Julian Assange has not been released but neither has he been extradited to the United States. He has not gone to heaven, but neither has he gone to hell. He remains in the same purgatory he entered in 2010, a kind of legal limbo. He has now obtained new permission to appeal the extradition order requested by Washington and that the British government had granted based on bilateral agreements between the two countries.
The judges of the High Court of London have determined that the Biden Administration has not responded satisfactorily to the demands imposed in exchange for extradition. In particular, Assange’s right to freedom of expression, recognized by the first amendment to the United States Constitution, would be fully respected in a trial, and she would not be harmed by the fact that she does not have North American nationality.
The magistrates had also requested guarantees that Assange would not be imposed the death penalty in any case if he were found guilty of the seventeen espionage crimes that he is accused of having leaked hundreds of thousands of compromising documents through the Wikileaks platform. for Washington about Army abuses in the wars in Afghanistan and Iran, murders of civilians and torture.
As a consequence of today’s decision, Assange obtains the right to appeal against the extradition order issued against him, and to question whether he would receive a fair trial with the same legal guarantees and the same respect for his rights that a citizen of the United States would have. Joined. This process will take months, during which he will remain locked up in the Belmarsh maximum security prison, where he has been since 2019. Stella Morris, his lawyer and wife, declared herself relieved to win again. time.
The United States accuses the Australian journalist of having attacked national security and endangered the lives of dozens of informants and CIA agents, for which it demands exemplary punishment. But Assange and his defenders consider that his complaints constitute a public service in the exercise of press freedom.
Assange has now spent almost 14 years in captivity. She remains in preventive detention in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison since April 2019, when the United States demanded her handover. In 2010 he was arrested at the request of Sweden for a case that is now archived and placed under house arrest. Between 2012 and 2019, he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, until it finally withdrew his political asylum.
On March 26, the High Court ruled that Assange could appeal his surrender based on three of nine arguments presented by his defense in a previous trial in February if the US did not offer the aforementioned guarantees. These were to ensure that, if tried there, the 52-year-old Australian would not be punished with the death penalty – illegal in the United Kingdom -; He will not be discriminated against because of his non-American nationality and will be able to rely on the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects freedom of expression.
In a diplomatic communication to the court in April, the Washington Government assured that, if Assange were extradited, “he will not be prejudiced by reason of his nationality in relation to the defense he chooses to raise at trial or with regard to sentencing.” . Washington also stated that “the death penalty will not be requested or imposed,” since the computer programmer is not accused of any crime punishable by the maximum penalty.
