Trump administration targeting 'enemy of America' Julian Assange, court told

Donald Trump’s administration is targeting Julian Assange as “an enemy of the America who must be brought down” and his very life could be at risk if he is sent to face trial in the US, the first day of the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition hearing has been told.

Lawyers for Assange intend to call as a witness a former employee of a Spanish security company who says surveillance was carried out for the US on Assange while he was at Ecuador’s London embassy and that conversations had turned to potentially kidnapping or poisoning him.

This was an indication of the danger which Assange faced were he to be extradited to a state “prepared to consider such extreme measures”, Edward Fitzgerald QC told Woolwich crown court in south-east London.

The case against extradition, which Assange’s lawyers oppose on a range of grounds including that it contravenes the UK-US treaty by being “politically motivated”, was laid out after a barrister for US authorities said secret sources who supplied information to the US government “disappeared” after they were put at risk of death or torture by WikiLeaks’s release of classified documents.

Assange, 48, is wanted in the US to face 18 charges of attempted hacking and breaches of the Espionage Act. They relate to the publication a decade ago of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and files covering areas including US activities in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Australian, who could face a 175-year prison sentence if found guilty, is accused of working with the former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak classified documents.

The case is set to continue on Tuesday and over the course of this week, when some witnesses are expected to give evidence anonymously, potentially from behind screens.

James Lewis QC, acting for US authorities, told the court: “The US is aware of sources, whose unredacted names and other identifying information was contained in classified documents published by WikiLeaks, who subsequently disappeared, although the US can’t prove at this point that their disappearance was the result of being outed by WikiLeaks.”

By disseminating material in an unredacted form, Lewis said, Assange had knowingly put human rights activists, dissidents, journalists and their families at risk of serious harm in states run by oppressive regimes.

Sitting at the back of the court and dressed in a grey blazer, grey sweater and white shirt with reading glasses perched on his head, Assange stood up shortly before lunchtime to tell the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, that he was having difficulty hearing amid the noise of chanting from hundreds of supporters outside.

“I am having difficulty concentrating and this noise is not helpful,” he said. “I understand and am very appreciative of the public support. I do understand they must be disgusted by these proceedings.”

Assange’s counsel delivered a barrage of arguments against extradition, including that Assange would be exposed to cruel and degrading treatment in a maximum-security prison.

Fitzgerald added that Prof Michael Kopelman, a distinguished forensic psychiatrist and expert witness for the defence, had said: “I am as confident as a psychiatrist can ever be that, if extradition to the United States were to become imminent, Mr Assange would find a way of suiciding.”

Other key parts of the evidence related to the claim, which emerged last week, that a then US Republican congressman offered Assange a pardon if he denied Russian involvement in the leaking of US Democratic party emails during the 2016 US presidential contest.

The court was told that Dana Rohrabacher, who claims to have made the proposal on his own initiative, had presented it as a “win-win” scenario that would allow Assange to leave the embassy and get on with his life. Assange was also said to have been asked to reveal the source of the leaks and rejected this overture.

Fitzgerald was scathing of the US president and referred back to WikiLeaks revelations such as video of US soldiers shooting unarmed civilians from a helicopter and the torture of detainees in Iraq. he added: “Such revelations obviously put him in the sights of the aggressive ‘America first’ ideologues of the Trump administration.”

Earlier, Lewis said that journalism was not an excuse for breaking laws. He took the court through a number of details about documents relating to sources which the US alleges were put at risk. One had supplied information about an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in Iraq. Another was named in a 2008 US state department cable discussing issues relating to ethnic conflict in China.

Lewis said he wanted to emphasise: “He is not charged with disclosure of embarrassing or awkward information that the government would rather not have have disclosed.”

Earlier, Lewis referred to a report in the Guardian from September 2011, which said WikiLeaks had published its full archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables, without redactions, potentially exposing thousands of individuals named in the documents to detention or harm.

He went on to describe how the move had been strongly condemned by WikiLeaks’ five previous media partners – the Guardian, the New York Times, El País, Der Spiegel and Le Monde – who had worked with the site publishing carefully selected and redacted documents.

The case against extradition counters that it is misleading to suggest Assange and WikiLeaks were responsible for the disclosure of unredacted names to the public. They say he took every step to prevent the disclosure of unredacted names, and WikiLeaks only published unredacted materials after they had been published in full by others.

Related: Amid the din, cleancut Assange struggles to hear case against him

Assange has been held on remand in Belmarsh prison since last September after serving a jail sentence for breaching bail conditions. He sought refuge in Ecuador’s embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was accused of sexual offences, which he denied.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.