Wikileaks founder Assange sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for skipping bail

Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange who sought asylum in the South American country’s London embassy in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden has been sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching his bail conditions in the UK seven years ago.

Aljazeera revealed that her Honour Judge Deborah Taylor handed down close to the maximum sentence of a year stating that Assange’s seven years in the embassy had cost UK taxpayers 16 million pounds while he sought asylum as a “deliberate attempt to delay justice.”

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The judge was given a letter written by Assange explaining his reasoning for hiding in the Ecuadorean Embassy to avoid charges of sexual assault in Sweden, that in “struggling through terrifying circumstances,” he did what he “thought at the time was best or perhaps the only thing that he could have done.”

Also, Assange was arrested on April 11 after Ecuador annulled his political asylum, accusing him of meddling in the nation’s foreign affairs.

He is to face another court hearing on Thursday on a US extradition request after being charged with conspiring to break into a Pentagon computer system.

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