Julian Assange’s partner said that a decision to extradite the WikiLeaks co-founder to the US would be “politically and legally disastrous for the UK”, on the eve of the judge’s decision.
Assange, 49, faces an 18-count charge, alleging a plot to hack computers and a conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information in a case that critics denounced as a dangerous attack on press freedom.
On Monday in Old Bailey, district judge Vanessa Baraitser will give her decision on whether he should be extradited to face charges in the United States, where his lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted. The United States government says the sentence should be four to six years.
Prior to Baraitser’s decision, Stella Moris, who has two children with Assange, said that the decision to allow extradition would not only be an “unthinkable farce” for her partner, but would undermine British prized freedoms.
Timeline
Julian Assange’s extradition battle
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WikiLeaks releases some 470,000 classified military documents about American diplomacy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Subsequently, he releases a further portion of more than 250,000 classified American diplomatic cables.
A Swedish prosecutor issues a European arrest warrant against Assange on charges of sexual assault involving two Swedish women. Assange denies the claims.
A British judge ruled that Assange could be extradited to Sweden. Assange fears that Sweden will hand him over to the United States authorities, who can sue him.
Assange is questioned in a two-day interview about the accusations at the Ecuadorian embassy by Swedish authorities.
Britain refuses Ecuador’s request to grant Assange diplomatic status, which would allow him to leave the embassy without being arrested.
Police arrested Assange at the embassy on behalf of the United States after his asylum was withdrawn. He is accused by the United States of “a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer hacking for agreeing to crack the password of a classified computer of the US government”.
Assange’s extradition hearing begins at Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London. After a week of initial arguments, the extradition case should be postponed until May. Other delays are caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
A scheduled four-week hearing begins in Old Bailey, with the United States government waiting to argue that Assange tried to recruit hackers to find confidential government information. If the courts approve extradition, the British government will still have the final say.
“That would rewrite the rules of what is allowed to post here,” Moris wrote in Mail on Sunday. “Overnight, it would cool the free and open debate about abuses by our own government and by many foreign governments as well.
“In fact, foreign countries could simply issue an extradition request saying that UK journalists, or Facebook users, in this case, have violated their censorship laws. The freedom of the press that we cherish in Britain is meaningless if it can be criminalized and suppressed by regimes in Russia or Ankara or by prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia. “
The case against Assange is related to the publication by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011.
Prosecutors say Assange helped US defense analyst Chelsea Manning violate the Espionage Law, was an accomplice to third-party intrusions and published confidential information that endangered American informants.
Assange denies conspiring with Manning to crack an encrypted password on US Department of Defense computers and says there is no evidence that anyone’s security has been compromised.
His lawyers argue that the prosecution is politically motivated and that he is being persecuted because WikiLeaks published documents from the United States government that revealed evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, said: “The simple fact that this case has reached the courts, let alone lasted so long, is a historic and large-scale attack on freedom of expression.
“The US government must listen to the wave of support from mainstream media editorials, NGOs from around the world, such as Amnesty and Reporters Without Borders and the United Nations, who are calling for these charges to be dropped.”
Assange has been held in the maximum security prison in Belmarsh since the police took him out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he took refuge for seven years, and arrested him for violating his bail conditions.
The UN special rapporteur on torture, Prof Nils Melzer, who visited him in Belmarsh, said that Assange is showing all the symptoms associated with prolonged exposure to psychological torture and should not be extradited. The court heard that he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, and defense psychiatrists said he suffered from severe depression and was at high risk of suicide.