US Wins Latest Appeal To Extradite WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange as UK High Court Overturns Previous Decision

The US government has won its High Court case to extradite Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

Following WikiLeaks' publishing of hundreds of thousands of leaked papers connected to the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, Assange, 50, is wanted in the United States for an alleged conspiracy to obtain and divulge national defense material.

Last year, a US grand jury charged him on 18 counts, 17 of which are related to the Espionage Act. According to Assange's lawyers, if convicted, he faces up to 175 years in prison and would be confined to a hell-hole US supermax prison.

Julian Assange can be extradited to the US

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled in January that Assange should not be extradited to the United States, citing a serious and oppressive danger of suicide. On the other hand, the US government challenged the decision, claiming that it had offered diplomatic assurances that Assange would not be subjected to the harshest punishments either before or after his conviction.

According to the report, Assange's sentence is expected to be between four and six years. On Friday, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, decided to favor the United States after a two-day hearing in October.

The matter has now been forwarded to Priti Patel, who will ultimately judge Assange's extradition, but he is anticipated to fight today's decision, Daily Mail reported. His father, Richard, has previously stated that if necessary, he will take the legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

According to court records filed Friday, the senior justices considering the appeal were satisfied that these guarantees addressed the concerns that drove the judge to make her ruling in January.

Per CNN, the courts ruled that the matter be sent back to Westminster Magistrates' Court, with a district judge directing that the case be sent to the UK Home Secretary, who would decide whether Assange should be extradited to the United States.

According to a statement posted on the official WikiLeaks Twitter feed, Assange's fiancée Stella Moris called the High Court judgment a "grave miscarriage of justice." After WikiLeaks disclosed thousands of sensitive data and diplomatic cables in 2010, Assange is wanted in the United States on 18 felony counts.

He is being imprisoned at London's Belmarsh Prison. He may face up to 175 years in jail if convicted. In April 2019, British officials raided the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Assange had been holed up for seven years, and detained him for violating a US extradition demand.

UK High Court overturns ruling against WikiLeaks' founder

The allegations against Assange stem from WikiLeaks' publication of 500,000 classified papers outlining military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as secret cables regarding Guantanamo Bay, in 2010, as per Gizmodo.

The infamous 'Collateral Murder' film, which depicted the July 2007 assassination of eleven people by an American Apache helicopter crew, includes Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and Saeed Chmagh, 40.

According to footage captured by the helicopter gunsight after receiving approval from a superior officer, the helicopter crew fired on a group of Iraqi civilians in New Baghdad, killing 11 individuals and badly injuring two children.

US' James Lewis QC said the district judge based her judgment on Assange's intellectual ability to evade suicide prevention measures, which might become a "trump card" for anybody opposing their extradition regardless of the other state's resources.

The four binding diplomatic guarantees given were a "solemn issue and are not handed out like smarties, according to Lewis. If extradited, Assange would not face special administrative measures (SAMs) or be held at the ADX Florence Supermax facility. The US would agree to Assange being sent to Australia to complete any prison sentence he could get.

The US government also claimed that Assange is fit to be extradited. Lewis tells the court that Assange's mental illness doesn't even come close to being serious enough to preclude him from being transported abroad.

However, Assange's attorneys contended that the guarantees about the WikiLeaks founder's possible treatment were "meaningless" and "vague" as they fought the US' request to reverse the extradition ban. While under observation in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the court also heard that Assange faced a "dangerous, scary, and frightening environment."