Julian Assange has been in custody or self-imposed exile in London for almost a decade.
Photographer: Jack Taylor / Getty Images
Photographer: Jack Taylor / Getty Images
A UK judge will decide on Monday whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges after weeks of talks about a possible Donald Trump pardon.
A London judge’s decision will come after President Trump, whose administration brought the charges, issued a plethora of pardons to political allies. And lawyers say Trump’s chances of clemency are better than a judge buying Assange’s arguments that his human rights will be trampled on in America.
“It is very rare for magistrates to refuse extradition requests from the United States,” said Anthony Hanratty, a lawyer at BDB Pitmans in London, an expert on extradition cases. “There is a very strong presumption that the United States will comply with its obligations regarding human rights and legal processes.”
Assange, 49, has been in self-imposed custody or exile in London for almost a decade. He initially sought refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012, instead of being interrogated in a sexual assault case in Sweden, which was later dismissed. Last year, when he was expelled from the embassy, he faced US charges related to WikiLeaks disclosures.
He is accused of working with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain confidential documents from databases containing nearly 90,000 reports of activities related to the war in Afghanistan, 400,000 reports related to the war in Iraq and 250,000 telegrams from State Department.
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At two extradition hearings earlier this year, delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, Assange’s lawyers focused their arguments on allegations that he could not receive a fair trial in the U.S.
But Assange drew praise from Trump during the 2016 campaign, when WikiLeaks released emails that undermined Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. And it appears that Assange’s supporters have left the extradition battle to focus on possible forgiveness.
Assange’s fiancee, Stella Moris, has spent the past few months making direct appeals to Trump via Twitter and appearances on Fox News.
“I beg you, please bring it home for Christmas,” she tweeted last month.
WikiLeaks officials declined to comment before Monday’s decision and instead referred to Moris’ tweets. The US Department of Justice declined to comment.
The prospect of presidential intervention gained momentum at the beginning of last year, when Assange’s lawyers said that a congressman and a Trump associate met with Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in the summer of 2017 to discuss a pardon if he revealed the source behind the leaked Democratic National Committee emails.
The fever of forgiveness has only grown in the past few weeks after Trump has granted forgiveness to more than a dozen people. The recipients were mostly political allies, including Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager, and Charles Kushner, the real estate developer and father of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Trump would face opposition to a pardon from within his own administration. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo – when he was director of the CIA – described WikiLeaks as a hostile force that threatens the United States
Except for forgiveness, the London extradition process is likely to drag on, no matter how Judge Vanessa Baraitser decides on Monday. Appeals can take 18 to 24 months, with possible challenges going to the UK Supreme Court and even the European Court of Human Rights, Hanratty said.
(Updates with the first mention of a presidential pardon in the eleventh paragraph.)