Today's program focuses on the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, whose physical and mental state have suffered the effects of seven years in confinement at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London and now in a British jail, serving a 50 week sentence for skipping bail. The UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Nils Meltzer, an attorney and profesor of international law, visited Assange. He was accompanied by two doctors who used the Istambul protocol on torture in their examination of Assange. Meltzer identified the causes for the journalist and publisher's deteriorated health in the governments (democracies all) responsable for his confinement: Britain, Sweden, Ecuador and the United States. The press has also participated in the "relentless smear campaign" against the whistleblower. Julian Assange now faces possible extradiction to the US where he has been indicted by a grand jury on 18 counts, 17 of them under the Espionage Act. The question is, can such acts as the obtaining and publication of state secrets be found criminal offenses without over-riding the First Amendment of the US Constitution?
English Language Broadcast
Panorama: Julian Assange
05/09/2019
33:32
