Julian Assange has been in self-imposed custody or exile in London for more than a decade.
Photographer: Jack Taylor / Getty Images
Photographer: Jack Taylor / Getty Images
A UK judge will decide on Monday whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the US to face criminal charges after weeks of talks over a possible pardon from Donald Trump.
The decision of a judge in London will come after President Trump, whose administration brought the accusations, issued a lot of pardons to the political allies. And lawyers say Trump’s chances of leniency are better than a judge buying Assange’s arguments that his human rights will be violated in America.
“It is very rare for magistrates to deny extradition requests from the United States,” said Anthony Hanratty, a lawyer at BDB Pitmans in London who specializes in extradition cases. “There is a pretty strong presumption that the United States will meet its human rights and legal obligations.”
Assange, 49, has been in self-imposed custody or exile in London for more than a decade. He initially sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012, rather than face questions in a case of Swedish sexual assault, which was later abandoned. Last year, when he was expelled from the embassy, he faced US accusations related to WikiLeaks revelations.
He is accused of working with U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain classified documents from databases containing about 90,000 war-related activity reports in Afghanistan, 400,000 Iraq-related war reports and 250,000 cables. of the State Department.
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In a pair of extradition hearings earlier this year, delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, Assange’s lawyers focused their arguments on allegations that he could not receive a fair trial in the US
But Assange drew praise from Trump during the 2016 campaign, when WikiLeaks launched emails that downplayed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. And it seems that Assange’s supporters have gone from the extradition battle to focus on a possible pardon.
Assange’s fiancée, Stella Moris, has spent the last few months making direct complaints to Trump via Twitter and appearances on Fox News.
“Please, please bring him home for Christmas,” she wrote on Twitter last month.
WikiLeaks officials declined to comment ahead of Monday’s ruling and instead referred to Moris’ tweets. The US Department of Justice declined to comment.
The prospect of the presidential intervention gained strength for the first time early last year, when Assange’s lawyers said a congressman and an associate Trump met Assange at Ecuador’s embassy in the summer of 2017 to discuss forgiveness if he revealed the source behind the leaked emails of the Democratic National Committee.
The pardon fever has only increased in recent weeks, after Trump issued pardons to more than a dozen people. The recipients were largely political allies, including Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager, and Charles Kushner, the real estate developer and father of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Trump would face opposition to the pardon within his own administration. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo – when he was CIA director – described WikiLeaks as a hostile force threatening the US
With the exception of pardon, the extradition process in London is likely to continue, regardless of how Judge Vanessa Baraitser would conduct Monday. Appeals could take between 18 and 24 months, with possible challenges to the UK Supreme Court and even the European Court of Human Rights, Hanratty said.
(Updates with the first mention of the presidential pardon in paragraph eleven.)