Julian Assange moves one step closer to the US as magistrates issue extradition order
Julian Assange moves one step closer to the US as magistrates issue extradition order – but WikiLeaks founder can STILL appeal before Priti Patel rubber stamps decision
Westminster Magistrates’ Court issued formal order for Assange’s US extraditionHome Secretary will now have to rubber stamp WikiLeaks founder’s extraditionAssange supporters say they have a month to make representations to Priti PatelIt comes after Supreme Court rejected plea to allow him to appeal to High Court But Assange’s legal team also say there are other parts of appeal still to be heard
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Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States has moved a step closer today after magistrates issued an official extradition order – but supporters say he can still appeal before Priti Patel rubber stamps the decision.
Westminster Magistrates’ Court formally issued an order to extradite the WikiLeaks founder this morning, after years of legal toing and froing.
It will now be down to Home Secretary Priti Patel to rubber stamp the 50-year-old’s extradition to the US, where he is wanted on espionage charges.
However, Assange’s legal team have previously said there are other parts of his appeal that had not yet been heard by the High Court.
Meanwhile, supporters say they will have four weeks to submit representations to the Home Secretary following today’s order.
Not-for-profit group Reporters Without Borders, who are supporting Assange, have called on Ms Patel to ‘protect journalism and press freedom by refusing extradition’.
And they say the Home Secretary has the power to reject the extradition, if she wishes.
However refusing the extradition would go against the long-standing extradition agreement between the UK and the US, and could spark a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
Julian Assange’s (pictured) extradition to the United States is expected to move one step closer today
Westminster Magistrates’ Court is formally expected to issue an order to extradite the 50-year-old WikiLeakers founder after years of legal toing and froing. Pictured: Assange’s wife Stella Morris outside court today
Assange supporters say they will have four weeks to submit representations to the Home Secretary Priti Patel following today’s order
Today’s administrative was brief, and Assange did not attend in person.
Assange’s supporters, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and members of Amnesty International, held a protest outside the court in the build up to the hearing.
Supporters held banners with slogans including ‘Free Assange’ and ‘Don’t Extradite Assange’.
Assange is wanted in America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. He has always denied wrongdoing.
Assange, who married his fiancee Stella Morris last month, has been held in Belmarsh prison for three years since being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Last month he was denied permission to appeal his extradition to the US. He asked the Supreme Court to allow him to challenge a December 2021 decision by the High Court, which ruled he could be extradited to America.
However, in March the Supreme Court confirmed it had rejected Assange’s appeal request.
The Supreme Court, the UK’s highest court, denied his request to challenge the ruling as his application did not raise ‘an arguable point of law’.
After the hearing, lawyers for Assange issued a statement and raised concerns about the reliance of the court on the US’s guarantee regarding the prison conditions Mr Assange would be kept in, should he be extradited.
A spokesman for Birnberg Peirce Solicitors read: ‘We regret that the opportunity has not been taken to consider the troubling circumstances in which Requesting States can provide caveated guarantees after the conclusion of a full evidential hearing.
‘In Mr Assange’s case, the Court had found that there was a real risk of prohibited treatment in the event of his onward extradition.’
The statement added: ‘No appeal to the High Court has yet been filed by him in respect of the other important issues he raised previously in Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
‘That separate process of appeal has, of course, has yet to be initiated.’
Assange is wanted in America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information.
If convicted in the US, Assange faces a possible penalty of up to 175 years in jail, his lawyers have said.
Supporters held banners with slogans including ‘Free Assange’ and ‘Don’t Extradite Assange’ outside the court today
Assange’s supporters, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and members of Amnesty International, held a protest outside the court in the build up to the hearing
However the US government said the sentence was more likely to be between four and six years.
It followed WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
He says the information exposed abuses by the US military, but the US say the leaks of classified material endangered lives, and so the US sought his extradition from the UK.
Stella Morris, 38, married 50-year-old Julian Assange (left) in Belmarsh Prison, south east London on March 23, just weeks before the third anniversary of his dramatic arrest when he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in the capital in April 2019
Supporters of Assange with signs and a banner, outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London in December last year
US authorities brought a successful High Court challenge against a January ruling by then-district judge Vanessa Baraitser that Assange should not be sent to the US, in which she cited a real and ‘oppressive’ risk of suicide.
