by Harley Schlanger, LaRouche Organization:

One can’t help feeling happy for Julian Assange, who was freed on June 26 after five years spent mostly in solitary confinement, in Belmarsh Prison near London, a venue known as Britain’s Guantanamo.  His time there was preceded by seven years spent in asylum in uncomfortable quarters in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.  On June 27, he was reunited with his family in Australia, freed at last from a Kafkaesque ordeal.  The last five years were spent fighting extradition to the U.S., where he was facing 17 new charges from a May 2019 indictment under the U.S. Espionage Act, which carried a maximum sentence of 170 years (1).  With his guilty plea, he was given a 62 month sentence, but released for time already served in prison.