Julian Assange will not be immediately extradited to America following a ruling on Tuesday morning, March 26th, at the High Court in London.
Judges gave the U.S. three weeks to provide “satisfactory assurances” that the WikiLeaks founder, who is wanted for releasing military information that American authorities had wanted to keep under wraps, will be able to rely on the First Amendment of the Constitution and that he won’t be subject to the death penalty.
If it fails to do this, Assange will be able to pursue his appeal against extradition at a full hearing.
This means that Assange—an inmate at Belmarsh Prison since 2019, before which time he spent almost seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had been granted political asylum—has not yet come to the “end of the road of the UK courts” so far as his legal fight is concerned.
Peter Hitchens, a conservative author and columnist at The Mail on Sunday, is one of Assange’s few vocal critics in the British media. But despite having “no great love” for the man or his politics, he has warned that if the journalist is extradited, “he will face the strong possibility of decades buried alive in some federal dungeon, the sort of place intended for mass murderers or terrorists.” Assange’s wife, Stella, has gone a step further, insisting that he “will die” if sent to the States.
Even today, just minutes before the Court’s ruling was published, the story of Assange’s battle appeared on next-to-none of Britain’s national newspaper websites—The Guardian appearing to be the only exception. Meanwhile, The Times and The Daily Telegraph, supposedly two of the country’s more conservative papers, boosted stories on the “Italians’ love of gesturing” and a “trio of goats [causing] chaos as they stop motorway traffic,” respectively.
Stella Assange today said she was “astounded” by the High Court’s ruling, adding:
What the courts have done is to invite a political intervention from the U.S.
The next hearing, when judges will determine whether the U.S. has met its conditions, will be held on May 20th. Assange will continue to spend the time before then in Belmarsh, away from his wife and two children.
