evidence” of “ill-treatment.”
As ECPMF reports:
A visibly fatigued and emaciated Assange greeted Melzer and his team during their visit on 9. May. It had been 28 days since Assange’s arrest. He was wearing a plain blue jumper and grey joggers.
Melzer and his team’s visit lasted for four hours. For three of those four hours Melzer and two medical experts, Professor Duarte Nuno Vieira from Portugal and Dr. Pau Perez-Sales from Spain conducted a medical assessment of Assange.
It followed the ‘Istanbul Protocol’. The protocol’s full name is the ‘Manual on Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.’
Melzer tells the ECPMF that at first, “after what this man [Assange] had gone through, I didn’t know what to expect.”
“From a medical perspective, both doctors concluded that his state of health was critical, and that it might deteriorate rapidly if he is not stabilized. And that’s exactly what happened.”
Two weeks after their visit, and 49 days into Assange’s detention, Assange was relocated to the hospital wing of Belmarsh. And a court hearing, on his extradition to the U.S., had to be postponed. It was deemed Assange was not medically fit to participate in the proceedings, even via video link.
What Assange is going through in prison is “psychological torture”, Melzer says emphatically. He came to this conclusion after his visit and published an official UN statement repeating this.
The British government maintains that allegations of torture or improper treatment are unfounded.
No comments:
Post a Comment