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US extra-territorializing its laws to punish Assange: Journalist

Frame grab from Press TV's interview of December 11, 2021 with journalist Richard Medhurst

The United States is "extra-territorializing" its laws so it can get its hands on whistleblower and founder of the WikiLeaks' website, Julian Assange, says a journalist.

"The US is saying if you don't live in the United States, don't work in the United States, if you're not from the United States, if you publish documents that the United States doesn't like, they will come and get you," Richard Medhurst, host of Press TV's The Communiqué program, said from Vienna on Saturday.

Washington accuses Assange of 18 counts relating to WikiLeaks' release of vast troves of confidential US military records, including classified military and diplomatic files in 2010 about US bombing campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq that proved highly embarrassing for Washington.

Assange was holed up in Ecuador's Embassy in London from 2012 to 2019, fighting extradition to the US. He was, however, arrested in London after being expelled from the embassy in 2019.

Ever since, Assange has been confined to London's Belmarsh Prison.

Medhurst's remarks came only a day after the British High Court overturned a ruling that blocked Assange's extradition to the United Sates, deciding that he could be sent to America, where he faces a possible life in prison sentence.

"And they're trying to make example out of him to scare other people. That's the point that they are making," Medhurst noted.

"The United States always does this. It always lies to other countries, it lies to other judges, to other jurisdictions in order to get people into the US," he observed.

"They just kidnap people overseas and render them to bring them to the United States. One way or another, they will find a way to get people in the US jurisdiction, because they know once you're there, no one is going to help you...no one is going to do anything."


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