U.S. Wins Appeal to Extradite Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange From the UK – NBC New York

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U.S. Wins Appeal to Extradite Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange From the UK – NBC New York

  • Judge Timothy Holroyde said Friday that the court “allows the appeal”.
  • In the US, the Australian entrepreneur is charged, among other things, with violating an espionage law and conspiracy to hack government computers.

Julian Assange, the 50-year-old founder of Wikileaks, has come one step closer to extradition from the UK to the US after the US government won an appeal in the London High Court.

Judge Timothy Holroyde said Friday that the court “allows the appeal”.

In the US, the Australian entrepreneur is charged, among other things, with violating an espionage law and conspiracy to hack government computers.

Holyrode said the US had assured Britain that Assange’s detention would meet certain conditions.

US authorities have accused Assange of 18 cases related to Wikileaks’ disclosure of hordes of confidential US military files and diplomatic cables that authorities said had put lives in danger.

The US is appealing a January 4 ruling by a London district judge that Assange should not be extradited as he was likely to commit suicide in a US prison.

Stella Moris, the fiancée of Julian Assange, said on Friday: “We will appeal this decision as soon as possible.”

She described the High Court’s judgment as “dangerous and misguided” and a “serious miscarriage of justice”.

“How can it be just, how can it be right, how can it be possible to extradite Julian to the very country that planned his killing?” Morris added.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser said in January the extradition was dire due to Assange’s mental health.

The activist founded WikiLeaks in 2006 to expose news leaks and classified information from anonymous sources.

Over the years, Assange has won a number of journalism awards, including the Economist’s New Media Award in 2008 and the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2011. Throughout the process, Assange has maintained that he is little more than a journalist and a publisher.

Assange has spent most of the last decade in custody. It started in 2012 when he was hiding in the Ecuadorean embassy in London after losing a UK Supreme Court appeal against his extradition to Sweden, where authorities tried to question him on rape allegations.

While the Swedish case subsequently dropped, Assange was evicted from the embassy in April 2019 and arrested in the UK for skipping bail. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison and is still in custody.

U.S. Wins Appeal to Extradite Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange From the UK