Here’s Why Doctors Write Open Letter Concerning Julian Assange

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is back in the news, this time for health reasons. 60 doctors have written an open letter stating that his health condition is deteriorating and immediate action needs to be taken or things could change for the worst. The 48-year-old Australian is currently inside a heavily guarded British Jail. 

He is still fighting a US bid to extradite him from Britain on charges filed under the Espionage Act. If found guilty he could be sentenced to 175 years. 

In a letter addressed to the British Home Secretary doctors have sent in a request to shift him from Belmarsh prison in Southeast London to a University Teaching Hospital. The doctors hail from the United States, Australia, Britain, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Sri Lanka, and Poland.

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

“Any medical treatment indicated should be administered in a properly equipped and expertly staffed university teaching hospital (tertiary care). They wrote further, “The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose.”

There were many instances in the past that clearly indicated that the editor’s health was deteriorating.  At a court hearing last month Assange appeared frail in public. He forgot his birth date and didn’t even understand the court proceedings according to district judge Vanessa Baraitser. He also complained about the conditions he was kept in Belmarsh. 

Julian Assange spent seven years in Ecuador’s embassy in London before being dragged out in April. He’s wanted by America for conspiring to hack government computers and for violating the espionage law. 

Last Tuesday Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation into a 2010 rape allegation even though they found the plaintiff’s claim “credible.”