After more than a decade of legal battles, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to make a final decision in Britain’s High Court on Monday on whether to extradite the suspected leaker to the United States.
Mr. Assange has been in British custody since 2019 after the Ecuadorian government revoked his political asylum status and expelled him from the London embassy seven years later. He faces 18 charges in the United States related to WikiLeaks’ release of hundreds of thousands of classified military and intelligence documents in 2010.
US prosecutors allege the Australian worked with military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to steal documents containing secret diplomatic cables and military information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and distribute them online. There is. Manning was convicted and served seven years in prison for his role in this scheme.
Supporters portray Mr. Assange as a victim of political persecution, targeted because his work as a journalist is poorly relied upon by the U.S. military. The leaked information included records of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan that killed civilians.
“Julian was charged with receiving, possessing, and communicating to the public information evidence of war crimes committed by the United States government,” his wife Stella Assange told The Associated Press. “Reporting a crime is never a crime.”
Assange initially sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy to escape a Swedish rape investigation and out of fear that he would be extradited to the United States for his WikiLeaks activities. The rape investigation was later dropped in 2021 in view of the passage of time.
Mr. Assange initially had his extradition to the United States blocked in 2021 after he was arrested in 2019 and sentenced to a year in a British prison for evading bail. The judge ruled that if Assange were sent to the United States, he would likely commit suicide. The harsh conditions in this country’s prison system.
The British government finally allowed his extradition in 2022, but he appealed.
The focus of Monday’s High Court hearing will be whether guarantees from the U.S. government can overcome concerns about Assange’s safety.
Stella Assange said the “so-called guarantees” that prosecutors would not pursue the death penalty were made of “weasel words”.
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristin Hrapenson said the justices asked whether Assange could rely on the protections of the First Amendment.
“It should be a simple question with a yes or no answer,” says Hrafnsson. “The answer was, ‘He can rely on the protections of the First Amendment.’ That’s no. So the only reasonable decision on Monday is for a judge to come out and say, “This isn’t good enough.” Anything else is a judicial scandal. ”
If the three-judge panel does not support Assange’s case and allow extradition, it will begin another years-long legal battle. If the court approves his extradition, Assange’s lawyers said they would ask the European Court of Human Rights to intervene.
There is also a possibility that President Biden could intervene in the case and fulfill the Australian government’s request to drop the charges and allow Assange to return to his home country. Biden said last month that he was “considering” the request.
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