25/01/2022 Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Pieter Omtzigt (Netherlands, EPP/CD), the Parliamentary Assembly‘s General Rapporteur on the Protection of Whistleblowers, has welcomed yesterday’s decision of the United Kingdom’s High Court to grant leave to Julian Assange to appeal to the Supreme Court on a point of law raised by his legal team.
“The issue of the validity of the assurances received from the United States regarding the treatment of Mr Assange is a very important one. The Supreme Court will have to decide whether it is sufficient that such assurances are made only at a later stage of the extradition proceedings, and not at their start. In my view, the reliability of so-called diplomatic assurances is an important factual issue that the lower courts should indeed be allowed to assess.”