- UK court criticized for Julian Assange extradition decision
- Assange appeals US extradition order, sparking ongoing legal battle
- Supporters denounce UK’s handling of Assange’s human rights
Experts and proponents of free speech have criticised a British court decision that failed to prevent the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States.
In 2022, an American court in Virginia ordered Assange’s extradition from the United Kingdom to stand trial on espionage charges; he has since filed an appeal of that extradition.
Tuesday marked the decision of the High Court of London to request assurances from the court in the Eastern District of Virginia that Julian Assange would not face capital punishment.
In addition, the court in the United Kingdom demanded a written assurance that Assange would be granted the same rights as a citizen of the United States under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which safeguards freedom of expression and press.
“Those [assurances] seem non-controversial at first glance, and I do not anticipate the United States declining to provide such assurances,” said Donald Rothwell, an Australian National University professor of international law.
Justice Jeremy Johnson penned the following in the decision of the UK High Court: “In the absence of assurances, we shall grant [Assange] leave to appeal without conducting a subsequent hearing […] We will grant the parties an opportunity to submit additional arguments prior to reaching a final decision on the application for leave to appeal, contingent upon the provision of assurances.
Rothwell stated, “Assange essentially joins a line of individuals who are also vying for attention and resolution of their appeals.” The likelihood of these processes being finalised within a six-month timeframe, or even by the conclusion of 2024, could be much higher.
This infuriates Assange’s supporters and allies, who argue that his resistance to extradition, which he initially waged for seven years from the Ecuadorean embassy in London and then for an additional five years from the Belmarsh maximum security prison, is sufficient punishment.
An investigative journalist affiliated with the renowned Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano and a former colleague of Julian Assange, the United Kingdom once again failed to seize a chance to administer justice.
“Human rights organisations of prominence, such as Amnesty International, have condemned on numerous occasions the inherent unreliability of assurances.” She stated, “British justice continues to hide behind the fig leaf of ‘assurances’.”
As far as she is concerned, the extradition procedure was not an endeavour to administer justice; rather, it was a deterrent intended to discourage other investigative journalists, publishers, and whistleblowers.
Maurizi stated, “Protected witnesses and a major investigation by Yahoo News indicate that the CIA attempted to destroy Julian Assange extrajudicially by attempting to kill or kidnap him.” “British justice is humanly eliminating him through lawful means at a gradual pace.”
According to reports, Assange needed to be more robust in participating in Tuesday’s proceedings, not even through a video link.
Stella, Assange’s wife, remarked outside the High Court, “Today’s ruling is abhorrent.” “The courts acknowledge that Julian continues to be subject to a flagrant violation of his freedom-of-expression rights, nationality-based discrimination as an Australian, and the possibility of capital punishment.”
“However, in doing so, the courts have invited a United States political intervention by issuing a letter stating that everything is fine.”
A British judge declared in January 2021 that Assange should not be extradited to the United States due to the high probability that he would commit suicide in isolation.
Stella Assange referred to the decision made on Tuesday as “a siege on Julian’s life.”
Protesters for Julian Assange gathered outside the courthouse and chanted, “Free, Free Julian Assange” and “There is only one decision – no extradition.”
A district court in the United States state of Virginia has levied seventeen espionage accusations against Julian Assange in connection with his 2010 publication on WikiLeaks, which contained hundreds of thousands of pages of classified US military documents.
US prosecutors allege that Assange conspired with one US intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning, to breach the Pentagon’s servers in order to retrieve those documents, despite actively seeking out whistleblowers in US intelligence agencies.
Many individuals consider the evidence in the folders to be war crimes committed by United States forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. They contain footage of an Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad in 2007 that claimed the lives of eleven individuals, two of whom were Reuters journalists.
Stella Assange addressed the media assembled outside the courtroom, stating, “This is a signal to all of you that if you expose the interests that are driving nuclear war, they will pursue you, imprison you, and attempt to kill you.”
Julian Assange has maintained that he operated as a publisher of public interest information. The US indictment labels him a spy, but that, according to experts on free expression, is an improper application of the 1917 US Espionage Act.
“The United States government now has another opportunity to drop the Espionage Act charges, as it ought to have done years ago,” said Jameel Jaffer, an international law professor at Columbia University and an authority on free speech.
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“Prosecuting Assange for the publication of classified information would have profound implications for press freedom because journalists and news organisations are frequently compelled to publish classified information in order to expose government wrongdoing,” said Jaffer, who currently serves as the director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute and was formerly the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Jaffer, in prior testimony regarding Assange’s case, has expressed disapproval of the manner in which US courts have implemented the Espionage Act since its inception during World War I. He has characterised the act’s provisions as “extremely broad” and stated that they stigmatise actions that may not have been intended to cause damage to the United States.
After Assange was indicted, Jaffer stated, “The act exposes leakers to severe penalties regardless of whether they acted with the intent to harm the security of the United States.” “The act is indifferent to… whether the public value of the information outweighs the harms caused by disclosure.”
