WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to US to face espionage charges

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited from the UK to the US, the High Court ruled on Friday (6 December). As reported by BBC, the US won its appeal against a January UK court ruling that Assange could not be extradited due to concerns over his mental health. However, judges were reassured by US promises to reduce the risk of suicide. 

Two of Britain’s most senior judges found on Friday that a then district judge based her decision earlier this year on the risk of Assange being held in highly restrictive US prison conditions. US authorities then offered a package of assurances that Assange would not face such strictest measures unless he committed an act in the future that required them.

The package includes: first, if extradited, 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. Second, the US lawyers said he would be allowed to transfer to Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given closer to home.

The case started when Assange founded WikiLeaks which published thousands of US’ classified documents in 2010. It includes 470,000 classified military documents concerning American diplomacy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It later released a further tranche of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables. 

Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010) and Cablegate (November 2010) are some of WikiLeaks’ biggest leaks. 

However, Assange’s fiancee Stella Morris called the ruling “dangerous and misguided” and it is a “grave miscarriage of justice”, adding that the US assurances were “inherently unreliable”.  “Today is international human rights day, what a shame. How cynical to have this decision on this day,” she said outside the Royal Courts of Justice.

Amnesty International described the ruling as a “travesty of justice” and the US assurances as “deeply flawed”. Amnesty International’s Europe Director Nils Muižnieks said that this”poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the US and abroad”.

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,” he added. 

According to BBC’s analysis, Team Assange is likely to try to reverse this judgement in two ways. First, they might 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 the recent judgement on the US' diplomatic assurances. However, 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.