Julian Assange faces extradition to the United States on espionage charges after senior judges overturned a ruling that he would be a suicide risk.
The WikiLeaks founder is wanted on 18 charges, including conspiring to hack government computers and violating espionage law, after the publication of leaked documents in 2010 and 2011 relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The High Court ruled that the judge who found Assange was at a “real” risk of suicide if sent to an American jail had failed to give the US authorities the chance to give assurances about his welfare.
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser had said in January it was not possible for the US authorities “to prevent suicide where a prisoner is determined to go through with this”. Assange, 50, has been a fugitive at the Ecuadorian embassy in London or held in jail since 2012.
Lord Burnett of Maldon, the lord chief justice, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, said that Baraitser should have notified the US authorities of her provisional decision to allow them to give assurances. They said that the US government had since provided a “package of assurances” to respond to her specific findings.
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Those assurances are that Assange will not be subject to “special administrative measures” or held at a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado; if convicted he will be transferred to Australia to serve his sentence; and while in custody in US he will receive appropriate clinical and psychological treatment”.
The High Court judges ruled: “There is no reason why this court should not accept the assurances as meaning what they say. There is no basis for assuming that the USA has not given the assurances in good faith.”
Baraistser has been directed to send the case to Priti Patel, the home secretary, to decide whether Assange should be extradited.
The district judge had rejected Assange’s seven other grounds for seeking to block his extradition, including that it was for “political offences”, was unjust because of the passage of time and was for “an ulterior political motive”.
James Lewis QC, for the US authorities, had told the High Court that the district judge based her decision on Assange’s “intellectual ability to circumvent suicide preventative measures”.
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He said that risked becoming a “trump card” for anyone who wanted to oppose their extradition regardless of any resources the other state might have. He said that the four “binding” diplomatic assurances made were a “solemn matter” and “are not dished out like smarties”.
Assange’s fiancée, Stella Moris, 37, was in court. She conceived their two sons, Max and Gabriel, while he was a fugitive in the embassy. She tweeted minutes before the judgment: “I hope the High Court will bring this abusive and vindictive extradition to an end today so that our children will be able to spend Christmas with their father.”
Afterwards Moris condemned the ruling as “dangerous and misguided” and a “grave miscarriage of justice”. She said that Assange would appeal to the Supreme Court, having already indicated that he will appeal on the grounds dismissed by Baraistser.
Moris added: “Every generation has an epic fight to fight and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society, of what it means to have press freedom, of what it means for journalists to do their jobs without being afraid of spending the rest of their lives in prison.
“The UK imprisons journalists, they’re imprisoning Julian on behalf of a foreign power which is taking an abusive, vindictive prosecution against a journalist. Julian represents all our liberties and all our rights.”
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Russia, suspected of hacking Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 US presidential election and handing materials to WikiLeaks, called the ruling “shameful”.
Assange has been held in Belmarsh prison since 2019 after he was carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy by police when it removed his diplomatic protection. He had entered the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex offence allegations, which he has always denied and were eventually dropped
Thomas Garner, extradition partner at the law firm Fladgate, said: “Assange’s team will likely petition the Supreme Court in a last attempt to challenge this decision as they did in 2012 in relation to the European arrest warrant he faced from Sweden. After he lost that ruling, he famously fled into the Ecuadorian embassy. No such option exists this time as he remains in custody.”
