WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, England.
Henry Nichols | Reuters
A British judge has rejected WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s latest attempt to fight extradition to the US to face espionage charges.
High Court judge Jonathan Swift said the new appeal would only “revisit” arguments that Assange’s lawyers had already advanced and failed.
Assange has been fighting in British courts for years to avoid being sent to the United States, where he faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over the release of classified diplomatic and military documents by WikiLeaks more than a decade ago.
In 2021, a U.K. district judge ruled that Assange should not be extradited because he would likely commit suicide if held in harsh U.S. prison conditions. U.S. authorities later assured that the Australian-born Assange would not face harsh treatment that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.
The assurances led to the UK High Court and Supreme Court overturning lower court decisions and the UK government authorizing the extradition in June 2022.
Assange is seeking to halt the extradition by holding new court hearings on the parts of his case that were dismissed by the first judge.
But in a ruling released Friday, Swift said none of the eight parts of Assange’s potential appeal were “controversial” and should not have been heard.
“The proposed appeal is nothing more than an attempt to rehear the broad arguments that were brought to the District Judge and dismissed,” he said.
Assange’s wife Stella Assange (Stella Assange) said the WikiLeaks founder will make a new appeal at a High Court hearing on Tuesday. He has all but exhausted his appeal avenues in the UK, but could still try to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.
“We remain optimistic that we will prevail and that Julian will not be extradited to the US, where the charges he faces could see him spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison for releasing truthful information exposing war crimes committed by The US government is responsible,” Stella Assange said on Twitter.
Assange’s supporters and lawyers insist he is a journalist entitled to First Amendment protections for free speech.They argue the case is politically motivated and that he will face inhumane treatment and will not receive a fair trial in the US
Assange, 51, remains in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, where he has been held since he was arrested in 2019 for evading bail in a separate legal proceeding. Before that, he spent seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault charges.
Sweden dropped its investigation into sex crimes in November 2019 because too much time had passed, but a British judge kept Assange behind bars pending the outcome of the U.S. extradition case.