Government approves extradition order for Assange
LONDON — The British government on Friday ordered the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to face spying charges, a milestone — but not the end — of a decadelong legal saga sparked by his website’s publication of classified U.S. documents.
WikiLeaks said it would challenge the order, and Assange’s lawyers have 14 days to lodge an appeal.
“We’re not at the end of the road here,” said Assange’s wife, Stella Assange. “We’re going to fight this.”
Julian Assange has battled in British courts for years to avoid being sent to the U.S., where he faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. American prosecutors say the Australian citizen helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeakspu-blished, putting lives at risk.
To his supporters, Assange, 50, is a secrecy-busting journalist who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A British court ruled in April that Assange could be sent to face trial in the U.S., sending the case to the U.K. government for a decision. Britain’s interior minister, Home Secretary Priti Patel, signed an order Friday authorizing Assange’s extradition.
The Home Office said in a statement that the government had to approve his move to the U.S. because “the U.K. courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust or an abuse of process to extradite Mr. Assange.”
Assange’s lawyers said they would mount a new legal challenge. “We will appeal this all the way, if necessary to the European Court of Human Rights,” attorney Jennifer Robinson said.
Robinson asked President Biden to drop the charges brought against Assange during Donald Trump’s presidency, arguing they posed a “grave threat” to free speech.
Assange’s supporters and lawyers maintain he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech. They argue that the case is politically motivated and that he would face inhumane treatment and be unable to get a fair trial in the U.S.
Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, said the British government’s “complicity in the political persecution of a journalist simply for revealing uncomfortable truths to the public is appalling, wrong and shames our country.”
Assange remains in London’s Belmarsh Prison, where he has been since he was arrested in 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years inside the Ecuadoran Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Sweden dropped the investigation in 2019.