Assange, verdict postponed: extradition to the US or last legal resort?

Numerous Assange supporters gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice today to protest not only against his extradition but also against what they see as an attack on freedom of expression and the press. Hundreds of golden ribbons with the words "free Julian Assange now!" were tied to metal railings outside the courthouse and to tree branches around it.

"Reporting a crime should not be a crime," said his wife Stella Assange, also stating that her husband's physical and mental health condition is so precarious that he "would not survive extradition".

Assange was not present in court today precisely because his health does not allow it. The Wikileaks founder has been locked up in the Belmarsh high security prison in London for almost five years.

For seven years he had taken refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London, a self-imposed exile to escape extradition. In 2019, however, the Ecuadorian government had stripped him of his political refugee status and Assange was immediately arrested by British police and transferred to Belmarsh.

In 2021, the High Court judges had accepted the assurances offered by the US authorities that Assange, if extradited, would not be subject to excessively repressive measures before or after trial and that if convicted, he could apply for a transfer to a prison in Australia to serve his sentence in his home country.

The judges also rejected the defence's claim that a trial in the US would be a 'political vendetta'. The problem was that the British judges could not accept the main argument of his lawyers that a trial in the US would not be fair without implicitly criticising the American legal system. The Supreme Court had upheld and the then Home Secretary Priti Patel had given the green light for extradition.

We are therefore at the legal last resort. Stella Assange has stated that if the judges do not grant her husband the right to appeal, she will go to the European Court of Human Rights asking for an 'emergency injunction' within 24 hours, given the risk of extradition to the US at short notice. The hope is to get more time to present new arguments, she said: 'We all need the truth. The whole world is watching'.

Assange's lawyers have always insisted that Wikileaks published the documents in the public interest to reveal war crimes and human rights abuses by US soldiers and personnel that would otherwise have remained secret.

The International Federation of Journalists, present in court, supports Assange's release 'to safeguard the right to freedom of expression'.