Assange's lawyers plan to request asylum in France for WikiLeaks founder

Julian Assange's European defence team said Thursday it will try to seek asylum in France for the WikiLeaks founder. French team member Eric Dupont-Moretti said Assange's case placed at stake "the fate and the status of all journalists."

He was one of a team of lawyers lined up at a Paris news conference to explain why they view the case against Assange as unfair, citing his poor health and alleged violations of his rights while in jail in London. Assange's full hearings for extradition to the United States on spying charges start next week in the British capital.

'Not an ordinary demand'

French members of the team said they have been working on a ''concrete demand'' for Macron to grant Assange asylum in France, where he has children and where Wikileaks was present at its founding. ''It is not an ordinary demand,'' lawyer Antoine Vey said, noting that Assange is not on French soil.

Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish coordinator of Assange's team, reiterated his client's plan to claim that the Trump administration offered him a pardon. The alleged condition was that Assange must agree to say that Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 US election campaign. Garzon insisted that Assange was ''pressured by the Trump administration'' but resisted and the ''order was given to demand the extradition of Julian Assange,'' he said.

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