LONDON (AP) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will find out on Monday whether he can be extradited from the UK to the US to face espionage charges over the publication of classified US military documents.
District judge Vanessa Baraitser must hand in her decision at the London Old Bailey courthouse on Monday at 10 a.m. If she grants the request, Britain’s Home Secretary Priti Patel will make the final decision.
Whichever party loses is expected to appeal, which could lead to years of more legal bickering.
However, there is a possibility that outside forces may come into play that could immediately end the decade-long saga.
Stella Moris, Assange’s partner and the mother of his two sons, has appealed via Twitter to US President Donald Trump to pardon Assange before leaving office on January 20.
And even if Trump doesn’t, there is speculation that his successor, Joe Biden, may take a more lenient approach to Assange’s extradition process.
US prosecutors have indicted 49-year-old Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse, with a maximum prison sentence of 175 years.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the U.S. government said in their closing arguments after the four-week hearing in the fall that Assange’s defense team had raised issues that were neither relevant nor admissible.
“Consistently, the defense is asking this court to make determinations, or to act on the statement, that the United States of America is guilty of torture, war crimes, murder, violations of diplomatic and international law, and that the United States of America “a lawless state,” they said. “These comments are not only not justified in these proceedings, but should never have been submitted.”
Assange’s defense team argued that he is entitled to First Amendment protection for the publication of leaked documents revealing US military misconduct in Iraq and Afghanistan and that the US extradition request was politically motivated.
In their final written arguments, Assange’s legal team accused the US of an “extraordinary, unprecedented and politicized” prosecution that is “a blatant denial of its right to freedom of expression and a fundamental threat to freedom of the press around the world.”
Defense lawyers also said Assange was suffering from widespread mental health issues, including suicidal tendencies, which could worsen if placed in inhospitable prison conditions in the US.
They said his mental health deteriorated after years of filing for asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and that he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Assange jumped bail in 2012 when he sought asylum at the embassy, where he stayed for seven years before being deported and arrested. He has been detained in Belmarsh prison in London since April 2019.
His legal team argued that if extradited, Assange would likely face solitary confinement, putting him at an increased risk of suicide. They said if he was subsequently convicted, he would likely be sent to the infamous ADX Supermax prison in Colorado, which is also inhabited by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
US government lawyers have argued that Assange’s mental state “is clearly not so severe as to preclude extradition.”
Assange has gained the support of high-profile figures, including dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and actress Pamela Anderson.
Daniel Ellsberg, the famous US whistleblower, also backed up, telling the hearing that they had “very similar political views.”
The 89-year-old, widely acclaimed for helping end the Vietnam War through his 1971 Pentagon Papers leaks, said the American public “ urgently needed to know what was routinely done in their name, and there was no such thing for them. other way to find out than through unauthorized disclosure. “
There are clear echoes between Assange and Ellsberg, who leaked more than 7,000 pages of classified documents to the press, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. Ellsberg was subsequently tried on 12 charges related to espionage law violations, punishable by up to 115 years in prison. The charges were dismissed in 1973 for government misconduct against him.
Assange and his legal team hope that developments in the US will put an end to his ordeal if the judge grants the US extradition request.