A British court ruled Tuesday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be immediately extradited to the U.S. on espionage charges unless officials in Washington guarantee he won’t face the death penalty and that he is afforded the same free speech protections as American citizens.
The ruling is a partial legal win for Australian-born Mr. Assange in his long battle over the website’s role in the publication of thousands of classified U.S. military and intelligence documents. He has appealed the British government’s order for his extradition to the U.S.
The British high court determined that Mr. Assange has a “real prospect of success” on at least three of his grounds for an appeal. The court said U.S. officials had three weeks to address concerns about whether he would receive a fair trial.
“Mr. Assange will not, therefore, be extradited immediately,” the U.K.’s Courts and Tribunals Judiciary said Tuesday in a statement.
He came to wide international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a massive series of leaks from former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning of U.S. military logs from the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, sensitive diplomatic cables, and footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad.
In 2019, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an 18-count criminal indictment that accused Mr. Assange of violating the Espionage Act by allegedly encouraging Manning to obtain the classified documents and then disclosing classified information.
Mr. Assange has become a cause celebre for civil libertarians, free-speech supporters and anti-war activists over his decision to publish the classified information. Alice Jill Edwards, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on torture, urged U.K. authorities to halt the extradition, saying that his health would be “irreparably damaged” by the move after his diagnosis of depressive disorder.
“Any extradition to the United States is very likely to exacerbate his medical underlying conditions — and there is a very real risk of suicide,” Ms. Edwards said in an interview last month.
Mr. Assange, who is in poor health and did not attend Tuesday’s court session, is an Australian citizen and U.S. prosecutors indicated they may argue at trial that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech rights, the U.K. court said.
“If such an argument is made and if it succeeds, then it is arguable that Mr. Assange might be prejudiced at his trial by reason of his nationality,” the court said.
The legal wrangling has dragged on for more than a decade. Tuesday’s ruling means that Mr. Assange will remain inside Belmarsh Prison in London, the high-security facility where he has spent the last five years. He previously spent seven years inside Ecuador’s London embassy after he was granted refuge there.
The British court gave U.S. prosecutors until April 16 to respond to Tuesday’s ruling, with another hearing on Mr. Assange‘s fate tentatively set for May 20.
Outside the courthouse, Mr. Assange‘s wife Stella assailed the decision, saying the British court was effectively inviting the U.S. government to provide the assurances that would allow the extradition to proceed.
“The Biden administration should not issue assurances,” she told reporters. “They should drop this shameful case that should never have been brought.”