UK court allows Assange’s extradition to US for spying case

A UK appeals court has opened the door for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be extradited to the US

Through DANICA KIRKA Associated Press

December 10, 2021, 2:22 p.m.

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LONDON – A UK appeals court opened the door on Friday to extradite Julian Assange to the United States by overturning a lower court ruling that the WikiLeaks founder’s mental health was too fragile to stand up to American criminal justice.

The London High Court ruled that US guarantees were sufficient to guarantee the humane treatment of Assange and ordered a lower court judge to send the extradition request to the UK Home Secretary for review. Home Secretary Priti Patel, who oversees law enforcement in the UK, will make the final decision on Assange’s extradition.

“There is no reason why this court should not accept the representations for what they say,” the High Court ruled Have given up faith. “

Assange’s fiancée, Stella Moris, called the decision a “grave miscarriage of justice” and said Assange’s lawyers would appeal to the UK Supreme Court.

“We will fight,” Moris said in court, where supporters gathered with banners demanding Assange’s release.

“Every generation has an epic battle to fight and this is ours because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society,” she said.

Assange, 50, is currently being held in London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison. The High Court ordered him to remain in custody pending the outcome of the extradition proceedings.

In January, a lower court judge denied the US request for Assange’s extradition on charges of WikiLeaks’ disclosure of classified military documents a decade ago. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition on health grounds, saying the Australian national is likely to commit suicide if held in harsh US prison conditions.

The United States appealed, challenging the notion that Assange’s mental health made him too vulnerable to stand up to the US judicial system. James Lewis, a US government attorney, said Assange had “no history of serious and persistent mental illness” and was not so ill that he could not resist harming himself.

US authorities have told UK judges that if extradited to prosecution, Assange would be entitled to serve any US prison sentence he receives in his native Australia. Authorities also said he was not being held in Supermax Prison in Florence, Colorado, the maximum security prison in the United States.

The US has charged Assange with 17 allegations of espionage and a computer abuse charge for the publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents by WikiLeaks. The indictment has a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison, although Lewis said “The longest prison sentence ever imposed for this offense is 63 months”.

Since WikiLeaks began publishing classified documents more than a decade ago, Assange has become a focal point.

Some see him as a dangerous intelligence agent who endangered the lives of informants, others who helped the US in war zones. Others say WikiLeaks shed light on official offenses that governments want to keep secret.

American prosecutors say Assange illegally helped US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic telegrams and military files that WikiLeaks later released, putting people at risk. Assange’s lawyers argue that he has worked as a journalist and is entitled to freedom of speech protection under the First Amendment when he publishes documents exposing the wrongdoing of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange has been in jail since his arrest in April 2019 for waiving bail during a separate lawsuit. Before that, he spent seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange sought protection at the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Sweden closed the sex offense investigation in November 2019 because so much time had passed.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/uk-court-rule-request-send-assange-us-trial-81670297