The mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 50, who is currently facing extradition in the US has written an open letter expressing her worry that her son will live the rest of his life imprisoned for simply having exposed the truth.

This comes after the High Court last week overturned a previous ruling against such a move.

Australia’s deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce also came to his defence, saying Mr Assange should be kept in the UK and tried there or returned to his home country.

Mr Assange’s fiancée Stella Moris has accused UK authorities of playing the role of “executioner” after he suffered a mini-stroke in prison.

Christine Assange stressed that her son being extradited over espionage charges in regards to the publication of classified military information in 2010 and 2011 by WikiLeaks was a courageous act rather than treason.

“Fifty years ago in giving birth for the first time as a young mother, I thought there could be no greater pain,” she said.

“But it was soon forgotten when I held my beautiful baby boy in my arms. I named him Julian. I realise now that I was wrong. There is a greater pain,” she wrote, adding that noting compares to “The unending, gut-wrenching pain of being the mother of a multi-award winning journalist who had the courage to publish the truth about high-level government crimes and corruption”.

“The pain of watching my son, who sought to publish important truths, being endlessly globally smeared. The pain of watching my son, who risked his life to expose injustice, being fitted up and denied a fair legal process, over and over again.”

Ms Assange explained that, “The constant nightmare of him being extradited to the US and being buried alive in extreme solitary confinement for the rest of his life. The constant fear the CIA will carry out its plans to assassinate him” is an excruciating reality.

“The rush of sadness as I saw his frail, exhausted body slumping from a mini-stroke in the last hearing due to chronic stress. Many people are also traumatised by seeing a vengeful superpower using its unlimited resources to bully and destroy a single defenceless individual,” she said.

“I wish to thank all the caring, decent citizens globally protesting Julian’s brutal political persecution. Please keep raising your voices to your politicians till it’s all they can hear. His life is in your hands.”

Mreanwhile, Konstantina Kouneva has also made a statement on Julian Assange. also known as Kostadinka Kuneva , is a Bulgarian immigrant in Greece, trade unionist and secretary of the Greek Trade Union of Cleaners and Housekeepers. She was elected as an MEP in the 2014 European Parliament elections.

“This text is dedicated to Julian Assange, to the journalists from Greece, Vassilis Vergis, Nikos Papaioannou, Stavros Vranas and his wife Elena Solomou, Phoebe Petropoulou, Michalis Leanis and Andreas Palaeologos and to all those who are fighting but are not heard,” Kouneva said.

“What does this persecution of Assange, this persecution of journalists and media in Greece and internationally, of investigative journalists and workers from all over the world, show? That freedom of speech, freedom of investigative journalism is the last thing that matters. What we have now is a farce and a mock democracy!
When it is a question of reporting real facts, of exposing them, or even slightly lifting the curtain and the dark veil of misinformation presented as ‘information’ and revealing truth, the backlash apparatuses hit hard. They crush anyone who dares to to peek behind the curtain and show the public what’s hidden there.”

Kouneva goes on to ask what this all means…

“That we have an extremely powerful, well-established system of global manipulation and deception of the people. What is the most crude censorship? When knowledge and information is absolutely forbidden to all. But now the situation is much more complicated, we have much information but little knowledge.
Certain individuals are scrambling to prevent us from learning truths and Assange exposed the secrets of the backstage masters and left them bare.
Remember what the great Dostoyevsky told us? The three weapons of power today are secrecy, force and manipulation. These are the real mechanisms of power.”

“The current system seeking global expansion is opposed to all local structure, resistance or diversity. There is total economic centralisation at the altar of profit. The words “democracy” and “national sovereignty” are void of meaning, because globalised capital also demands global political power. That is why we have puppet regimes. On the surface we have so-called democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, but in fact the real power is …the Secret.
In the most information driven era, churning so-called universal information, the truth is a secret.”