WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to face hacking and espionage charges in the US, the High Court ruled today.
London’s High Court of Justice accepted diplomatic assurances from the US that it would take measures to mitigate Assange’s risk of suicide.
The decision overturns an earlier ruling by a district judge in January that it would be “oppressive” to send Assange for trial in the US, where he would be at high risk of suicide.
The verdict is a major setback for the 50-year-old founder of WikiLeaks, in a case that his defence lawyers argue will have a chilling effect on press freedom.
Assange’s fiancée, Stela Morris, said in a statement after the hearing that Assange would appeal the decision at the earliest possible time.
She described the High Court ruling as “dangerous and misguided” and a “grave miscarriage of justice”.
The High Court has reversed a decision by a senior judge at Westminster Magistrate’s Court who found that Assange had mental health conditions that would put him at risk in the harsh conditions he would face in US prisons.
Diplomatic assurances
Giving the judgment, Lord Chief Justice Ian Duncan Burnett said the US had given diplomatic assurances over Assange’s treatment in the country in a diplomatic note on 5 February 2021.
“Assurances of this kind are solemn undertakings offered by one government to another,” he said.
The judge said he was satisfied that the assurances exclude the possibility of Assange being made subject to special administrative measures (SAMS) or held at the ADX facility – a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado.
The assurances applied either pre-trial or after any conviction, unless Assange “committed any act in future” which rendered him liable to detention in those conditions, he said.
The US also gave an undertaking that it would consent to an application by Assange to be transferred to Australia to serve his sentence, if convicted.
Assange would also receive “appropriate clinical and psychological treatment as recommended by a qualified treating physician” in a US prison.
The court found that district judge Vanessa Baraitser should have notified the US of her provisional view that Assange should not be extradited before her verdict in January, to give it the opportunity to give assurances to the court.
The judge said the court had the power to receive and consider the assurances “notwithstanding” that they were offered after the district judge gave her decision not to extradite Assange.
The court directed the district judge to send the case to the secretary of state to make a final decision on extradition.
Espionage Act
The case represents the first time that the US Espionage Act 1917, originally enacted to prosecute spies during the First World War, has been used to bring charges against an individual for receiving and publishing classified information.
Assange has been charged in a US indictment with 17 counts under the Espionage Act for receiving and publishing classified government documents and one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The allegations centre on hundreds of thousands of documents leaked to WikiLeaks by former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 and 2011.
They included the rules of engagement for the Iraq war and the “collateral murder” video which showed US soldiers laughing as they fired at unarmed civilians in Iraq.
Solicitors Birnberg Peirce, representing Assange, said in a statement that it would be seeking permission to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court within 14 days.
The law firm said that further appeals on other important questions, including questions of free speech and on the political motivation of the US extradition request, have yet to be considered by an appeals court.
Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said: “Julian’s life is once more under grave threat, and so is the right of journalists to publish material that governments and corporations find inconvenient.”
