Iran Press/America: The WikiLeaks publisher, Julian Assange was jailed for 50 weeks on Wednesday for breaking bail conditions imposed seven years earlier by seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the Guardian reported.
The UN working group on arbitrary detention (WGAD) said it was deeply concerned by the “disproportionate sentence” imposed on Assange for violating the terms of his bail, which it described as a “minor violation.
The group has twice previously called for Assange to be freed after it judged his confinement to the Ecuadorian embassy by the threat of arrest should he leave amounted to arbitrary detention.
“The working group regrets that the government has not complied with its opinion and has now furthered the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Assange,” it said in a statement on Friday.
“It is worth recalling that the detention and the subsequent bail of Assange in the UK were connected to preliminary investigations initiated in 2010 by a prosecutor in Sweden.
It is equally worth noting that that prosecutor did not press any charges against Assange and that in 2017, after interviewing him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, she discontinued investigations and brought an end to the case.
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