Julian Assange and the Indonesian elections (E276)

Julian Assange is behind bars and in the hands of the UK justice system, where a request for his extradition to the US in due course will be heard, and heard, and heard. Not since Oscar Wilde’s conviction that led to “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” will a more exotic court room drama rivet the nation and then the world. Vaughan Smith has been a central figure in the ballad of Julian Assange from the start. A former army officer, he gave over his country home to Julian Assange and put up thousands of pounds for his bail. Having lost most of it, he’s still in the fight and on the publisher’s side. So, in a very special edition of Sputnik, we invited him into the studio to tell us more about the Julian Assange he knows, who is very different from the media portrayal.

Elections took place this week in Indonesia. It’s a country with over 190 million registered voters, and it is predicted to be one of the largest economies by 2030. With a massive turnout of over 80 percent, it was still unclear at the time of recording who had won the election with both candidates claiming victory. So, we sent Gayatri to Indonesia to find out just what is going on in one of the largest democracies in the world.

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Podcast https://soundcloud.com/rttv/sets/sputnik-orbiting-the-world