WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “dangerously close” to being extradited to the United States after he lost his latest legal appeal, his family said. UK high court judge Justice Jonathan Swift rejected all eight grounds of Assange’s appeal against the US’s extradition order in a three-page judgment handed down on Tuesday. With this, Assange faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents.
According to The Guardian’s report, Julian Assange’s lawyers say they will appeal to the same court again. His wife Stella Assange said that her husband would make a “renewed application for appeal to the high court” next week.
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The case would then be heard before two new judges in a public hearing, Stella Assange said. “And we remain optimistic that we will prevail and that Julian will not be extradited to the United States where he faces charges that could result in him spending the rest of his life in a maximum security prison for publishing true information that revealed war crimes committed by the US government,” The Guardian quoted her as saying.
Meanwhile, the WikiLeaks founder’s father, John Shipton, stressed that his son’s grounds for a further hearing were “clear, firm, and just”.
“Julian’s family watch on, horrified, and all fair-minded people the world over watch with profound disquiet and alarm,” he said, as per the report.
The extradition order was signed by then-UK home secretary Priti Patel in June last year.
In his appeal, Assange argued that Patel erred in her decision to approve the extradition order because it violated the US-UK extradition treaty which states “extradition shall not be granted if the offence for which extradition is requested is a political offence”.
His legal team continues to maintain that Wahington’s desire to try Assange is politically motivated.
The appeal also contended that Assange was being prosecuted for protected speech and that the extradition request was an abuse of process, the report mentioned.
The US government has misrepresented the core facts of the case to the British courts, the legal team contended.
Meanwhile, the defence has five working days to submit an appeal of 20 pages to a panel of two judges, who will convene a public hearing.
If the appeal is rejected again, he will have no further appeal avenues at the domestic level. He could still fight the extradition at the European court of human rights, which confirmed that an application had been received for it last December.
Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told The Guardian that the rejection was a serious development, “that leaves him dangerously close now to extradition”.
He said the moments of setback were “the toughest” for his brother. “These times are always very hard for Julian in the prison. He’s obviously focused on this next appeal … but he’s not doing well. This saga’s been going on 13 years and it is taking its toll on his body and on his mind. But he still has a fighting spirit, we’re just hoping he makes it through this,” Shipton said, as per the report.
He also stressed that the Australian government’s public statements advocating for the release were insufficient.
The WikiLeaks founder faces 18 charges over the platform’s publication of classified documents, largely the result of a leak by former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison but was released after President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.
If extradited to the US, Assange faces a potential 175-year sentence for his publishing work while he has been held, in deteriorating health, in Belmarsh prison for more than four years during his fight against the US extradition order.