Assange Not to be Extradited to the US For Now, London Grants Appeal

Assange will not be extradited to the United States, at least for now. The journalist and WikiLeaks founder still has a card to play to try to escape the highly contested extradition to the US, which has been pursuing him for nearly 15 years for leaking classified Pentagon and State Department documents containing embarrassing revelations. The High Court of London has indeed given the green light today to the Australian journalist's defense request - rejected at first instance - for a further, ultimate appeal before the British justice against delivery to the overseas authorities. In the verdict, moreover, the judges also asked the Washington government to provide within three weeks additional guarantees that, if extradited, the rights of the journalist accused of espionage will be respected. And, above all, that he will not risk the death penalty. "If such assurances are not provided, permission to appeal will be granted and then there will be an appeal hearing," reads a summary of the verdict released by the BBC. Assange, 52 years old, is fighting a long legal battle with the British government to avoid being extradited to the United States and face there a trial for having published, starting from 2010, about 700,000 military documents and confidential diplomatic dispatches from Washington. Since 2019 he has been detained in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London without having been subjected to a trial. In the United States, the journalist faces 18 charges and a possible sentence of 175 years in prison for having disclosed thousands of classified files also denouncing abuses committed by the American armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is accused of violating the National Espionage Act, the American espionage law, which dates back to 1917.