Julian Assange has been in custody or self-imposed exile in London for nearly a decade.
Photographer: Jack Taylor / Getty Images
Photographer: Jack Taylor / Getty Images
A British judge will rule Monday whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the US for criminal charges after weeks of talking about a possible pardon from Donald Trump.
A London judge’s decision comes after President Trump, whose administration has filed the indictment, granted an abundance of pardons to political allies. And lawyers say Trump’s likelihood of leniency is greater than a judge buying Assange’s arguments that his human rights will be trampled on in America.
“It is rare for magistrates to refuse US extradition requests,” said Anthony Hanratty, a lawyer at BDB Pitmans in London, who specializes in extradition cases. “There is a fairly strong suspicion that the US will comply with human rights and legal process obligations.”
Assange, 49, has been in custody or self-imposed exile in London for the better part of a decade. In 2012, he initially sought refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy rather than being questioned in a Swedish sexual assault case, which was later dropped. Last year, when he was expelled from the embassy, he faced US charges related to WikiLeaks revelations.
He is accused of collaborating with US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain classified documents from databases containing approximately 90,000 reports of war-related activity in Afghanistan, 400,000 reports of Iraq war and 250,000 State Department cables.
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In a few extradition hearings earlier this year, delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, Assange’s lawyers focused their arguments on allegations that he could not get a fair trial in the US.
But Assange received praise from Trump during the 2016 campaign when WikiLeaks released emails undermining Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. And it appears that Assange’s supporters have left the rendition battle to focus on a possible pardon.
Assange’s fiancé, Stella Moris, has made direct pleas to Trump through Twitter and appearances on Fox News in recent months.
“I’m begging you please bring him home for Christmas,” she tweeted last month.
Officials at WikiLeaks declined to comment pending Monday’s ruling and instead referred to Moris’s tweets. The United States Department of Justice declined to comment.
The prospect of presidential intervention first gained traction early last year when Assange’s lawyers said a congressman and a Trump associate met Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in the summer of 2017 at discuss a pardon if he revealed the source behind the leaked Democratic National Committee emails.
The pardon fever has only increased in recent weeks after Trump pardoned more than a dozen people. The recipients were mostly political allies, including Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager, and Charles Kushner, the real estate developer and father of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Trump would oppose pardons from within his own government. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo – when he was CIA director – described WikiLeaks as a hostile force threatening the US
Barring pardon, the extradition process in London is likely to continue regardless of how Judge Vanessa Baraitser rules Monday. The appeal could take 18 to 24 months, with potential challenges to the UK’s Supreme Court and even the European Court of Human Rights, Hanratty said.
(Updates with the first mention of a presidential pardon in the eleventh paragraph.)