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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's hearing at Britain's High Court in London on his possible final appeal against his extradition to the United States began on Tuesday, as supporters of the Australian publisher held rallies around the world to demand his release from prison .
The first day of the two-day hearing before a two-judge panel ended Tuesday and arguments continue Wednesday. This hearing could be Assange's final appeal hearing as he seeks to block his extradition to the US to face espionage charges over the publication of classified US military documents. However, a full appeal hearing could take place later if he wins in court this week.
“Mr Assange is being prosecuted for using ordinary journalistic practices to obtain and publish classified information that is true and in the public interest,” Assange’s lead lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told the court.
Should he lose that appeal, Assange's only remaining option would be to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, and his wife Stella said his lawyers would seek an injunction from European judges if necessary. She told reporters that her husband's life is in danger every day in prison and that she believes he will die if extradited to the United States
The European Parliament calls on Britain to release Assange as the final appeal against US extradition begins
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's hearing on his possible final appeal against his extradition began on Tuesday at the British High Court in London. (Fox News Digital/Landon Mion)
If he is extradited to the US after all legal remedies have been exhausted, Assange would have to stand trial in Alexandria, Virginia and could be sentenced to up to 175 years in an American maximum security prison.
Journalists outside England and Wales, including from Fox News Digital, were denied access to view the hearing remotely.
Assange, 52, was absent from court on Tuesday because he was “not feeling well,” Fitzgerald told the Supreme Court. His family has raised concerns about his health and safety in the past, and those fears were heightened when the Australian journalist was unable to make it to the courtroom.
“I am very concerned that Julian was not well enough to appear in court today,” Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton told Fox News Digital.
A British district judge rejected the U.S. extradition request in 2021, saying Assange would likely commit suicide if held in harsh U.S. prison conditions. Higher courts later overturned this decision after receiving assurances from the US regarding his treatment, and the British government signed an extradition order in June 2022.
The U.N. special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, called on the British government earlier this month to stop the possible extradition of Assange over concerns that he would face treatment amounting to torture or other forms of ill-treatment or punishment.
Last month, a group of Australian lawmakers wrote a letter to British Home Secretary James Cleverly calling for Assange's extradition to the US to be stopped over concerns about his safety and welfare and for the British government to provide an independent assessment instead the risk of Assange being persecuted.
Assange faces 17 charges of allegedly receiving, possessing and communicating confidential information to the public under the Espionage Act, as well as one charge of allegedly conspiring to commit computer intrusion.
The charges were brought by the Trump administration's Justice Department because WikiLeaks published leaked cables in 2010 from U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning detailing U.S. government war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp Cuba were described in detail. The materials also revealed cases of torture and rendition by the CIA.
AUSTRALIAN MP calls on the British government in a letter to stop extradition of Julian Assange to the US, citing health concerns
The WikiLeaks video “Collateral Murder” was also released 14 years ago, showing the US military shooting civilians in Iraq, including two Portal journalists.
Assange has been held at London's Belmarsh maximum security prison since he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11, 2019 for breaching bail conditions. He had been applying for asylum at the embassy since 2012 to avoid deportation to Sweden over allegations that he raped two women because Sweden would not give assurances that it would protect him from extradition to the United States. The investigation into the sexual assault allegations was ultimately closed.
Another lawyer for Assange, Mark Summers, claimed there was evidence that there was a “truly breathtaking plan” to kidnap or murder Assange while he was at the Ecuadorian embassy, and that former President Trump ” “detailed options” for his killing were demanded.
“Senior CIA officials requested plans, the president himself requested that he be given options for implementation, and even sketches were made,” Summers said.
The CIA under the Trump administration allegedly had plans to kill Assange over the agency's release of sensitive hacking tools called “Vault 7” that were leaked to WikiLeaks, Yahoo reported in 2021. The agency said the leak represents “the largest data loss in CIA history.”
The agency was accused of holding discussions “at the highest levels” of the government about plans to assassinate Assange in London and allegedly following then-CIA director Mike Pompeo’s instructions to develop “sketches” and “options” for the assassination. According to the Yahoo report, the CIA also had advanced plans to kidnap and extradite Assange and made a political decision to charge him.
While he was at the embassy, the CIA was exposed for spying on Assange and his lawyers. A judge recently ruled that a lawsuit against the CIA for spying on his visitors can proceed.
“It was the first time that Julian's lawyers were able to lay out the political aspects of his prosecution in court, particularly Mike Pompeo's efforts and his crusade against Julian,” Shipton told Fox News Digital about Tuesday's hearing. “How he used the Justice Department as a weapon to kidnap Julian from the Ecuadorian embassy, recorded meetings with his lawyer, and even plotted to murder him.”
The UK Supreme Court sets the date for Julian Assange's final appeal against US extradition
Stella Assange said her husband's life was in danger every day in prison and she believed he would die if extradited to the US (Portal)
“Soon it will be up to Britain to decide whether to stand up for free speech or send Julian to the US where he may face torture and death,” he continued.
U.S. attorneys said in their written statements that their case had been “consistently and repeatedly misrepresented” by Assange's legal team. U.S. attorneys said Assange was being prosecuted not for publishing the leaked materials, but for aiding and conspiring with Manning to obtain them unlawfully, and subsequently revealing names of sources and “putting these individuals at great risk of harm.” “exposed”.
There is no evidence that WikiLeaks' publication of the documents endangered anyone.
State Department spokesman Mathew Miller was pressed about the Assange hearing at a briefing on Tuesday, and Miller declined to go into detail but claimed that the WikiLeaks founder helped Manning break into a government computer hacking to steal information – an apparent reference to the charges against Assange. He is accused of asking Manning to provide additional materials, a common practice among journalists.
The Obama administration decided in 2013 not to charge Assange over WikiLeaks' 2010 release of classified cables because it would also have had to charge journalists at major news outlets who had published the same materials, which was described as “The New York Times problem.” Former President Obama also commuted Manning's 35-year sentence for violations of the Espionage Act and other crimes to seven years in January 2017, and Manning, who had been imprisoned since 2010, was released later that year.
However, the Justice Department under former President Trump later charged Assange under the Espionage Act, and the Biden administration continued to pursue his prosecution.
Fox News Digital contacted the Justice Department about Tuesday's hearing, but a spokesperson declined to comment.
Numerous rallies calling for Assange's release were held in cities around the world, including in London, Berlin, Paris, Sydney and Washington, DC
In London, Stella Assange, who like her husband's lawyers called the charges politically motivated, compared the case to that of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who died in prison on Friday while serving a 30-year sentence.
“Julian is a political prisoner and his life is in danger,” she told reporters outside the courthouse before a large crowd of Assange’s supporters. “What happened to Navalny can happen to Julian.”
Fox News Digital attended the rally in Washington, where supporters praised Assange for revealing the truth about US war crimes.
Bipartisan congressional resolution calls on US officials to drop charges against Assange
Supporters of Julian Assange hold a sign demanding his freedom at a rally outside the Justice Department in Washington, DC (Fox News Digital/Landon Mion)
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink, said: “Think of the hundreds of thousands of people who have died because of the US's lies, and yet there is no accountability, no talk, not even of imprisonment.” [former President] George Bush or [former Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice or even Hillary Clinton for their crimes as Secretary of State. Nothing, nothing at all.
Benjamin continued: “Julian Assange, the one who wanted the global community to know about the war crimes that were being committed. Julian Assange, who understood how powerful the truth can be. And yet here he is, languishing in prison. Here he is, possibly to be extradited to the United States very soon.”
“This is a moment when we need to think about how wrong the world order is, when we need to think about how unfair it is that those who tell the truth are in prison, and how much we care for Julian Assange “Never be extradited to the United States because we know he will never get a fair trial here in the United States,” she added. “And we know he did nothing wrong. On the contrary, if anything, you should be recognized for telling the truth… And hopefully one day we can personally celebrate the release of Julian Assange, thank him for exposing the war criminals and the American people said what your government did.”
Author and journalist Esther Iverem said she is “heartbroken in many ways, as a journalist who believes in journalism and believes that journalism can make a difference when people hear the truth… I'm just here to say, that Julian Assange is free. He's a fortune teller.”
Filmmaker and journalist Eleanor Goldfield said Assange was being prosecuted because “he opened up governments and wouldn't stop.”
“Assange is a man, he is a man whose fate shapes the fate of countless others, whose fate is inextricably linked to all those who tear at the façade of empire, who do not sit down and shut up, even in the face of it.” prison sentence,” she said at the Justice Department. “If Julian Assange is brought to this country and charged with espionage, the people in this building, on this street, in this city, in this empire will have officially criminalized real journalism and truth-telling. “
Singer, political activist and community organizer Luci Murphy led activists in song.
“Drop the charges, we won't be moved!” Murphy sang. “Free Assange, we will not be moved! Like a tree planted by the water, we will not be moved.”
No publisher before Assange had been charged under the Espionage Act, and many press freedom groups said his prosecution set a dangerous precedent that should criminalize journalism.
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In 2022, the editors and publishers of US and European media outlets who worked with Assange to publish excerpts from the more than 250,000 documents he received as part of the Cablegate leak revealed: The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País – wrote an open letter calling on the US to drop charges against Assange.
A Guardian editor also published an editorial on Sunday saying the media opposed extradition of Assange to the US because it would pose a threat to both the WikiLeaks founder and journalism.
There have also been several efforts by lawmakers in the US and Australia over the past year to call for Assange's release, including a vote last week in which the Australian Parliament overwhelmingly called on the US and UK governments to to end the prosecution of Assange, and introduced a resolution last month in the US House of Representatives calling for his release.
Portal contributed to this report.