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WikiLeaks founder said awarding Venezuela\u2019s opposition leader is a \u2018gross misappropriation\u2019 of funds and risks facilitating war crimes.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint in Sweden against the Nobel Foundation, challenging the organisation\u2019s decision to award its Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.<\/p>\n Assange said this year\u2019s awarding of the prize to Machado represented a \u201cgross misappropriation\u201d of funds and the \u201cfacilitation of war crimes\u201d under Swedish law. He added that he was seeking to freeze 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.18m) from being transferred to her as prize money.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The Nobel Committee awarded Machado the prize in October for promoting democratic rights and fighting to achieve a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.<\/p>\n Assange\u2019s criminal complaint, filed on Wednesday, accuses 30 individuals associated with the Nobel Foundation, including the organisation\u2019s leadership, of misappropriating funds, facilitating war crimes and crimes against humanity, and financing crimes of aggression.<\/p>\n By awarding the prize to Machado, \u201can instrument of peace\u201d was converted \u201cinto an instrument of war\u201d, Assange said in the complaint, accusing Machado of inciting and endorsing the \u201ccommission of international crimes\u201d by the United States as it applies military pressure to force Venezuela\u2019s President Nicolas Maduro to step down.<\/p>\n Machado\u2019s selection for the prestigious honour was not without controversy after drawing criticism for her vocal support for Israel during its ongoing genocidal war in Gaza, including in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly after her Nobel win was announced in October.<\/p>\n She has pledged to move Venezuela\u2019s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem should she take office.<\/p>\n Machado has also expressed support for US President Donald Trump\u2019s months-long campaign against Venezuela\u2019s Maduro, aligning herself with right-wing hawks in his administration.<\/p>\n Trump officials argue that Maduro has links to criminal drug gangs that pose a direct threat to US national security \u2013 despite doubts raised by Washington\u2019s intelligence community \u2013 and have threatened to take military action against Venezuela.<\/p>\n Since September, Trump has ordered more than 20 military strikes against alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America\u2019s Pacific coast, killing 104 people so far.<\/p>\n A massive deployment of US naval and air forces is also under way in Latin America, as fears grow that Washington could order an invasion of Venezuela to topple Maduro.<\/p>\n Assange said this week that Machado\u2019s backing of Trump\u2019s military campaign \u201ccategorically exclude[s]\u201d her from consideration for the prize as it violates the criteria set out in the will of the award\u2019s founder, Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel.<\/p>\n \u201cThe complaint shows that Alfred Nobel\u2019s 1895 will explicitly mandates that the peace prize go to the individual who during the preceding year \u2018conferred the greatest benefit to humankind\u2019 by doing \u2018the most or the best work for fraternity between nations\u2019,\u201d Assange said.<\/p>\n WikiLeaks also argued that there is \u201creal risk\u201d the funds have been or will be \u201cdiverted from their charitable purpose to facilitate aggression, crimes against humanity, and war crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n The Peace Prize is awarded by a Norwegian selection committee in Oslo, but Assange argued the Stockholm-based foundation must assume financial responsibility. Swedish police confirmed to the AFP news agency that they had received the complaint.<\/p>\n Assange founded whistleblowing organisation WikiLeaks in 2006 and rose to prominence in 2010 after publishing a series of leaks from US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.<\/p>\n In 2012, Assange was granted refuge by Ecuador\u2019s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped, staying there for seven years.<\/p>\n He was then jailed in London\u2019s high-security Belmarsh prison from 2019 to 2024, as the US government sought to extradite him over charges he conspired to hack into US military databases to acquire sensitive secret information.<\/p>\n As part of a US Justice Department plea deal, Assange was released from prison in the United Kingdom in 2024 after pleading guilty to a single count of violating espionage laws, before returning to his native Australia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n WikiLeaks founder said awarding Venezuela\u2019s opposition leader is a \u2018gross misappropriation\u2019 of funds and risks facilitating war crimes. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint in Sweden against the Nobel Foundation, challenging the organisation\u2019s decision to award its Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. Assange said this year\u2019s awarding of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
A contentious selection<\/h2>\n
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