The British High Court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States on espionage charges on one very big condition.
The Wikileaks founder has garnered a partial victory in the ongoing legal battle over his site's publication of classified American documents. Two High Court judges ruled that Julian Assange, who faces espionage charges in the United States, can't be extradited to the U.S. unless America guarantees he won't be given the death penalty.
Assurances that he won't be given the death penalty need to be given within three weeks for the extradition to occur. This means the Assange saga, which has labored along for over ten years, will continue and he will remain in Belmarsh Prison, a high-security facility in London where he has been for the last five years.
The judges, Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson, said that Assange, an Australian citizen, "is afforded the same First Amendment protections as a United States citizen and that the death penalty is not imposed."
If that occurs, according to the judges, "we will give the parties an opportunity to make further submissions before we make a final decision on the application for leave to appeal."
The judges said a hearing will be held May 20 if the U.S. makes those submissions. Supporters of Julian Assange say that, as a journalist, he is protected by the First Amendment for exposing U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan because he acted in the public interest.
They further argue that the prosecution is politically motivated and he could not get a fair trial in the U.S. Assange's wife Stella Assange said the WikiLeaks founder "is being persecuted because he exposed the true cost of war in human lives."
"The Biden administration should not issue assurances. They should drop this shameful case, which should never have been brought," she said outside the High Court in London.
The ruling follows a two-day hearing in the High Court in February, where Assange's lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said American authorities were seeking to punish him for WikiLeaks' "exposure of criminality on the part of the U.S. government on an unprecedented scale," including torture and killings.
The United States government contends Assange's actions went beyond journalism because his site solicited, stole, and indiscriminately published classified government documents that endangered innocent lives.
Judges rejected six of Julian Assange's nine appeal arguments, including that the prosecution is political.
The judges rejected six of Assange's nine grounds of appeal, including the allegation that his prosecution is political. They said that while Assange "acted out of political conviction ... it does not follow however that the request for his extradition is made on account of his political views."
