UK court: WikiLeaks founder Assange can be extradited to US

LONDON — A British court ruled Friday that Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States to face espionage charges that could result in decades of jail time, reversing a lower-court decision in the long-running case against the embattled WikiLeaks founder.

The ruling was a victory for the Biden administration, which has pursued an effort to prosecute Assange begun under the Trump administration.

But Assange will seek to appeal the decision to Britain’s Supreme Court, according to his legal team.

The Justice Department’s decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act in connection with obtaining and publishing secret government documents has raised novel First Amendment issues and alarmed advocates of media freedom.

In ruling that Assange can be extradited, the High

Court in London said it was satisfied by assurances provided by the Biden administration that it would not hold him under the most austere conditions reserved for high-security prisoners and that, if he were to be convicted, it would let him serve his sentence in his native Australia if he requested it.

An American lawyer for Assange, Barry J. Pollack, denounced the ruling, calling it “disturbing” that the British court accepted the U.S. government’s “vague assurances” of humane treatment.

Assange fled into the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 when he was facing an investigation on allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, which were eventually dropped. He remained in the embassy for seven years until he was ejected in 2019. He has been detained in London’s Belmarsh prison.

The complex case centers on his 2010 publication of diplomatic and military files leaked by Chelsea Manning.