(London, U.K.) The harsh and inhumane realities awaiting Julian Assange if he were to be extradited to the United States were outlined to the Old Bailey during the second week of his ongoing U.S. extradition proceedings.
Eric Lewis, a prominent U.S. attorney who has represented a number of high-profile cases, told the Old Bailey on Monday (September 14) that the nature of Assange’s case means he will be in solitary confinement at every stage of his case if it were to be taken to Eastern District Court of Virginia — from pre-trial detention to remand to every day of the sentence handed down to him.
Lewis said that due to the nature of the documents that WikiLeaks released, the Department of Justice will undoubtedly place the publisher in what is known as Special Administrative Measures — a staple for every case where the prosecution will argue there is an element of national security.
Assange has been indicted on 17 counts of espionage, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years each, with an additional charge of conspiracy to committing computer intrusion that carries an additional possible sentence of five years’ imprisonment.
Lewis told the court if Assange’s case were to go “brilliantly,” that he could expect a minimum of 20 years in prison, but in all likelihood will spend the rest of his living days in a cell.
“All signs point to a very long sentence, measured in many decades,” he said.
If Assange were to be extradited, his pre-trial detention and remand period would be spent at the Alexandria Detention Center, a facility ten miles outside of Washington D.C., and his sentence served at the “supermax” ADX Florence in Colorado that has frequently been described as “hell-like” and “inhumane”.
Lewis told the court that if Assange was to end up at the facility, he would be isolated from all other prisoners — with his one hour exercise time likely to be scheduled for three in the morning so as not to risk him coming into contact with any other prisoner held in general population.
“He’s going to spend 20 hours in a 50-foot cell with no contact with the rest of the prison population for a very long period of time and that obviously causes people to deteriorate rapidly.”
This would follow what is approaching ten years that Assange has spent in confinement without access to the outdoors or sunlight — either arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorean embassy in London or at Britain’s H.M.P. Belmarsh where he has been incarcerated since his arrest.
The case continues.