Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited from the
UK to the US, the High Court has ruled.
The US won its appeal against a January UK court ruling that
he could not be extradited due to concerns over his mental health.
Judges were reassured by US promises to reduce the risk of
suicide. His fiancee said they intended to appeal.
Mr Assange is wanted in the US over the publication of
thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011.
Senior judges found the lower judge had based her decision
in January on the risk of Mr Assange being held in highly restrictive prison
conditions if extradited.
However, the US authorities later gave assurances that he
would not face those strictest measures unless he committed an act in the
future that merited them.
Giving the judgement, Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett said:
"That risk is in our judgement excluded by the assurances which are
offered.
"It follows that we are satisfied that, if the
assurances had been before the judge, she would have answered the relevant
question differently."
Mr Assange's fiancee Stella Moris called the ruling
"dangerous and misguided", adding that the US assurances were
"inherently unreliable".
In an emotional statement outside the court, Ms Moris said:
"For the past... two years and a half, Julian has remained in Belmarsh
prison, and in fact he has been detained since 7 December 2010 in one form or
another, 11 years. For how long can this go on?"
Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said in a
statement: "Julian's life is once more under grave threat, and so is the
right of journalists to publish material that governments and corporations find
inconvenient.
"This is about the right of a free press to publish
without being threatened by a bullying superpower."
Amnesty International described the ruling as a
"travesty of justice" and the US assurances as "deeply
flawed".
Nils Muiznieks, the human rights organisation's Europe
director, said it "poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the
Unites States and abroad".
Judges ordered the case must return to Westminster
Magistrates' Court for a district judge to send it formally to Home Secretary
Priti Patel.
Mr Assange's legal team - Birnberg Peirce Solicitors - said
any appeal to the Supreme Court would relate to the question of assurances,
rather than on issues such as free speech or "the political motivation of
the US extradition request".
Two of the country's most senior judges have concluded there
is nothing in law to stop the UK sending Julian Assange to America.
In line with previous cases, the Lord Chief Justice and Lord
Justice Holroyde ruled that when the US administration gives a promise to the
UK of fair and humane treatment of a detainee, its word should not be doubted.
Team Assange are likely to try to reverse this judgement in
two ways. First, they want to challenge last January's findings that his leaks
amounted to an alleged crime - but it is not clear if such an appeal would be
heard.
Second, they may ask the Supreme Court to examine today's
judgement on the US's diplomatic assurances - but there is no guarantee it will
take the case because they would have to argue that there is a fundamental
problem with the law - which has never been the case in the past. And so time
may be running out.
The US had offered four assurances, including that Mr
Assange would not be subject to solitary confinement pre or post-trial or
detained at the ADX Florence Supermax jail - a maximum security prison in
Colorado - if extradited.
Lawyers for the US said he would be allowed to transfer to
Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given closer to home.
And they argued Mr Assange's mental illness "does not
even come close" to being severe enough to prevent him from being
extradited.
But lawyers representing Mr Assange argued the assurances
over his future treatment were "meaningless" and "vague".
If convicted in the US, Mr Assange, 50, faces a possible
penalty of up to 175 years in jail, his lawyers have said. However the US
government said the sentence was more likely to be between four and six years.
Mr Assange faces an 18-count indictment from the US
government, accusing him of conspiring to hack into US military databases to
acquire sensitive secret information relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,
which was then published on the Wikileaks website.
He says the information exposed abuses by the US military.
But US prosecutors say the leaks of classified material
endangered lives, and so the US sought his extradition from the UK.
Extradition is the process under which one country can ask
another to hand over a suspect to face trial.
Mr Assange was jailed for 50 weeks in May 2019 for breaching
his bail conditions after going into hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in
London.
He sought refuge in the embassy for seven years from 2012
until he was arrested in April 2019.
At the time he fled to the embassy, he had been facing
extradition to Sweden on allegations of sexual assault which he denied. That case
was later dropped.
Despite serving his sentence for breaching bail conditions,
Mr Assange remains in prison while he fights extradition because of his history
of absconding.
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