Assange wins stay of extradition to US

Alameen Templeton

Australia wants the UK to send Julian Assange home after the Wikileaks founder won a stay of extradition to the US Monday.

The UK High Court granted Assange permission to appeal his extradition, frustrating US efforts to put the 52-year-old hacker on trial for leaking US military secrets.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese repeated his calls for an end to the persecution of Assange, saying there was “nothing to be served” by his “ongoing incarceration”.

“We continue to work very closely to achieve that outcome,“ Albanese told reporters, while also declaring “enough is enough”.

Assange will be allowed to launch a narrow appeal that will look at whether he will receive free speech protections as a foreigner in the US legal system.

The UK government approved Assange’s extradition in June 2022.

He has been detained in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London since April 2019, after spending seven years holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy.

Earlier this year, Albanese said the seemingly endless prosecution of Assange “cannot just go on and on and on indefinitely”.

US authorities want to put Assange on trial for divulging US military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He is accused of publishing some 700,000 confidential documents relating to US military and diplomatic activities, starting in 2010.

Two senior judges said Assange’s argument that he might not be able to rely on the US First Amendment right to free speech deserved a full appeal, which is unlikely to be held for months.

Hundreds of Assange’s supporters who had massed outside the court cheered and sang after the ruling. They tied yellow ribbons to iron railings, held placards and shouted “Free, free Julian Assange”.

Assange was absent from court for health reasons. His wife, Stella, said he was “obviously relieved” as he had not been able to sleep.

In April, US President Joe Biden said he was considering Australia’s request to drop Assange’s prosecution.

“I hope that the US administration looks at this case and now… considers it should just be dropped,” Stella said on Monday. “The signals should be clear that it’s time to drop it.”

The US Justice Department declined to comment. Assange’s legal team said he could have been put on a plane to the US within 24 hours had the ruling gone against him.

US prosecutors had told the court Assange could “seek to rely” upon the First Amendment protections granted to US citizens, and would not be discriminated against because of his nationality. “We say this is a blatantly inadequate assurance,” Assange’s lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told the judges. The court also concluded that Assange’s appeal should apply to all 18 counts, not only three, as lawyers for the US had argued.

If he had been extradited, Assange faced a sentence of up to 175 years in a maximum security prison. Multiple rights groups, media and the leaders of countries including Australia, Mexico and Brazil have urged that charges against him be dropped.