Sixty Doctors Write To British Home Secretary That They Fear Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Could Die In Prison

More than 60 eminent physicians have written an open letter signed by them to British Home Secretary Priti Patel that they fear Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's health is so bad that he could die inside the top-security Belmarsh prison.

These medical doctors who are from the United States, Australia, Britain, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Sri Lanka and Poland, have called for Assange to be moved from Belmarsh prison in southeast London to a university teaching hospital in order to save his life.

Their letter mentioned that they based their assessment on “harrowing eyewitness accounts” of his October 21 court appearance in London and a November 1 report by Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur On Torture.

Earlier, Melzer who had visited him in prison, had stated that Julian Assange showed all symptoms associated with prolonged exposure to psychological torture and should not be extradited to the United States.

Incidentally, the 48-year-old Assange is still fighting a US bid to extradite him from Britain on charges filed under the Espionage Act which could see him given a sentence of up to 175 years in a US prison.

Allegedly, Assange used the WikiLeaks website to publish classified military and diplomatic files in 2010 about US bombing campaigns in Afghanistan as well as Iraq which proved highly embarrassing to the US government.

According to the physicians who have written the letter to the British Home Secretary, there are serious concerns regarding Assange’s physical and mental health.

“We write this open letter, as medical doctors, to express our serious concerns about the physical and mental health of Julian Assange,” the doctors stated in their 16-page open letter.

They said they had “concerns about Assange's fitness” to go through the full extradition hearing, which is set for February 2020.

“Assange requires urgent expert medical assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health. Any medical treatment indicated should be administered in a properly equipped and expertly staffed university teaching hospital (tertiary care),” the physicians have written.

“Were such urgent assessment and treatment not to take place, we have real concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Assange could die in prison. The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose,” the letter stated.

According to the letter, at Assange’s first appearance in public for six months, in a court hearing recently, he seemed frail and also appeared confused whenever he was asked to talk at the Westminster Magistrates' Court in London.

Assange seemed to have difficulties recalling his birth date, and at the end of the hearing told District Judge Vanessa Baraitser that he had not understood what had happened in court, the letter stated.

Assange had also complained about the conditions in which he was being kept in Belmarsh prison.

It may be recalled that in August this year, United States Federal Judge John G Koeltl had ruled that WikiLeaks founder Assange did not break any law by publishing hacked Democratic National Congress (DNC) emails.

He also ruled that WikiLeaks is fully entitled to publish them.

The judge had concluded that if WikiLeaks could be held liable for publishing documents about the DNC’s political, financial and voter-engagement strategies simply because the DNC labels them ‘secret’ or “trade secrets”, then any newspaper or other media outlet also could be held liable for the same.

The judge stated that the US First Amendment prevents such liability in the same way it would preclude liability for press outlets which publish materials in public interest.