WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be set free, UN rights experts have demanded, arguing that the 50-week sentence he has received in Britain amounts to detention without legal justification.
The Australian initiator of the whistleblower platform was sentenced for breaching bail conditions this week.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Geneva pointed out the punishment was linked to an extradition request that Sweden had dropped in 2017, when a Swedish prosecutor stopped investigating Assange for rape and sexual assault.
It said the punishment was "disproportionate" for his "minor violation".
"The Working Group is further concerned that Mr Assange has been detained since 11 April 2019 in Belmarsh prison, a high-security prison, as if he were convicted for a serious criminal offence," the UN body said in its statement on Friday.
On that day, police dragged Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had spent seven years to avoid arrest.
The Working Group, which consists of UN-appointed but independent experts, found in 2016 that Britain and Sweden were responsible for Assange's confinement in the embassy.
The British government, which rejected the panel's conclusions at the time, "has now furthered the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Mr Assange", the UN body said.
The UN definition of arbitrary detention includes imprisonment without an arrest warrant or without a fair trial, as well as putting people behind bars for expressing their beliefs.
Assange is currently fighting his extradition to the United States, where he is accused of conspiring with former US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak a trove of classified material in 2010.
