Julian Assange's degrading mental health cited at extradition hearing in London court

Julian Assange “binge-watched” the suicide of the former Bosnian Croat general in the United Nations (UN) court in 2017, said the doctor who visited the WikiLeaks founder several times at London's Ecuadorian Embassy in an extradition hearing on Thursday, September 24.

As per reports, Dr Sondra Crosby, an associate professor of medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine said that she has observed a significant downfall in both the mental and physical state of Assange over her four visits from October 2017 at the embassy.

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On being granted asylum by Ecuador amid fears of extradition to the United States over his WikiLeaks work, Assange was living at the embassy in London. The medical professional told London’s Old Bailey criminal court that on a visit back in February 2018, Assange relayed his thoughts of suicide and how he had been thinking about it “very deliberately”.

Crosby said that he had “binge-watched” the suicide that had occurred a few months earlier of Slobodan Praljak at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

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The dramatic incident of 2017

The dramatic incident of 2017 that Assange watched in rapid succession was Praljak drinking from a small bottle, that reportedly contained potassium cyanide, just a few seconds after the appeals judge confirmed his 20-year-old sentence for war crimes during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Bosnian Croat general claimed his innocence before committing the act and collapsing in the court. Praljak was then taken to a Dutch hospital but died two hours later. 

Moreover, the entire scene of the 72-year-old former commander of Bosnian Croat military forces lifting his hand to his mouth and drinking the fluid was, unfortunately, live-streamed on the court’s official website. Crosby is reported to have said at the hearing that the WikiLeaks founder had described to her how he “freeze-framed” and even “analysed” Praljak’s facial expressions in those moments. 

The doctor made the revelation while Assange’s lawyers are arguing this week that the WikiLeaks founder could commit suicide if he is extradited to the US to face the espionage charges. The lawyers have already pointed out Assange’s degrading mental health during his stay at the embassy for seven years and the ejection in April 2019 to a British prison.

Crosby also talked about how Assange “appeared to be severely depressed” in a visit to Belmarsh Prison in London in October 2019 and that he talked about having suicidal thoughts “hundred times a day”. 

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Inputs/Image: AP