Julian Assange had an easy coronavirus, but his condition is mostly bad, Gabriel Shipton, half-brother of the WikiLeaks founder, told Das Erste. Things are also bad in terms of mental health: Assange has been in a maximum security prison in London for more than three and a half years. According to Shipton, this treatment of Assange serves a certain purpose and shows the world:
if you disclose evidence of U.S. war crimes, your freedom will be taken away from you.
Julian Assange recently contracted the coronavirus. Apparently, he endured the disease quite easily. For the most part, however, his health is very poor. His half-brother Gabriel Shipton paints a grim picture:
“We see his physical decline. We see it with our own eyes,” Das Erste reports.
Things are also bad in terms of mental health. For more than three and a half years Assange has been in Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in London. According to Shipton, the British judicial system has never explained why he is being held in high-security conditions. Nor has anyone explained why Assange’s repeated requests to attend court hearings were denied.
Shipton sees this attitude as “plain arbitrary” and sees it as a method of influencing the public:
“While Julian is being held in a maximum-security prison and broken by this endless trial, it serves a certain purpose. It shows the world: if you release this kind of information – evidence of U.S. war crimes, evidence of torture – you’re going to be stuck in endless litigation. Your freedom of movement, your right to asylum, will be taken away from you. Your freedom of speech will be taken away from you.”
Gabriel Shipton, a filmmaker by profession, made the documentary Ithaca. It shows the family’s struggle for Assange’s release, and shows the WikiLeaks founder as a father and husband. In this way, Shipton hopes to appeal to a wider audience on an emotional level and to broaden Assange’s circle of support. But, of course, the film is also about the situation as a whole.
Shipton notes that his brother has just been nominated for the Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament:
“Julian was one of three nominees for the Sakharov Prize, the European Parliament’s most important prize for human rights and freedom of speech. Julian is in prison for exactly the same reason that the European Parliament honors him.”
According to Shipton, Assange now has more access to his lawyers than during court hearings. He can also receive visitors once or twice a week and see his wife Stella and children. But he is likely to spend many more years behind bars.
A British court initially imposed a ban on Assange’s extradition to the United States, but only because he was deemed suicidal. The judge upheld all of the prosecution’s claims that he had published classified documents, for which the U.S. wants to put him on trial. The extradition was banned only because of Assange’s psychological condition and the harsh conditions in a U.S. prison.
The ban was lifted in December 2021, and in June of that year the then British Home Secretary Priti Patel gave the go-ahead for extradition to the United States. Assange’s defense appealed her decision to the High Court in London. This means that for the foreseeable future, the process will return to its essence: freedom of the press and the question of what actions it covers, Das Erste writes.
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