UN calls for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s release from high-security British jail, calls sentence ‘disproportionate’
- UN working group on arbitrary detention said Assange violating the terms of his bail was a ‘minor violation’
UN experts have called for Julian Assange to be released from prison and criticised the British government for breaching his human rights.
The WikiLeaks publisher was jailed for 50 weeks on Wednesday for breaking bail conditions imposed seven years earlier by seeking asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
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 Ecuadorean 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 Mr Assange,” it said in a statement on Friday.
