British Court Rejects U.S. Request to Extradite WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

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A British court has rejected the U.S. government's request to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the country on charges pertaining to illegally obtaining and sharing classified material related to national security.

 

In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court today, Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied the extradition on the grounds that Assange is a suicide risk and extradition to the U.S. prison system would be oppressive.

 

"I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America," judge Baraitser said in a 132-page ruling.

 

The U.S. government is expected to appeal the decision.

 

The case against Assange centers on WikiLeaks' publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011.

 

The documents include "approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables," per the U.S. Department of Justice, which accused Assange of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, to disclose sensitive information related to the national defense.

 

A federal grand jury last May indicted Assange on 18 counts related to unlawfully obtaining, receiving, and disclosing classified information, and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion to crack a password hash stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet), a U.S. government network used to transmit classified documents and communications.

 

Assange, who sought refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London between June 2012 and April 2019 to avoid a warrant against him, was arrested last year after Ecuador withdrew his diplomatic asylum. In May 2019, he was found guilty in a U.K. court of breaching bail conditions and sentenced to 50 weeks, following which the aforementioned indictment was returned in the U.S.

 

If convicted, Assange faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on each count with the exception of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, for which he faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

 

The U.S. non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation tweeted, "The case against Julian Assange is the most dangerous threat to U.S. press freedom in decades. This is a huge relief to anyone who cares about the rights of journalists."

 

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Julian Assange cannot be extradited to US, British judge rules

Judge says it would be ‘oppressive’ to extradite WikiLeaks founder to US, citing concerns for his mental health

 

Julian Assange pictured in April 2019. The case against the 49-year-old relates to WikiLeaks’s publication of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

 

Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage and of hacking government computers, a British judge has decided.

 

Lawyer for US authorities are to appeal against the ruling, which was delivered at the central criminal court by the district judge, Vanessa Baraitser.

 

Delivering her ruling the judge said said the WikiLeaks founder was likely to be held in conditions of isolation in a so-called supermax prison in the US and procedures described by US authorities would not prevent him from potentially finding a way to take his own life.

“I find that the mental condition of Mr Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America,” she said.

Assange has been taken back to Belmarsh prison ahead of an application on Wednesday for his release on bail, which will refer to conditions at the high-security prison in south London against the backdrop of the worsening Covid-19 pandemic.

 

The judge’s decision, focusing on Assange’s health, came after she knocked down one argument after another made last year by Assange’s lawyers. Sending him to the US would not breach a bar on extradition for “political offences” she said, and she had no reason to doubt that “the usual constitutional and procedural protections” would be applied to a trial he might face in the US.

 

But she accepted the evidence of prominent medical experts, including details of how Assange had suffered from depression while in prison in London. “The overall impression is of a depressed and sometimes despairing man who is genuinely depressed about his future,” said Baraitser.

 

The case against the 49-year-old relates to WikiLeaks’s publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011.

 

Prosecutors say Assange helped the US defence analyst Chelsea Manning breach the US Espionage Act, was complicit in hacking by others and published classified information that endangered informants.

 

Assange denies plotting with Manning to crack an encrypted password on US computers and says there is no evidence anyone’s safety was compromised. His lawyers argue the prosecution is politically motivated and that he is being pursued because WikiLeaks published US government documents that revealed evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses.

 

At the weekend, Assange’s partner had said a decision to extradite the WikiLeaks co-founder to the US would be “politically and legally disastrous for the UK”.

 

Stella Moris, who has two children with Assange, said a decision to allow extradition would be an “unthinkable travesty”, adding in an article published by the Mail on Sunday that it would rewrite the rules of what it was permissible to publish in Britain.

“Overnight, it would chill free and open debate about abuses by our own government and by many foreign ones, too.”

 

Over the course of hearings last year, lawyers for Assange had called witnesses who told the court that WikiLeaks had played a vital role in bring revelations to light that exposed the way in which the US had conducted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Among them, the founder of the legal charity Reprieve, Clive Stafford-Smith, said “grave violations of law” such as the use of US drones for targeted strikes in Pakistan had been brought to light with the help of documents published by WikiLeaks.

 

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam war, had also defended Assange, saying he had acted in the public interest, and warned he would not get a fair trial in the US.

 

Assange has been in custody in Britain since April 2019, when he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had taken refuge seven years previously to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that was subsequently dropped.

 

 

Source: Julian Assange cannot be extradited to US, British judge rules

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EFF Statement on British Court’s Rejection of Trump Administration’s Extradition Request for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange

 

 

Today, a British judge denied the Trump Administration’s extradition request for Wikileaks Editor Julian Assange, who is facing charges in the United States under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The judge largely confirmed the charges against him, but ultimately determined that the United States’ extreme procedures for confinement that would be applied to Mr. Assange would create a serious risk of suicide.

 

EFF’s Executive Director Cindy Cohn said in a statement today:

“We are relieved that District Judge Vanessa Baraitser made the right decision to reject extradition of Mr. Assange and, despite the U.S. government’ initial statement, we hope that the U.S. does not appeal that decision. The UK court decision means that Assange will not face charges in the United States, which could have set dangerous precedent in two ways. First, it could call into question many of the journalistic practices that writers at the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox News, and other publications engage in every day to ensure that the American people stay informed about the operations of their government. Investigative journalism—including seeking, analyzing and publishing leaked government documents, especially those revealing abuses—has a vital role in holding the U.S. government to account. It is, and must remain, strongly protected by the First Amendment. Second, the prosecution, and the judge’s decision, embraces a theory of computer crime that is overly broad -- essentially criminalizing a journalist for discussing and offering help with basic computer activities like use of rainbow tables and scripts based on wget, that are regularly used in computer security and elsewhere.

While we applaud this decision, it does not erase the many years Assange has been dogged by prosecution, detainment, and intimidation for his journalistic work. It also does not erase the government’s arguments that, as in so many other cases, attempts to cast a criminal pall over routine actions because they were done with a computer. We are still reviewing the judge’s opinion and expect to have additional thoughts once we’ve completed our analysis.”

 

Read the judge’s full statement.

 

 

Source: EFF Statement on British Court’s Rejection of Trump Administration’s Extradition Request for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange