{"id":15808,"date":"2024-02-20T12:48:07","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T12:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/20\/julian-assange-makes-last-ditch-attempt-in-uk-court-to-avoid-extradition-to-the-us\/"},"modified":"2024-02-20T12:48:07","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T12:48:07","slug":"julian-assange-makes-last-ditch-attempt-in-uk-court-to-avoid-extradition-to-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/20\/julian-assange-makes-last-ditch-attempt-in-uk-court-to-avoid-extradition-to-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Julian Assange makes last-ditch attempt in UK court to avoid extradition to the US"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Julian Assange\u2019s legal team returned to London\u2019s High Court on Tuesday to fight for what could become his final attempt at avoiding extradition to the United States, where he is facing life in prison if convicted on espionage charges. <\/p>\n

After a years-long battle, the 52-year-old WikiLeaks founder is down to his only remaining legal avenue in the British justice system and now just two UK High Court judges <\/strong>stand between him and a possible flight across the Atlantic. <\/p>\n

The two-day hearing will examine whether the embattled Australian should be granted leave to appeal a 2022 extradition decision made by former UK Home Secretary Priti Patel. If the court\u2019s decision goes against Assange, he must be extradited within 28 days. However, his legal team is expected to apply to the European Court of Human Rights for an intervention to ground the flight through a rule 39 order. <\/p>\n

Assange is wanted by US authorities on 18 criminal charges relating to his organization\u2019s dissemination of classified material and diplomatic cables in 2010 and 2011. <\/p>\n

Each of those counts carries a potential sentence of 10 years, meaning that if convicted, Assange could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison. <\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s hearing is the latest stage in a convoluted journey that has left Assange incarcerated at Belmarsh, a high-security prison in the south-east of the British capital, years after an undignified eviction from London\u2019s Ecuadorian embassy. <\/p>\n

Assange began his whistleblowing website WikiLeaks in 2006 in what he argued was a bid to challenge the West\u2019s power structures and uphold human rights. <\/p>\n

But his self-described <\/strong>quest for \u201cradical transparency and truth,\u201d combined with a polarizing personality, transformed him over the following years into a notorious character, earning him crusaders and critics in equal measure. <\/p>\n

How we got here<\/h2>\n

Assange\u2019s battle began in 2010 when then-little-known WikiLeaks started publishing huge quantities of classified documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Starting in April, the website posted a video showing a US military helicopter firing on and killing two journalists and several Iraqi civilians in 2007. Several months later, it disclosed more than 90,000 classified Afghan war documents dating back to 2004. <\/p>\n

In 2012, Assange sought political asylum within the Ecuadorian embassy in west London. He remained there for almost seven years until the Metropolitan Police entered his safe haven in 2019 acting on an extradition warrant from the US Justice Department. British officers moved in after Ecuador withdrew his asylum and invited authorities into the embassy, citing Assange\u2019s bad behavior. <\/p>\n

The US want Assange to be brought to the US where he faces an\u00a018-count indictment\u00a0handed down by the Eastern District of Virginia. This alleges that the WikiLeaks founder actively solicited classified information, pushing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea\u00a0Manning to obtain thousands of pages of classified material and providing\u00a0Assange\u00a0with diplomatic State Department cables, Iraq war-related significant activity reports and information related to Guantanamo Bay detainees. <\/p>\n

Two years later, a British\u00a0judge rejected the US request\u00a0on the grounds that such a move would be \u201coppressive\u201d by reason of his mental health. The US continued to press for Assange\u2019s extradition and successfully overturned the judge\u2019s ruling months later after providing fresh assurances on Assange\u2019s treatment in America. <\/p>\n

What is his legal team asking for now?<\/h2>\n

At the hearing on Tuesday, Assange\u2019s team was expected to assert that he is being extradited for political reasons and that a handover to the US violates the European Convention on Human Rights. <\/p>\n

Assange\u00a0did not attend the hearing as he is unwell, his lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told the court, the UK\u2019s\u00a0PA\u00a0Media\u00a0news agency reported. <\/p>\n

Fitzgerald told the court Assange \u201cis being prosecuted for engaging in ordinary journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information, information that is both true and of obvious and important public interest.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ahead of the hearing, Assange\u2019s wife Stella described her husband\u2019s situation as \u201cextremely grave.\u201d <\/p>\n

Speaking with reporters at a meeting organized by the Foreign Press Association on Thursday, she added: \u201cIt is the final hearing. If it doesn\u2019t go Julian\u2019s way, there is no possibility to appeal to the Supreme Court or anywhere else in this jurisdiction.\u201d <\/p>\n

She also emphasized her concerns for Assange\u2019s wellbeing and said she fears that if extradited, he could take his own life. \u201cHis health is in decline, mentally and physically. His life is at risk every single day he stays in prison. If he is extradited, he will die.\u201d <\/p>\n

Why is his extradition controversial?<\/h2>\n

Supporters of Assange and human rights groups have long voiced concern over the US indictment, saying that if the extradition order is allowed to proceed it could have a radical effect on journalism. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe risk to publishers and investigative journalists around the world hangs in the balance. Should Julian Assange be sent to the US and prosecuted there, global media freedoms will be on trial, too,\u201d said Julia Hall, Amnesty International\u2019s expert on counterterrorism and criminal justice in Europe, <\/strong>in a statement. <\/p>\n

Rebecca Vincent, director of International Campaigns for Reporters Without Borders, said his case had \u201calarming implications for journalism and press freedom.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cNot least of all, as he would be the first publisher tried under the US Espionage Act, which lacks a public interest defense,\u201d Vincent said during a press conference last Thursday. \u201cThis means that this precedent could be applied to any others that publish stories based on classified documents, so that could affect any journalist \u2013 any mainstream media organization \u2013 anywhere in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a two-day hearing and obviously that reflects the number of issues that the defense sought to raise,\u201d he explained. Vamos added that the judges would \u201cbe mindful that lots of people are paying attention\u201d to Assange\u2019s case and would likely take some time to consider the arguments presented. <\/p>\n

This is a developing story \u2013 more to come.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Julian Assange\u2019s legal team returned to London\u2019s High Court on Tuesday to fight for what could become his final attempt at avoiding extradition to the United States, where he is facing life in prison if convicted on espionage charges. After a years-long battle, the 52-year-old WikiLeaks founder is down to his only remaining legal avenue <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15809,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}