Actress and activist Pamela Anderson said Monday that the U.K. and Australia are being “subservient” to the U.S. by enabling the prosecution of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

The Canadian-born former “Baywatch” star made the remark on a British television program after a British judge ruled recently that Assange, an Australian, should remain behind bars in the U.K. pending a U.S. extradition request because he is likely to abscond if released.

“The U.K. is subservient to the United States, and so is Australia, which is really disappointing,” Ms. Anderson said on “Good Morning Britain” while appearing remotely from Vancouver.

“I think he should come to Canada,” Ms. Anderson added about her friend.

Assange, 48, entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 amid fears of being extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges related to his WikiLeaks website and its publication of classified materials. He was granted asylum and lived on the property for nearly seven years prior to being ejected in April and promptly arrested by British police at the request of U.S. authorities.

The Department of Justice has subsequently charged Assange with 18 criminal counts, including several violations of the U.S. Espionage Act related to soliciting and publishing secret military and diplomatic documents, putting him at risk of spending the rest of his life in prison if extradited abroad and found guilty. He has argued he acted as a journalist and is fighting extradition to the U.S.

Assange was under house arrest when he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy, and a British judge ruled that he effectively jumped bail by entering the embassy and punished him accordingly. That prison sentence had been set to expire this month, but he was recently ordered to remain behind bars pending the result of extradition proceedings set to start in February 2020.

“He was right by seeking asylum, because everything he said that was going to happen happened,” Ms. Anderson said during the television interview. “And now he’s in prison.”

“I care a great deal about Julian and I think he’s been psychologically tortured,” added Ms. Anderson, a longtime friend of Assange who visited him several times at the Ecuadorian Embassy and more recently at London’s Belmarsh Prison.

Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and ill treatment, similarly stated after visiting Assange at Belmarsh in May that he believed the WikiLeaks publisher “showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture.”

“I condemn, in the strongest terms, the deliberate, concerted and sustained nature of the abuse inflicted on Mr. Assange and seriously deplore the consistent failure of all involved governments to take measures for the protection of his most fundamental human rights and dignity,” he said at the time.

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