The High Court in London will decide on Tuesday if Julian Assange can appeal against extradition to the United States. This might be his last chance to fight his case in British courts.
The US wants to take Assange to court for releasing secret US military records and government messages on WikiLeaks. He is 52 years old.
They say the leaks put their agents in danger and there’s no excuse for his criminal behavior. Assange’s fans say he is a journalism hero and is being punished for showing US bad actions.
Britain said it was okay for him to be sent to another country in 2022, and now he is trying to change that decision.
His first try to argue against the move was denied. Then, his lawyers had a two-day meeting last month to try to change that decision.
Two older judges will announce their decision at 10:30 AM on Tuesday.
If Assange is successful, there will be another hearing to review his challenge. If he doesn’t win, he can try to get help from the European Court of Human Rights.
“This is it. DECISION TOMORROW,”” his wife Stella Assange wrote on X.
In 2010, Julian Assange started having legal problems. He then stayed in Ecuador’s embassy in London for seven years to avoid being arrested. In 2019, he was taken out of the embassy and put in jail for breaking his bail rules. He has been kept in a very secure prison in southeast London for a long time, and even got married there.
In February, Assange’s team said the prosecution was influenced by politics and that he was being targeted because he exposed serious government crimes.
They said ex- President Donald Trump asked for detailed choices on how to harm him.
The lawyers for the US to said that he was not being charged for sharing the leaked materials, but for helping Chelsea Manning to get them illegally and then revealing names of sources, which put those people in danger.
WikiLeaks got famous in 2010 for releasing a video of a US military attack in Baghdad. The attack happened in 2007 and killed twelve people, including two Reuters news workers.
Assange’s lawyer in the US said they did not see any sign of the case against him being resolved, even though a newspaper report said the US Justice Department was thinking about letting him plead guilty to a less serious charge.
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