LONDON – It is Julian Assange’s last hope to try to avoid extradition to the US. The High Court of London, in fact, will examine today and tomorrow the appeal of the 52-year-old Australian’s lawyers who thus want to obtain a new appeal against the decision of the then British Home Secretary Come Patel, which agreed to Assange’s transfer to the United States in 2022. However, Assange will not be in court because, his lawyer reports, “he is not well”.
Who is Julian Assange and the Wikileaks case
Australian, journalist, activist and IT expert, he had already been found guilty of hacking by a court in his country in 1995, but was then pardoned, promising “not to do it again”. However, his notoriety arrived in 2010 with WikiLeaksthe site that in the meantime he founded four years earlier and which publishes secret and confidential documents of world institutions and authorities online.
Assange, WikiLeaks and the inalienable principle of full freedom of expression by Luigi Manconi and Chiara Tamburello 28 December 2023
In 2010 Assange released hundreds of thousands of confidential files and cables from the American government and army, thanks to the complicity of Bradley Manning, a former US military intelligence analyst and today a woman with a name Chelsea Manning, which manages to steal three entire databases of electronic documents, and then pass them to Assange. Manning will be sentenced by the US to over 25 years in prison, only to be pardoned by former president Barack Obama.
The publication of the files quickly goes around the world, because not only are burning confidential messages from American diplomacy revealed but they put the United States under accusation for methods, violence and indiscriminate killings during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 onwards, with massacres of civilians who had never been admitted until then. Of one of these, in 2010 again in Iraq, there is also a video, in which two journalists were killed Reuters. Furthermore, in 2016, during the American election campaign, Assange also published an avalanche of Democratic Party files, stolen by hackers with suspected connections to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. An episode for which he was praised by Donald Trump and criticized and denounced by Hillary Clinton and her party.
Why is Assange in prison in London?
Right now due to 18 US indictments for “espionage”, “theft of classified information” and for “putting the lives at risk” of many Americans. Assange is found in Belmarsh maximum security prison (East London) since 2019when he was arrested by the British police in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had taken refuge for seven years thanks to the protection of the then left-wing president Rafael Correathen revoked by his successor, Lenin Moreno.
In June 2012 Assange was locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy, which then granted him political asylum, after Sweden’s extradition request, where he was accused of sexual violence by two women (the case later lapsed). The Australian activist then feared that this was an excuse to be extradited to the USA, and therefore, after being arrested by the British police and released, he did not respect the terms of his probation, asking Ecuador for help. For this, in 2019 he was sentenced by London to 52 weeks in prison, but in the meantime his detention was prolonged, given the US request and his record.
What does Assange risk?
According to his lawyers, 175 years in prison in the United States, if he were to be found guilty of all 18 charges. According to American legal experts, more realistically 4 to 8 years. Assange’s lawyers have asked for this latest appeal from the High Court on the basis of a series of arguments, such as “the impossibility of having a fair trial in America”, or the extradition agreement between the US and the UK which does not provide for ” political motivations” and that the “crime of espionage” does not apply to journalists and publishers. “It is now a matter of life and death for my husband,” Stella Assange, Julian’s partner and wife since 2015 and with whom she conceived two children during her time at the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, told reporters last week , behind the luxury Harrods department store in the British capital.
Stazione futuro Honorary citizenships for Assange by Riccardo Luna 15 January 2024
There is a fundamental difference of views here. Assange’s supporters consider him first and foremost a journalist, but also a champion of freedom of information, as well as a martyr to censorship and the United States, for having exposed the military’s wrongdoings. Long protests are expected outside the High Court in London today. For his critics, however, the 52-year-old Australian would have acted against the law, endangered the lives of many Americans, threatened the security of the United States, while some like Hillary Clinton they accused Assange of being supported by Russia.
When will Assange’s fate be decided?
The High Court hearing is scheduled for today and tomorrow, Wednesday. If the court decided to accept the defense requests, then a real appeal process would be reopened on the British extradition decision and this court case would continue for many months. However, if Assange were to miss this last opportunity, then “extradition to the US would be a matter of days”, according to his wife Stella. In this case, there would still be a chance, i.e. a last appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, which however has not expressed its opinion on the Assange case in the past.