Time is running out for Julian Assange. If MPs do not act, how can they say they value free speech? | Duncan Campbell

The WikiLeaks founder faces extradition and an uncertain fate in the US. Our judges and politicians must intervene

A lifesize bronze statue of him appeared in Parliament Square over the weekend but the real Julian Assange could very shortly be taken, handcuffed and protesting, from Belmarsh prison in London and flown off to a high security jail in the US.

The statue, created by the Italian sculptor Davide Dormino, stood alongside two others, of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, at a rally to remind us that Assange's extradition could now be very imminent. Manning, of course, was the former US soldier who leaked the damning information that Assange published through WikiLeaks; Edward Snowden waits in Russia to see whether all the talk of the sanctity of free speech in his country amounts to more than words.

Duncan Campbell is a freelance writer who worked for the Guardian as crime correspondent and Los Angeles correspondent