LONDON (AP) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will find out on Monday if he can be extradited from the UK to the US to face espionage charges for publishing secret US military documents.
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser is due to rule in Old Bailey Court in London at 10 am. If he accepts the request, then Britain’s Home Secretary, Priti Patel, will make the final decision.
Any losing party is expected to appeal, which could lead to several legal battles over the years.
However, there is a possibility that outside forces may come into play that could instantly end the ten-year saga.
Stella Moris, Assange’s partner and the mother of his two sons, called on US President Donald Trump on Twitter to apologize to Assange before he left office on January 20th.
And even if Trump doesn’t, it is speculated that his successor, Joe Biden, could take a more lenient approach to Assange’s extradition process.
U.S. prosecutors have charged Assange, 49, with 17 counts of espionage and one count of misuse of a computer, with a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the US government said in their closing arguments after the four-week hearing in the autumn that Assange’s defense team raised issues that were neither relevant nor admissible.
“Consistently, the defense calls on this court to conclude or act on the grounds that the United States is guilty of torture, war crimes, murder, violations of diplomatic and international law, and that the United States is” a state without law ‘”, they said. “These observations are not only unjustified in these proceedings, but should never have been made.”
Assange’s defense team claimed that it was entitled to the protection of the First Amendment for the release of disclosed documents exposing US military iniquities in Iraq and Afghanistan and that the US extradition request was politically motivated.
In their written closing arguments, Assange’s legal team accused the US of “extraordinary, unprecedented and politicized” prosecution, which is “a blatant denial of its right to freedom of expression and a fundamental threat to freedom of the press around the world.” . “
Defense attorneys also say Assange suffers from numerous mental health problems, including suicidal tendencies, which could be aggravated if he is placed in inhospitable prison conditions in the United States.
They said his mental health deteriorated while taking asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for years and that he was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Assange was released on bail in 2012 when he sought asylum at the embassy, where he stayed for seven years before being evacuated and arrested. He has been held in Belmarsh Prison in London since April 2019.
His legal team claimed that Assange would, if extradited, be in solitary confinement, which would put him at increased risk of suicide. They said that if he was later convicted, he would probably be sent to the famous ADX Supermax prison in Colorado, where Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman also live.
US government lawyers have argued that Assange’s mental state “is obviously not so severe as to prevent extradition”.
Assange attracted the support of high-quality personalities, including dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and actress Pamela Anderson.
Daniel Ellsberg, the famous US whistleblower, also came in support, telling the meeting that they have “very comparable political views”.
The 89-year-old, widely recognized for contributing to the end of the Vietnam War by leaking 1971 Pentagon documents, said the American public “urgently needed to know what was usually done on their behalf, and there was no other way for them to learn it than by unauthorized disclosure. “
There are clear echoes between Assange and Ellsberg, which have released more than 7,000 pages of classified documents, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. Ellsberg was subsequently tried on 12 counts of violations of the Espionage Act, which were punishable by up to 115 years in prison. The accusations were rejected in 1973 because of the government’s conduct against him.
Assange and his legal team will hope that developments in the United States will put an end to the ordeal if the judge accepts the US extradition request.