France leftist leader promises Assange citizenship

French leftist politician Jean-Luc Melenchon promised Friday to grant French nationality to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange if left-wing parties win a majority in parliamentary elections this weekend. 

Assange is wanted in the US for allegedly violating the Espionage Act by publishing military and diplomatic files in 2010, and could face up to 175 years in jail if found guilty, though the exact sentence is difficult to estimate.

Ahead of voting on Sunday, Melenchon was asked about the extradition of Assange to the United States, which the British government approved on Friday to the dismay of his supporters and free-press campaigners.

"If I am prime minister on Monday, Mr Julien Assange -- I believe he has already asked for it -- will be naturalised as French and we will ask for him to be sent to us," Melenchon told reporters.

"Mr Assange should be decorated for all his services to French people," he added.

Melenchon's new NUPES coalition of left-wing and green parties is hoping for a majority after Sunday's vote, which could lead to 70-year-old Melenchon being named prime minister.

But polls suggest centrist President Emmanuel Macron's "Together" coalition is likely to emerge as the biggest party.

The French parliament debated a motion in February proposing granting Assange political asylum, which was defeated after failing to win enough support from Macron's MPs.

The WikiLeaks founder has influential contacts inside the current French government, however, with his former lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti now serving as justice minister.

Dupond-Moretti had requested a meeting with Macron in 2020 in order to ask for political asylum for his client, and has faced calls from French rights groups to make good on his promise now that he is inside the cabinet. 

Assange has 14 days to appeal the UK government decision, which came after a British court issued a formal order clearing his removal in April.

His supporters have held frequent rallies to protest the planned deportation, which they see as an infringement on media freedom and free speech.

He has been detained at a top-security jail in southeast London since 2019 for jumping bail in a previous case accusing him of sexual assault in Sweden.

In February 2020, Dupond-Moretti, one of France's best-known lawyers before he entered politics, called the possible 175-year prison sentence "shameful, unbearable and contrary to the idea everyone has of human rights."

Bangladesh, flood, stranded

Bangladesh has deployed troops to help two million people stranded by floods after relentless monsoon rains inundated huge swathes of territory for the second time in weeks, officials said Friday.

Floods are a regular menace to millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency, ferocity and unpredictability.

Much of the country's northeast is underwater and the situation could worsen over the weekend with more heavy rains forecast.

Authorities suspended imminent high school graduation tests across the country, with hundreds of classrooms now being used as makeshift shelters for those whose homes have been submerged. 

"The situation is very alarming. More than two million people are now marooned by flood water," Sylhet region chief administrator Mohammad Mosharraf Hossain told AFP.

"People have taken shelter on their boats. We have deployed the army and we are trying to evacuate them."

Hossain said authorities had sent the military to flood-hit rural towns, with soldiers going door to door handing out aid and rescuing people from rising tides.

Heavy rains that began last week in Bangladesh and parts of neighbouring India fed into rivers that burst their banks downstream, said Arifuzzaman Bhuiyan of the government's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre.

He added that the Surma river, Sylhet region's largest waterway, was more than a metre (three feet) higher than normal.

"This is one of the worst floods in the region's history. The situation will worsen in the next three days," he said.

Much of the area is currently without electricity and internet, Sylhet-based Bangladeshi journalist Mamun Hossain told AFP from the region.

The worst flooding in nearly two decades hit Sylhet late last month, with at least 10 people killed and four million others affected.