British Judge Rejects U.S. Request to Extradite WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange

Providing her ruling Monday just after months of sporadic hearings since of the coronavirus pandemic, District Choose Vanessa Baraitser claimed Mr. Assange has already toyed with suicide and the prospect of detention in isolation in the U.S. would probable rekindle these thoughts. She claimed he has the intellect and dedication to get all over anti-suicide protocols in U.S. jails.

“The general impression is of a depressed and in some cases despairing person who is truly fearful about his future,” she claimed, rejecting the U.S. extradition ask for.

In her ruling, Choose Baraitser rejected all of Mr. Assange’s other defenses in opposition to extradition, declaring there was no reason to imagine he would not get a good demo and the offenses he was alleged to have committed would be prosecutable in the U.K., far too.

Mr. Assange, a 49-yr-previous Australian, who appeared in court docket in person Monday is needed in the U.S. on 18 fees of breaking espionage guidelines and conspiring to hack a army laptop. The alleged offenses relate to the publication in 2010 and 2011 by WikiLeaks of a huge trove of labeled content that painted a bleak photo of the American strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan and their aftermath.

Mr. Assange has frequently defended his perform and the broader WikiLeaks task as general public-desire journalism that exposed wrongdoing by the U.S. and other governments. The significant-profile scenario has ignited debate in excess of the scope of press flexibility in the online age, and sparked concern that standard media retailers and reporters could in the same way be pursued for publishing govt strategies.

The U.S. alleges that Mr. Assange broke the regulation by soliciting labeled content from former U.S. Army intelligence analyst

Chelsea Manning

and by serving to her crack a password to obtain that content. Publication of the diplomatic cables and army logs she furnished endangered the life of U.S. intelligence sources, the U.S. govt alleges.

In June, the Justice Department issued a new indictment that involved new allegations that broadened the scope, the division claimed, of the conspiracy bordering alleged laptop intrusions with which Mr. Assange has been charged. He is alleged between 2007 and 2015 to have encouraged and assisted hackers affiliated with the groups Nameless and LulzSec obtain labeled information and facts printed by WikiLeaks, and to have performed a function in serving to Edward Snowden, a Countrywide Security Agency contractor who in 2013 leaked aspects of clandestine surveillance systems to the press, to evade arrest.

In hearings at a London court docket distribute in excess of just about a yr, Mr. Assange denied that he solicited everything from Ms. Manning or assisted her steal labeled files. His protection argues that Mr. Assange’s prosecution is politically enthusiastic, a possible bar to extradition beneath a bilateral treaty between the U.S. and U.K. that governs extradition requests. His attorneys also argue extradition to stand demo risks exposing Mr. Assange to degrading treatment method in contravention of U.K. human legal rights regulation and undermines his legal rights to no cost expression.

Choose Baraitser rejected these arguments Monday. But she claimed evidence from several doctors throughout the hearing showed Mr. Assange experienced from conditions which include autism and scientific depression. He experienced already built options for his dying and sought absolution from a priest, she claimed.

Create to Jason Douglas at [email protected]