WikiLeaks' Julian Assange may get a shot at freedom as UK court asks for US 'assurances'
A British court ruled Tuesday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be allowed to appeal his extradition to the U.S. to stand trial on spying charges unless American authorities can show whether he might face new charges carrying the death penalty and to what degree he is protected by the First Amendment.
"Unless satisfactory assurances are provided" by the U.S., "we will grant leave to appeal," the court ruled, citing Assange's right to free expression, the chance that he could face prejudice on the basis of his nationality, and the possibility he could face execution.
Assange's wife, Stella Assange, blasted the ruling for not blocking his extradition. "I find this astounding," she told reporters outside court. "This case is a retribution. It is a signal to all of you that if you expose the interests that are driving war, they will come after you. They will put you in prison."
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The 52-year-old Australian hacker has been fighting extradition to the U.S. since 2012. He spent seven years in self-exile inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and the past five years in a high-security British prison.
The U.S. Justice Department indicted Assange in 2019 on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks' publication of classified U.S. diplomatic and military documents.
The British court gave U.S. officials three weeks to submit those assurances.
The Trump connection
The ruling extended until at least May 20, when the court will next rule, a decadelong legal saga over the controversial activist who has embarrassed and outraged the U.S. with a string of blockbuster leaks.
The U.K. judges cited "the calls for the imposition of the death penalty by leading politicians and other public figures," a reference in part to comments that Donald Trump made about WikiLeaks in a 2010 interview: "I think there should be like a death penalty or something."
And they noted a Yahoo News article published during the Trump presidency describing then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo and other officials as "seeing blood" after WikiLeaks released a batch of CIA hacking tools knows as "Vault 7." Pompeo designated WiliLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”
The Chelsea Manning connection
U.S. prosecutors say Assange put lives at risk by helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published − including video footage allegedly showing U.S. Apache helicopters killing a dozen civilians in Iraq.
Assange disputes that claim and describes himself as a political refugee.
Julian Assange: He infuriated Washington. Now he's facing life in prison
Journalism or espionage?
Assange maintains that as a journalist he should be immune from prosecution and that his work revealed embarrassing and highly damaging facts about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the detainees held at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Assange's detractors say that he doesn't write stories or interview anyone or provide sufficient explanatory context and that the dissemination of raw, unfiltered documents and data – the publication of stolen classified materials – should not count as journalism.
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Assange’s lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted in a U.S. trial, though American authorities have said the sentence would likely be much shorter than that.
His supporters believe the prosecution is politically motivated, that he won’t get a fair trial in the U.S., and that it could have serious implications for First Amendment protections. They also worry about this health.
"His health is in decline, mentally and physically. His life is at risk every single day he stays in prison, and if he’s extradited, he will die," Stella Assange, whom he married in prison in 2022, told reporters last week.
More: Julian Assange: He infuriated Washington. Now he's facing life in prison
Assange did not attend the hearing Tuesday because he was too ill, his lawyers said.
“This is an unprecedented case in which the Espionage Act is being repurposed in order to criminalize what The New York Times does every single day,” Stella Assange said Tuesday. “The United States should not issue assurances. They should just drop the case.”
A rape complaint, and jumping bail
Assange’s legal troubles began in 2010, when he was arrested in London at the request of Sweden, which wanted to question him about allegations of rape and sexual assault made by two women. In 2012, Assange jumped bail and sought refuge inside the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he was beyond the reach of U.K. and Swedish authorities. He was also effectively a prisoner inside Ecuador's tiny diplomatic mission.
The relationship between Assange and his Ecuadorian hosts eventually soured, and defense lawyers accused the embassy's security team of spying on him for the CIA. He was evicted from the embassy in April 2019. British police immediately arrested him for breaching bail in 2012. Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison throughout the extradition battle. Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in 2019.
“The UK High Court’s ruling presents the U.S. government with another opportunity to do what it should have done long ago − drop the Espionage Act charges," Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement. "Prosecuting Assange for the publication of classified information would have profound implications for press freedom, because publishing classified information is what journalists and news organizations often need to do in order to expose wrongdoing by government."
Contributing: Bart Jansen
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Wikileaks' Julian Assange extradition on hold, court seeks 'assurances'
