Amnesty International has called on US authorities to drop the charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and urged British authorities to release him immediately.

The call on Tuesday by Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard came ahead of an appeal hearing in London on Wednesday against the decision by a British court not to extradite Assange to the US, where he faces charges related to WikiLeaks’ publication of secret military files.

The High Court is due to hear an appeal against the decision in January not to extradite the 50-year-old Australian due to concerns he might be a suicide risk in a US prison.

Amnesty pointed to an investigation by Yahoo News revealing that US security services considered kidnapping or killing Assange when he was living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Those reports “have cast even more doubt on the reliability of US promises and further expose the political motivation behind this case,” Callamard said.

“It is a damning indictment that nearly 20 years on, virtually no one responsible for alleged US war crimes committed in the course of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars has been held accountable, let alone prosecuted, and yet a publisher who exposed such crimes is potentially facing a lifetime in jail,” she added.

Assange is accused of stealing and publishing secret material from US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with whistleblower Chelsea Manning. His supporters see him as an investigative journalist who brought war crimes to light.

AAP

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