UK court rules not to immediately extradite WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange to US

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange won permission from a British court on Tuesday to appeal his extradition to the United States, where he faces espionage charges and is wanted for allegedly leaking classified documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Assange will therefore not be immediately extradited,” the British court ruled in what may be his final legal challenge in the UK courts.

The ruling by London’s Royal Courts of Justice means Assange will have the opportunity for a new hearing unless the United States provides “satisfactory assurances” on certain aspects to address his grounds for appeal. The court said a further hearing on May 20 would determine whether the guarantees provided were satisfactory.

The court held that it would give the United States a three-week period to ensure that Assange could rely on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and ensure that he would not be prejudiced at trial because of his nationality. The court sought assurances that Assange enjoys the same First Amendment protections as a U.S. citizen and will not be subject to the death penalty.

Assange, 52, is wanted in the United States on criminal charges related to WikiLeaks’ high-profile leak of a trove of classified U.S. military records and diplomatic cables. While the U.S. believes the leaks endangered the lives of its agents and that there is no excuse for Assange’s criminal conduct, Assange’s supporters hail him as a journalistic hero who has been prosecuted for exposing U.S. wrongdoing.

Assange has been asking British courts to grant his new appeal, the last legal dice roll in a long legal saga that has kept him locked up in a British maximum-security prison for the past five years.

Assange is wanted in the United States on 18 charges and has been fighting extradition for more than a decade. During this time, he spent seven and a half years in self-imposed exile at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and the last nearly five years in prison in Belmarsh, England.

Assange’s lawyers argued on the first day of the hearing in February that U.S. authorities were seeking to punish him because WikiLeaks “exposed criminal conduct by the U.S. government on an unprecedented scale,” including torture and killings.