Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, went a step closer to facing criminal charges in the United States for one of the largest ever breaches of confidential information on Friday after Washington won an appeal in an English court against his extradition.
Authorities in the United States have charged Australian-born Assange, 50, with 18 crimes pertaining to WikiLeaks’ release of massive troves of classified US military papers and diplomatic cables, which they claim to put people’s lives in jeopardy.
Assange’s admirers see him as an anti-establishment hero who has been hounded by the US for exposing US misconduct and double-dealing from Afghanistan and Iraq to Washington.
The US won an appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice in London against a London District Judge’s decision that Assange should not be extradited because he would likely commit suicide in a US prison.
Judge Timothy Holroyde said he was pleased with a package of guarantees from the US about Assange’s custody conditions, including a promise not to imprison him in a so-called “ADX” maximum-security prison in Colorado and that if convicted, he may be moved to Australia to spend his sentence.
After an odyssey that has taken him from an adolescent hacker in Melbourne to years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and ultimately incarceration in a maximum-security jail, Assange faces more obstacles before being extradited to the United States.
The legal debate is almost certain to reach the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, which is the country’s highest court of appeal.
Assange’s fiancée, Stella Moris, said the ruling would be appealed.
“How can it be fair, right, or possible to extradite Julian to the very country that plotted his assassination?” she stated “At the earliest opportunity, we will appeal this ruling.”
After the ruling, supporters of Assange gathered outside the court, screaming “free Julian Assange” and “no extradition.” Hundreds of yellow ribbons were tied to the court’s gates, and signs proclaiming “Journalism is not a crime” were held aloft.
Judge Holroyde said the case should now be sent to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, with the instruction that the judges forward it to the British government, which will decide whether Assange should be extradited.
ATTACK BY HELICOPTER
Assange, who denies any wrongdoing, began his career as a young hacker known as Mendax – an ancient Latin word meaning “false” – who would go on to expose some of the US’s most sensitive secrets a few decades later.
WikiLeaks sprang to notoriety after releasing a US military video in 2010 depicting a 2007 attack in Baghdad by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people, including two journalists.
Thousands of secret classified files and diplomatic cables were then revealed, exposing the US’s often harsh assessments of international leaders ranging from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the Saudi royal family.
In 2012, Assange evaded extradition and was offered asylum by Ecuador’s then-president Rafael Correa. He was imprisoned at the British embassy in London for seven years, during which time British police spent millions of pounds looking for any evidence that he would emerge.
Assange, who has white hair and a lengthy beard, was taken out by British police when relations with Ecuador deteriorated.
Assange was charged by the US Justice Department with conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 WikiLeaks release of hundreds of thousands of US military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as American diplomatic communications.
Assange is viewed by US prosecutors and Western security authorities as a reckless and dangerous opponent of the state whose actions put the lives of sources listed in the leaked documents in jeopardy.
His supporters celebrate Assange as a hero for exposing what they call modern regimes’ abuse of power and defending the freedom of expression.
