The London court gave U.S. officials three weeks to provide the assurances, and said Assange would be able to appeal his extradition if those promises are not forthcoming. He is expected to remain for now in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he has been held since 2019.
An indictment filed in Virginia accuses Assange, 52, of helping former Army private Chelsea Manning hack into U.S. systems and obtaining thousands of pages of classified military records and diplomatic cables about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2010. Prosecutors say Assange put lives at risk by publishing the documents, which included unredacted names of sources and other sensitive military details, as part of a mass exposé on WikiLeaks.
Assange’s supporters and several leading news organizations say he was a journalist publishing damning information about U.S. actions abroad and that his extradition and prosecution would set a legal precedent undermining the First Amendment.
The long-stalled case against the Australian-born Assange could begin to move quickly if the extradition is granted by the British courts. But Assange would then have a final opportunity to appeal his extradition to the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, France.
The WikiLeaks founder would face a maximum sentence of decades in prison if convicted of all charges. The 18-count indictment does not include allegations that Assange published Democratic officials’ emails that were hacked as part of a Russian campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence in 2017 after she was convicted of Espionage Act and other offenses related to the WikiLeaks disclosures. Justice Department officials declined to pursue charges against Assange during the Obama administration, then reversed course and obtained an indictment under President Donald Trump — but the move stirred controversy. Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia disagreed on whether to file charges under the Espionage Act, a law that is typically used to charge sources who leak from inside the government, not the publishers who disseminate the information through their platforms.
Officials under Attorney General Merrick Garland, an appointee of President Biden, have overseen much of the extradition process amid growing international opposition. Australia’s parliament voted last month to call on the British and U.S. governments to release Assange.
A British judge initially halted Assange’s extradition in January 2021, finding him “a depressed and sometimes despairing man” at high risk of suicide in the solitary or highly restrictive conditions he might face in U.S. custody.
In a letter last year inviting King Charles III to tour the conditions in Belmarsh prison, Assange noted that a fellow inmate facing deportation had committed suicide yards away from his cell.
The U.S. government offered not to impose “special administrative measures” on Assange, and to keep him out of the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., pending trial. U.S. officials agreed to let Assange serve any sentence in Australia if he were convicted, and they noted Assange would be offered clinical and psychological treatment while in custody.
Britain’s highest court had previously approved the extradition in December 2021, finding that “the United Kingdom and the USA have a long history of cooperation in extradition matters, and the USA has in the past frequently provided, and invariably fulfilled, assurances.” Assange was allowed to raise more arguments after that ruling.