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Jeremy Corbyn Says UK Should Oppose Assange Extradition

The leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party says the government should oppose the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States.

LONDON (AP) — The leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party says the government should oppose the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States.

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn gives a thumbs up gesture as he arrives for an interview by BBC TV journalist Andrew Marr, in Liverpool, England, Sunday Sept. 23, 2018. The Labour Party is holding its annual party conference in Liverpool, which is due to decide on decisive issues like whether to back a new Brexit referendum on the country's departure from the European Union. (Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)

Jeremy Corbyn said in a tweet that the U.S. is trying to extradite Assange because he exposed "evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Diane Abbott, Labour's spokeswoman for domestic affairs, told the BBC on Friday that the government should block the extradition on human rights grounds. Assange was arrested Thursday at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

Abbott says the U.S. case against Assange is about the "embarrassment of the things he's revealed about the American military and security services."

She says Assange is "a whistleblower, and much of the information that he brought into the public domain, it could be argued, was very much in the public interest."

Categories / Criminal, International, Politics

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