They were both tortured by the state

Howlin’ Wolf was locked up for two months in the Army psych ward. He was lashed to his bed, his body parts examined and measured: his head, his hands, his feet, his teeth, his penis. The shrinks wanted to know if he liked to have sex with men, if he tortured animals, if he hated his father. He was beaten, shocked and drugged when he resisted the barbarous treatment by the military doctors. Finally he was cut loose from the Army, discharged as being unfit for duty. He was probably lucky he wasn’t lobotomized or sterilized, as was the cruel fate of so many other encounters with the dehumanizing machinations of governmental psychiatry.

Melzer said. “Mr. Assange has been deliberately exposed, for a period of several years, to progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture.”