"We were awakened by police which broke into the room. They immediately took our rifles, as if we were dangerous criminals and told us not to move. Half-naked, we watched them checking our personal belongings. However, they were interested only in mine."

"I have just spoken with the IBU vice-president," Drachev told RT. "IBU Interim Anti-Doping Manager Hakkarainen who had been expelled from the International Ski Federation (FIS) signed all the papers without authorization of the IBU and triggered a police investigation. She was expelled from FIS for taking unsanctioned actions. Now I asked our IBU colleagues: 'What are you going to do?' They said they will think about what to do with her. 'It's too late' I told them," he added.

"If they extradite Julian and kill him in America, it is the death knell of jurisprudence in this country," he said. "[Assange's case] has nothing to do with the law, it's not a legal proceeding at all. It's a joke and it's disgusting... It makes me ashamed to be English."

"Julian Assange in America getting a fair trial? Zero chance," he said. "He didn't commit any espionage, he reported on things that were going on - they happened to be war crimes."

There's an extradition treaty between the UK and the United States, which has a number of articles. The fourth article says that no extradition proceeding should even start if there is a political motivation to it. This isn't political? Of course it is.

"He's been in prison for seven years now, in the Ecuadorian Embassy and now in this maximum security place in Belmarsh," where "they've almost killed him," Waters said. "He's really sick... Julian could hardly remember his own name."

Despite calls from Australian lawmakers for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to block Assange's extradition earlier this week, Waters said the PM is much too beholden to Washington to follow through on the request.

Boris? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we found even one iota of British bulldog in Boris Johnson, but unfortunately he is 100 percent American poodle.

"I suspect [Jonhson] will stay in his kennel and do what he's bloody well told by his masters across the Atlantic," he said.

Ultimately, Waters concluded, the persecution of Julian Assange is a "way of exerting... authority, so that nobody will report on anything that's inconvenient to power ever again."

Any reporting on wrongdoing by any armed forces anywhere in the world, I think it's a moral obligation and duty [for journalists], and it's a duty of the government to do something about it, not try and kill them!

• Two US probes scrutinize how Boeing 737 MAX 8 with 'flawed flight system' got the green light
• Boeing outsourced its 737 MAX software to $9-per-hour engineers to cut costs
• "It will be a crash for sure," said the man who blew the whistle on Boeing's 737Max
• 'Designed by clowns and supervised by monkeys': Senate investigation into Boeing air disasters reveals what employees thought of 737-MAX