WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is one step nearer to dealing with espionage expenses within the US after a British choose formally permitted his extradition.
The case will go to Britain’s inside minister for a choice, and Assange, 50, nonetheless has authorized avenues of enchantment.
A choose at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court docket on Wednesday issued the extradition order in a short listening to, as Assange watched by video hyperlink from Belmarsh Jail. He acknowledged his full title and date of delivery.
It's as much as House Secretary Priti Patel to determine whether or not to grant the extradition.
The order comes after the UK Supreme Court docket final month refused Assange permission to enchantment in opposition to a decrease courtroom’s ruling that he could possibly be extradited.
The transfer doesn’t exhaust the authorized choices for Assange, who has hunted for years to keep away from a trial within the US on 17 expenses of espionage and one cost of laptop misuse associated to WikiLeaks’ publication of an enormous trove of labeled paperwork greater than a decade in the past.
His legal professionals have 4 weeks to make submissions to Patel, and may search to enchantment to the Excessive Court docket.
Assange lawyer Mark Summers advised the courtroom that the authorized staff had “severe submissions” to make.
American prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped US Military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal 500,000 labeled diplomatic cables and navy information that WikiLeaks later printed, placing lives in danger.
Supporters and legal professionals for Assange argue that he was appearing as a journalist and is entitled to First Modification protections of freedom of speech for publishing paperwork that uncovered US navy wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They argue that his case is politically motivated.
A British district choose had initially rejected a US extradition request on the grounds that Assange was prone to kill himself if held beneath harsh US jail situations. US authorities later offered assurances that the WikiLeaks founder wouldn’t be held in solitary confinement at a federal supermax jail that his legal professionals mentioned would put his bodily and psychological well being in danger.
In December, the Excessive Court docket overturned the decrease courtroom’s resolution, saying that the US guarantees have been sufficient to ensure that Assange could be handled humanely.
Assange’s legal professionals say he may withstand 175 years in jail if he's convicted within the US, although American authorities have mentioned the sentence was prone to be a lot decrease than that.
Assange has been held at Britain’s high-security Belmarsh Jail in London since 2019, when he was arrested for skipping bail throughout a separate authorized battle. Earlier than that, he spent seven years holed up contained in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to keep away from extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.
Sweden dropped the intercourse crimes investigations in November 2019 as a result of a lot time had elapsed.
Final month, Assange and his former lawyer Stella Moris married in a jail ceremony.
Earlier than the marriage, she proudly wrote within the Guardian how she would go “by means of the gates on the most oppressive high-security jail” in Britain to marry “the love of my life.”
With Put up wires
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