A British court has rejected the U.S. government’s request to
extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the country on
charges pertaining to illegally obtaining and sharing classified
material related to national security.
In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today, Judge
Vanessa Baraitser denied the extradition on the grounds that
Assange is a suicide risk and extradition to the U.S. prison system
would be oppressive.
“I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it
would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of
America,” judge Baraitser said[1]
in a 132-page ruling.
The U.S. government is expected to appeal the decision.
The case against Assange centers on WikiLeaks’ publication of
hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and
Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011.
The documents include “approximately 90,000 Afghanistan
war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related
significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee
assessment briefs, and 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables,”
per the U.S. Department of Justice, which accused Assange of
conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in
the U.S. Army, to disclose sensitive information related to the
national defense.
A federal grand jury last May indicted[2]
Assange on 18 counts related to unlawfully obtaining, receiving,
and disclosing classified information, and conspiracy to commit
computer intrusion to crack a password hash stored on U.S.
Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet
Protocol Network (SIPRNet), a U.S. government network used to
transmit classified documents and communications.
Assange, who sought refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London
between June 2012 and April 2019 to avoid a warrant against him,
was arrested last year after Ecuador withdrew his diplomatic
asylum. In May 2019, he was found guilty in a U.K. court of
breaching bail conditions and sentenced to 50 weeks, following
which the aforementioned indictment was returned in the U.S.
If convicted, Assange faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in
prison on each count with the exception of conspiracy to commit
computer intrusion, for which he faces a maximum sentence of five
years in prison.
The U.S. non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation tweeted[3], “The case against
Julian Assange is the most dangerous threat to U.S. press freedom
in decades. This is a huge relief to anyone who cares about the
rights of journalists.”