The Royal Courts of Justice in the United Kingdom has ruled that Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States to face charges on espionage as the US government moves closer to prosecuting the WikiLeaks founder.
The British High Court in its ruling, overturned the earlier judgement of a lower court that blocked Assange from being extradited to the US to face criminal charges for fear that prison conditions there would result in suicide.
According to Bloomberg, Assange’s lawyers are considering his appeal options, including to the U.K. Supreme Court, meaning the question of whether he is ultimately sent to the U.S. will remain open for months to come.
The judges on Friday sent the case to the British government, which typically approves the requests.
During the litigation, the High Court judges accepted assurances from the US to the UK that Assange would not face solitary confinement or a supermax prison in Colorado if he’s jailed in the U.S. They said he can serve his sentence in Australia if convicted.
What you should know
Assange, 50, has been in prison or in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, as he fought attempts to send him to face charges first in Sweden and then in the U.S.
Assange, 50, is wanted in the U.S. on allegations of disclosing national defence information following WikiLeaks’s publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked military documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars a decade ago.
The Swedish case against him was dropped, but the U.S. government in 2019 charged him with espionage for his role in releasing hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents via WikiLeaks, with the help of U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
The Australian-born Assange is being held in London’s Belmarsh prison and has been held at South London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison since 2019.
In January, a lower court refused the U.S. request to extradite Assange due to concerns over his mental health, citing the risk that highly-restrictive conditions of U.S. prisons could make him suicidal.
Giving his judgment on Friday, Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett of Maldon said “that risk is in our judgment excluded by the assurances which are offered (by the U.S. authorities)’’.
Lawyers for the U.S. said Assange would be allowed to transfer to Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given.
Assange’s fiancé, Stella Morris, on Friday, said that he is unlikely to be sent to the U.S. in the near future, as he still has several options to appeal assuring that they will appeal this decision at the earliest possible moment.
