British Court Decides That Julian Assange Can File A New Appeal Against Extradition

(PatriotPostNews.com) – Julian Assange has been granted the right to appeal an extradition order that would send him to the United States as the latest update in his lengthy legal saga.

On Tuesday, March 26, the High Court in Great Britain ruled that the United States has three weeks to confirm that the WikiLeaks founder will not be subjected to the death penalty for espionage. The court also requests that the American government confirm Assange will have First Amendment, free speech rights, despite his Australian citizenship.

The ruling stated that these “assurances” must be provided if the United States wants to avoid the accused spy being granted an appeal, in which case a hearing would begin. If the nation does give the “assurances,” final arguments will be heard on May 20, the final scheduled hearing to decide if Assange is permitted to appeal his extradition.

Per the judgment, the suspect is not going to “be extradited immediately.” It added that Assange could successfully appeal the order based on “three of the nine grounds” he has sought out. The suspected spy has been in prison before his trial for nearly five years, since April 2019.

At that time, the Department of Justice in the United States sought to have him extradited to try him for espionage. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary for Britain at the time, signed a warrant for Assange’s extradition in June 2022. This followed the country’s High Court denying the suspect the ability to appeal.

Assange’s legal team argued in a final attempt to stop the process in February that the suspect had revealed intelligence information on his WikiLeaks website as a journalist, not a spy. However, prosecutors for the United States maintain that he risked American lives by assisting Chelsea Manning, an intelligence analyst with the United States Army, obtain classified communication and files and then publishing them on his site in 2010.

Assange faces 17 espionage charges and an additional, single charge of misusing his computer by publishing the classified materials.