Dear Mrs Patel, enough torture by solitary confinement: please release Julian Assange NOW !

 

Julian Assange should be given his freedom

 

Dear Home Secretary

A British Judge has decided that Julian Assange had been punished enough, saying that he should not be extradited to U.S.A. Hoorah!  District Judge Vanessa Baraitser said: "I have decided extradition would be oppressive by reason of mental harm and I order his discharge."

 

Assange is a journalist who has been persecuted by Britain and the Americans. He has spent eight and a half years in solitary confinement, in an embassy sanctuary and now in Belmarsh prison, and without being convicted of any crime. In fact I believe very firmly that he has committed no crime.

 

Please, Mrs Patel, it is time to leave Mr Assange in peace. Liberate him NOW, and allow him and his partner Stella Morris, the mother of his small children, to find ways to recover from the last eight years of persecution, isolation, and mental torture for which you personally had no responsibility.

 

Do I like Assange? No. Do I admire him? No. But journalism and the revelation of truth are essential to freedom and democracy. Mrs May and her American allies have behaved like medieval tyrants in the case of these whistleblowers, and it is time to admit that Britain got it wrong in its persecution of Julian Assange. This is what he looks like after 8 years of confinement. Enough is ENOUGH !