The two-day “permission to appeal” hearing described as WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange’s last opportunity to avoid extradition to the United States has concluded at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London. The judges told the court they would reserve their decision.
Hundreds of people have been gathering outside the court for two days in a row, in support of Assange.
Assange, 52, was not in court for the second day of his hearing and did not appear via video link to the courtroom from prison due to being unwell.
In 2006, Assange founded the WikiLeaks website. It claims to have published more than ten million documents, including confidential or restricted official reports related to war, spying and corruption.
Julian Assange forced to wait over last chance to avoid extradition
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In 2010, it rose to prominence after it released a video of a US military helicopter which showed civilians being killed in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
It also released more than 90,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan and about 400,000 secured US files on the Iraq war.
The two leaks represented what’s been described as “the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history”.
In 2019, the US Department of Justice described the leaks as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States”.
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Assange has been in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison since 2019, for breaching bail conditions in a separate case.
He has been kept there while the US extradition case proceeds, because of his history of absconding.
Today, Claire Dobbin a lawyer for the US told the Court that the prosecution of Assange is “based on the rule of law and evidence”.
“The appellant’s prosecution might be unprecedented, but what he did was unprecedented.”
Protesters cheering to free Julian Assange
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She added, that Assange “indiscriminately and knowingly published to the world the names of individuals who acted as a source of information to the US.
“It is this which forms the objective basis for his prosecution. It is these facts which distinguish him, not his political opinions.”
As part of her argument, she said: “The material published, unredacted, had no public interest whatsoever.”
Yesterday, Assange’s lawyer, Ed Fitzgerald, introduced the arguments for permission to appeal. The barrister told the court that Assange is being subject to an “unjustified interference in freedom of speech.
“The applicant is being prosecuted for political offences.
“The prosecution is politically motivated. Mr Assange was exposing serious criminality. He is being prosecuted for engaging in ordinary journalist practice of obtaining and publishing classified information, information that is both true and obvious.”
Assange denies wrongdoing, while his legal team argued that US authorities were seeking to punish him for Wikileaks’ “exposure of criminality on the part of the US government on an unprecedented scale”, including torture and killings.
If the two judges on the panel at the High Court – Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Johnson – refuse to allow Assange to challenge the extradition order, then his only route to stop the US Marshalls arriving on a flight is the European Court of Human Rights.
However, this may be challenging as the ECHR in Strasbourg has an established and settled position on sending suspects from the UK to the US – and generally concludes that they will be treated in a way that does not breach their human rights.
If it goes against Assange, he will be given time to ask the ECHR to intervene, but there is no certainty it will. If he wins permission to appeal, the whole case will go away again, likely for months, while the full challenge is prepared.