Julian Assange US extradition updates: UK High Court allows appeal

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Thanks for joining our coverage of today’s court hearing that marked a pivotal moment in Julian Assange’s years-long fight to avoid extradition to the US from the UK.

Stella Assange has said outside London’s High Court after the ruling that the US had been “putting lipstick on a pig” for a long time “but the judges did not buy it”.

“As a family we are relieved, but how long did this go on. The United States should read the situation and drop this case now,” she added.

Simon Crowther, legal adviser at Amnesty International, has said that “the High Court’s decision is a rare piece of positive news for Julian Assange and all defenders of press freedom”.

“The High Court has rightly concluded that – if extradited to the USA, Assange will be at risk of serious abuse, including prolonged solitary confinement, which would violate the prohibition on torture or other ill-treatment,” he said.

Crowther also said the ongoing US attempt “to prosecute Assange puts media freedom at risk worldwide”.

“As the fight continues in the UK courts, we call on the USA to finally put an end to this shameful saga, by dropping all the charges against Assange. This would bring the process in the UK to an immediate halt, and Julian Assange will be freed,” he said.

Assange’s battle to avoid extradition to the US has received a huge boost as London’s High Court has ruled that the US assurances over his case were unsatisfactory and he would get a full appeal hearing.

In a short ruling, two senior judges said the US submissions were not sufficient and said they would allow the appeal to go ahead.

Dozens of Assange supporters have gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, many wearing T-shirts bearing Assange’s face.

A large sign had Assange’s photo and the words reading: “Publishing is not a crime. War crimes are.”

Some protesters held a large white banner aimed at President Joe Biden, exhorting: “Let him go Joe.”

“This man’s life is at stake,” 83-year-old sculptor Jenny West told AFP. “He represents all other journalists, it’s a pressing humanitarian situation,” she added.

One protester, Emilia Butlin, 54, told Reuters she wanted to show solidarity: “He, with his work, has offered tremendous service to the public, informing them about what governments are doing in their name.”

Alice Jill Edwards in March called on the UK government to halt the possible extradition of Assange to the US, urging authorities to consider his appeal based on substantial fears that, if extradited, he would be at risk of treatment amounting to torture or other forms of ill-treatment or punishment.

“Julian Assange suffers from a long standing and recurrent depressive disorder. He is assessed as being at risk of committing suicide,” Edwards said. “If extradited, he could be detained in prolonged isolation while awaiting trial, or as an inmate. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison,” she added.

“The risk of being placed in prolonged solitary confinement, despite his precarious mental health status, and to receive a potentially disproportionate sentence raises questions as to whether Mr Assange’s extradition to the United States would be compatible with the United Kingdom’s international human rights obligations,” the UN special rapporteur continued, noting that the US government’s assurances of “humane treatment” were not a sufficient guarantee.

Assange’s wife, Stella, speaks outside the High Court.

“We hope the courts rule in Julian’s favour today,” she said. “Thank you to those who are coming and to the millions of people around the world who are supporting Julian and protesting.”

“We hope the courts will do the right thing today and find in Julian’s favour,” she said. “But if they don’t, we will seek an emergency injunction from the European Court of Human Rights.”

Assange’s lawyer says his client stayed away from the hearing for health reasons.

Assange’s wife Stella appeared in court with his brother and father.

His lawyer Edward Fitzgerald says the judges should not accept the assurance given by US prosecutors that Assange could seek to rely upon the rights and protections given under the First Amendment because a US court would not be bound by this.

“We say this is a blatantly inadequate assurance,” he told the court.

Fitzgerald accepted a separate assurance that Assange would not face the death penalty, saying the US had provided an “unambiguous promise not to charge any capital offence”.

The US said the assurances in the First Amendment of its constitution were sufficient. That amendment guarantees a number of rights, including to free speech and a free press.

James Lewis, representing the US authorities, said in court documents that the assurance “cannot bind the courts” but the US courts would “take solemn notice and give effect so far as they are able to a promise given by the executive”.

At home in Australia, Julian Assange’s family and friends are preparing for his possible extradition to the United States, ahead of what could be his final hearing in the United Kingdom on Monday.

Assange’s half-brother Gabriel Shipton, who spoke to Al Jazeera from Melbourne before flying to London, said he had already booked a flight to the US.

Read more here.

Earlier this year, Al Jazeera’s podcast The Take spoke to Stella Assange, the wife of the WikiLeaks founder.

If he’s transferred to the United States, Stella says it’s not just Julian Assange that faces grave consequences, but journalism itself.

Listen to the episode below:

Former leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has taken part in the demonstration supporting Assange outside the High Court in London.

He said in a statement on X that the demonstration aimed “to say loud and clear: journalism is not a crime”.

Corbyn called for Assange’s release.

The act was passed in 1917 in response to espionage threats related to World War I and has remained on the books, almost in its original form, for more than 100 years.

“The core of the Espionage Act are provisions making it a crime to provide information related to the national defence to anyone not authorised to receive it,” Emily Berman, who teaches national security law, foreign affairs law and constitutional law at the University of Houston’s Law Center, told Al Jazeera.

The act has typically been used to prosecute government workers who provide classified information to foreign governments, but more recently, it has been used to prosecute people for leaking classified information to the media.

“The statute arguably applies to Julian Assange because it criminalises sharing national defence information with anyone not authorised to receive it even if the person sharing the information is him/herself not authorised to have it,” Berman said.

“The statute is usually not used against such people, however, in part because that use of the statute would arguably allow the prosecution of journalists who publish information they received from government insiders. So the normal course is to prosecute the leakers, but not the publishers,” she added.

“With Assange, however, they are seeking to prosecute him for having published classified information that was provided to him by a government employee.”

Berman noted the use of the statute has free press advocates concerned because it is hard to draw a clear legal distinction between someone like Assange publishing information on a website and a news organisation doing the same thing.

“In other words, the use of the Espionage Act against Assange represents an expansion of the government’s use of that statute in ways that arguably pose a threat to journalists whose job is to report on national security matters, which often involves acquiring classified information from anonymous government sources,” she said.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has expressed his hope that “the persecution against Assange ends and he returns to the freedom he deserves as soon as possible”.

He said on X that “Julian Assange, the journalist who should have won the Pulitzer Prize for revealing secrets of the powerful, has instead been imprisoned for 5 years in England, condemned to the silence of the entire press that should be defending his freedom as part of the fight for freedom of expression”.

Jameel Jaffer, a professor of law and journalism at Columbia University, says the case is the first in which the US government has relied on the 1917 Espionage Act as the basis for the prosecution of a publisher.

“A successful prosecution of Assange on the basis of this indictment would criminalise a great deal of the investigative journalism that is absolutely crucial to democracy,” he told Al Jazeera, citing cultivating sources, communicating with them confidentially, soliciting information from them, protecting their identities from disclosure and publishing classified information.

“I really can’t imagine why the Biden administration would want this dangerous, short-sighted prosecution to be part of its legacy. The Justice Department should drop the Espionage Act charges, which should never have been filed in the first place.”

Assange created the website in 2006 as a “dead letter drop” for would-be leakers.

WikiLeaks rose to prominence in April 2010 when it published a classified video showing a 2007 US helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Baghdad.

It also released more than 90,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan, and about 400,000 secret US files on the Iraq war.

The two leaks represented the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.

It followed these up with the release of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world, with some of the information published by newspapers such as The New York Times and Britain’s The Guardian.

The leaks angered and embarrassed US politicians and military officials, who said the unauthorised dissemination put lives at risk.

Here’s a look at the key dates in this long-running legal saga:

• 2010: In a series of posts, WikiLeaks releases almost half a million documents relating to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• August 2010: Swedish prosecutors issue an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. The warrant is withdrawn shortly afterwards, with prosecutors citing insufficient evidence for the rape allegation. Assange denies the allegations.
• September 2010: Sweden’s director of prosecutions reopens the rape investigation. Assange leaves Sweden for Britain.
• December 2010: After Swedish police issue an international arrest warrant, Assange surrenders to police in London and is detained pending an extradition hearing. The High Court grants Assange bail.
• February 2011: The District Court in Britain rules Assange should be extradited to Sweden.
• June 2012: Assange enters the Ecuadorian embassy in central London, seeking asylum on June 19, after his bids to appeal the extradition ruling failed. Police set up a round-the-clock guard to arrest him if he steps outside.

• August 2012: Ecuador grants Assange political asylum.
• July 2014: Assange loses his bid to have Swedish arrest warrant cancelled. A judge in Stockholm upholds the warrant alleging sexual offences against two women.
• August 2015: Swedish prosecutors drop investigations into some allegations against Assange because of the statute of limitations; an investigation into a rape allegation remains active.
• October 2015: Metropolitan Police end their 24-hour guard outside the embassy but say they’ll arrest Assange if he leaves, ending a three-year police operation estimated to have cost millions.
• February 2016: Assange claims “total vindication” as the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention finds that he has been unlawfully detained and recommends his immediate release and compensation to him. The UK calls the finding “frankly ridiculous”.
• October 2018: Assange seeks a court injunction pressing Ecuador to provide him with basic rights he said the country agreed to when it first granted him asylum.
• April 2019: Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno blames WikiLeaks for recent corruption allegations; Ecuador’s government withdraws Assange’s asylum status. London police arrest Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy for breaching bail conditions in 2012, as well as on behalf of US authorities.
• May 2019: Assange is sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012.
• May 2019: The US government indicts Assange on 18 charges over the publication of classified documents. Prosecutors say he conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• November 2019: The Swedish prosecutor drops the rape investigation.
• June 2020: The US files a new indictment against Assange that prosecutors say underscores his efforts to procure and release classified information.
• January 2021: A British judge rules Assange cannot be extradited to the US because he is likely to kill himself if held under harsh US prison conditions.
• July 2021: The High Court grants the US government permission to appeal the lower court’s ruling blocking Assange’s extradition.
• December 2021: The High Court rules that US assurances about Assange’s detention are enough to guarantee he would be treated humanely.
• March 2022: Britain’s top court refuses to grant Assange permission to appeal against his extradition.
• June 2022: Britain’s government orders the extradition of Assange to the US. Assange appeals.

Assange’s supporters see the legal saga as a battle for media freedom, while major news organisations and press freedom advocates have condemned the prosecution under the Espionage Act, which has never been used over the publishing of classified information.

Jordan Higgins, press and policy officer at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, says a decision to extradite Assange “would undoubtedly have a chilling effect on press freedom” in the US, the UK and beyond.

“Seeing the US Espionage Act used against a publisher in this way, and for an Australian to be potentially extradited to the US from the UK, is extremely worrying and sets a dangerous precedent,” Higgins told Al Jazeera.

“It is vital that journalists and whistleblowers are able to participate in critical reporting in the public interest without fear of persecution.”

The 52-year-old has been indicted in the US on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over the publication of classified US documents.

Prosecutors say Assange helped US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that his organisation later published.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for violating the US Espionage Act but was released in 2017 after then-President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Assange’s lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted, though US authorities have said the sentence is likely to be much shorter.

Born in Townsville, Australia, in 1971, Assange founded WikiLeaks, an internet-based service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to share, in 2006.

In 2010, WikiLeaks released a leaked video from a US helicopter showing an air strike that killed civilians in Iraq’s capital Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists. It also published more than 91,000 documents, including classified US military reports related to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The US maintains that he conspired to hack government computers and violated an espionage law. He denies any wrongdoing.

Assange claimed political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in England in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced allegations of rape and sexual assault.

He has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison since his arrest at the embassy in 2019. His supporters say his health is fragile while the Council of Europe has expressed concern about his treatment.