German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken out against the extradition of Julian Assange to the US. “I think it would be good if the British courts were to grant him the necessary protection, because he must expect persecution in the United States, given the fact that he has betrayed US state secrets,” Scholz said on Monday during a question-and-answer session at a vocational school centre in southern Germany. He said he assumed that the chances of this happening had increased because representatives of the United States had been “unable to assure the British judges in the last hearing that the …