Babies now on board in Julian Assange’s mammoth US extradition tussle – The Age

There was one piece of happy news on a doleful Easter day in Britain: Julian Assange had managed to father two children whilst locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy. This proves that love will find a way, even if your self-isolation is being enforced by the British police and the CIA.

It drew attention to the plight of this Australian publisher, who faces charges in America carrying a maximum of 175 years' imprisonment, all for revealing, back in 2010, truthful facts of considerable public interest.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with Gabriel, the first of the two children that he was said to have fathered while in the embassy.Credit:Stella Morris

He now languishes, probably for several years, in Belmarsh, Britains toughest (and mainly for terrorist suspects) prison while he fights the US attempt to extradite him for trial in Maryland. If convicted there, on essentially the same espionage act charges which brought his source, Chelsea Manning, a 35-year sentence, he can expect a somewhat heavier term 50 years, perhaps time enough for him to die in an American Supermax jail. Manning was pardoned by US president Barack Obama, but there is little prospect that Assange would receive clemency from a second-term President Trump.

His defence is, principally, that the extradition proceedings are brought for political purposes, to deter other publishers from revealing what US forces do, even illegally and what US diplomats know (but the media does not) about human rights abuses. This argument will be developed later in the year at Westminster Magistrates Court.

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Babies now on board in Julian Assange's mammoth US extradition tussle - The Age