United States lawyers will launch a new effort on Wednesday to extradite Julian Assange from Britain, arguing that concerns about the WikiLeaks founder’s mental health should not prevent him from facing US justice.
The 50-year-old Australian is wanted in the United States on 18 criminal charges, including breaking an espionage law, after his group published thousands of secret classified files and diplomatic cables in 2010.
Supporters of Assange gathered outside London’s High Court in the early hours of Wednesday, chanting “Free Julian Assange” before his father and mother of two of his children, Stella Morris, arrived.
Assange, who denies any wrongdoing, is being held in Belmarsh Prison.
The hearing is the latest in a legal battle that has been going on since 2012.
WikiLeaks rose to prominence when it began publishing huge chunks of confidential US military records and diplomatic cables that the US says endanger lives.
Soon after, Sweden sought Assange’s extradition from Britain on charges of sex crimes. When he lost a case against extradition in 2012, he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London and remained there before finally being dragged out in April 2019.
Assange was then jailed for violating the terms of a British bail, although the Swedish case against him was dropped, and US authorities sought his extradition.
On 4 January, a British judge rejected his argument that the case was political and an attack on freedom of expression, but said he should not be extradited because his mental health problems meant he could commit suicide in a US prison. will be at risk.
Supporters view Assange as an anti-establishment hero who has been victimized because he has exposed American wrongdoing in Afghanistan and Iraq and say his prosecution is a politically motivated attack on journalism and free speech.
US prosecutors and Western security officials regard him as a reckless enemy of the state, whose actions threatened the lives of the agents named in the leaked material.
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