Protesters hold banners in support of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange outside Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Feb 19, 2020, during Assange's remand hearing via video-link as he fights extradition to the United States. (TOLGA AKMEN / AFP)

PARIS — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is jailed in Britain fighting extradition to the United States for espionage and computer hacking, may seek asylum in France, his lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti said on Friday.

Dupond-Moretti told Europe 1 radio that Assange’s legal team would be in contact with French President Emmanuel Macron to make the case for Assange to get asylum in France. Assange has said that his youngest child and the child’s mother are French.

Assange’s lawyers noted the request for asylum was “not an ordinary demand” because Assange is not on French soil

Assange’s lawyers noted the request for asylum was “not an ordinary demand” because Assange is not on French soil.

Dupond-Moretti said the French asylum request would be based on humanitarian and health grounds, arguing that Assange was showing signs of “psychological torture”.

“Article 53 of our constitution also allows for France to give refuge to a man who is being threatened on reasons of his freedom of expression,” he told Europe 1.

The 48-year old Assange, who spent seven years holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy before he was dragged out last April, is wanted in the United States on 18 counts, including conspiring to hack government computers and violating an espionage law. He could spend decades behind bars if convicted.

French lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti speaks during a press conference held to defend Julian Assange in Paris on Feb 20, 2020.(FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP)

An earlier request made in 2015 by Assange to get asylum in France was rejected.

Assange is currently in jail in London, and Judge Vanessa Baraitser will hear arguments next week as to why he should or should not be sent to the United States.

 A hero to admirers who say he has exposed abuses of power, Assange is cast by critics as a dangerous enemy of the state who has undermined Western security. He says the extradition is politically motivated by those embarrassed by his revelations.

Jennifer Robinson, Assange’s lawyer, says his case could lead to criminalising activities crucial to investigative journalists and his work has shed an unprecedented light on how the United States conducted its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are talking about collateral murder, evidence of war crimes,” she said. “They are a remarkable resource for those of us seeking to hold governments to account for abuses.”

WikiLeaks angered Washington by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables that laid bare critical US appraisals of world leaders, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the Saudi royal family.

Assange made international headlines in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a classified US military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff.

PARDON DEAL?

The hearing at London’s Woolwich Crown Court will not decide if Assange is guilty of any wrongdoing, but whether the extradition request meets the requirements set out under a 2003 UK-US treaty, which critics say is stacked in favor of the United States.

ALSO READ: Lawyer: Assange offered US pardon if he denied Russia role

Baraitser has agreed that the case will get under way next week before being postponed until May 18 when it will resume again for a further three weeks to allow both sides more time to gather evidence.

Assange’s lawyers have said in preliminary hearings that they would argue he was being sought for political offences and that the treaty banned extradition on these grounds.

Trump offered to pardon Assange if he said that Russia had nothing to do with WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic Party emails in 2016, his lawyer told a London court this week. The White House dismissed the accusation.

Other arguments would feature medical evidence, public denunciations by leading US political figures and details from the case of Chelsea Manning, an ex-intelligence analyst who was convicted by a US Army court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other offences for leaking secret cables to WikiLeaks.

Assange’s legal team are planning to call up to 21 witnesses as part of his defense.

In 2012, Assange took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden where he was accused of sex crimes which he denied and which were later dropped, saying he feared he would ultimately be sent on to the United Sates.

READ MORE: Sweden drops Assange rape investigation after 9 years

After seven years, he was dragged from the embassy in 2019 and then jailed for 50 weeks for skipping bail. He has remained in prison ever since, after the United States launched its extradition request.

If the judge decides Assange should be extradited, the decision needs to be rubber-stamped by Home Secretary (interior minister) Priti Patel although he will have the right to appeal to London’s High Court and then possibly to the Supreme Court, Britain’s top judicial body.