UK court blocks Assange extradition to US

A court in London has ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States to face espionage charges because of concerns over the state of his mental health.

The surprise ruling, against which the US authorities have said they plan to appeal, is the latest development in the lengthy saga over the future of the 49-year-old Australian, who has been in a British prison since May 2020, having spent the previous seven years in refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in connection with an unrelated legal issue.

The case against Assange began a decade ago, when WikiLeaks published thousands of leaked documents relating to US activities in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Prosecutors said Assange was complicit in helping US defense analyst Chelsea Manning breach the country's Espionage Act, by accessing and publishing classified information, charges which could potentially have carried a sentence of up to 175 years in jail, although it was said he would only face a far shorter term.

But Assange denies he has plotted with Manning to access computers of the US Department of Defense.

Announcing her decision, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser said that US prosecutors had met the tests for Assange to be extradited, but "faced with the conditions of near total isolation without the protective factors which limited his risk at (Her Majesty's Prison) Belmarsh… the overall impression is of a depressed and sometimes despairing man fearful for his future", adding that he had the "intellect and determination" to circumvent any suicide prevention measures in place at prisons in the US.

Assange's lawyers argued that the case against him was being pursued for political reasons, rather than legal ones.

Supporters including US academic Noam Chomsky said that Assange had lifted "the veil" of secrecy protecting powers from public scrutiny, and last October his partner Stella Morris said he was being held "because he informed you of actual crimes and atrocities being committed by a foreign power…that power wants to put him in incommunicado detention in the deepest darkest hole of its prison system for the rest of his life."

Campaigning Australian journalist John Pilger tweeted that the ruling was "wonderful ... a face-saving cover for the British to justify their disgraceful political trial of Assange on America's behalf," and Britain's former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott called it "an excellent ruling".

The US nonprofit organization Freedom of the Press Foundation added: "The case against Julian Assange is the most dangerous threat to US press freedom in decades. This is a huge relief to anyone who cares about the rights of journalists."