Julian Assange’s mother lashed out at Theresa May, accusing the British prime minister of using her son’s “thuggish, brutal, unlawful” arrest to divert attention from “her Brexit dog’s breakfast.”
In her scathing attack on Twitter, Christine Assange also said her son, the WikiLeaks founder who was dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy Thursday and arrested on UK and US warrants, “has been deprived of exercise and medical care.”
“Please be patient, gentle & kind to him,” she wrote to police and court personnel, adding that she would “fight like hell” to secure the 47-year-old’s release.
Christine Assange focused her anger mainly on May as well as Ecuador’s president.
“Theresa May trying to divert attention away from her Brexit dog’s breakfast by cheering on the thuggish, brutal, unlawful arrest of my courageous, tortured multi-award-winning journalist son Julian!”
Speaking in the House of Commons on Thursday, May declared that Assange’s arrest showed “no one is above the law” in the UK.
Addressing Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, Christine Assange tweeted: “Shame on you @Lenin #Moreno! May the Ecuadorean people seek vengeance upon you, you dirty, deceitful, rotten traitor!
“May the face of my suffering son haunt your sleepless nights.. And may your soul writhe forever in torturous Purgatory as you have tortured my beloved son!”
She also assailed District Judge Michael Snow, who had described Julian Assange’s behavior as “that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.”
“UK judge should NOT be making statements like this! This is (a) rubbish Legal process!” tweeted Christine Assange, who lives in Australia.
Meanwhile, Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott both called on the British government to block Assange’s extradition.
“The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government,” Corbyn tweeted.
Speaking in the Commons, Abbott said Assange was being “pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations and their military forces,” according to Sky News.
She also told the BBC that May should block Assange’s extradition to the US after the prime minister previously intervened in the case of computer hacker Gary McKinnon.
“It is not the rape charges, serious as they are, it is about WikiLeaks and all of that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military and security services that was made public,” Abbott said.
“He is at the very least 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.”