London, Dec 24 (IANS) Julian Assange, founder of whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, has said that if the US succeeds in removing him from Britain or Sweden, there was a ‘high chance’ he would be killed in the US prison system.
In an interview with the Guardian in Ellingham Hall, the country mansion in Norfolk where he is living under house arrest, Assange said it would be difficult for British Prime Minister David Cameron to hand him over to the US if there was strong support for him from the British people.
Assange, however, said the final word on his fate rests with Cameron.
‘It’s all a matter of politics. We can presume there will be an attempt to influence British political opinion, and to influence the perception of our standing as a moral actor,’ he said.
Assange is currently fighting extradition to Sweden. He strongly denies allegations of sexual misconduct with two Swedish women. But he said the biggest threat to his freedom emanates from a wrathful US.
According to him, the Obama administration is ‘trying to strike a plea deal’ with Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old intelligence official and alleged source of the US diplomatic cables leaked last month.
US attorney general Eric Holder wants to indict Assange as a co-conspirator and is examining ‘computer hacking statutes and support for terrorism’, Assange said.
Assange said he is prepared for the possibility that he might spend a long period in prison if indicted by the US.
The prospect of solitary confinement was no longer an ‘intellectual abstraction’ but a reality.
His extradition hearing is scheduled for Feb 6-7.
‘Solitary confinement is very difficult. But I know that provided there is some opportunity for correspondence I can withstand it. I’m mentally robust. Of course, it would mean the end of my life in the conventional sense,’ he said.
Since moving to Ellingham Hall, Assange has given numerous media interviews, but said he was fed up with the press. He described an interview with BBC as ‘awful’, when the news anchor grilled him on how many people he had slept with.
Assange said WikiLeaks did not have enough money to pay its legal bills, even though ‘a lot of generous lawyers have donated their time to us’.
He said legal costs for WikiLeaks and his own defence were approaching 500,000 pounds.
The decisions by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks – apparently following US pressure – had robbed the website of a ‘war chest’ of around 500,000 euros.
This would have been enough to fund WikiLeaks’ publishing operations for six months. At its peak, the organisation was receiving 100,000 euros a day, he said.
However, Assange can take cheer from the fact that he has secured a seven-figure advance for a book about WikiLeaks and his life story.
The book is to be published in the spring by Knopf in the US and Canongate in Britain.
