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World / United Kingdom
By Lauren Kent, Jack Guy, Claudia Rebaza and Lauren Said-Moorhouse, CNN
3 minute read
Updated 11:28 AM EDT, Mon May 20, 2024
People attend a protest outside London's High Court before Julian Assange's extradition hearing on May 20.
London CNN —
London’s High Court has ruled that Julian Assange has the right to appeal in his final challenge against extradition to the United States.
The legal victory for the WikiLeaks founder was cheered by dozens of his supporters as they rallied outside the court in the British capital.
Some beat drums, some shouted “drop the case,” while other supporters held placards reading “Let him go Joe,” in reference to US President Joe Biden.
Assange’s legal team argued in Monday’s hearing that the judges, Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson, should not accept the assurances given by US prosecutors that he could seek to rely on the rights and protections under the US First Amendment.
His team made the case that, if extradited, Assange could be discriminated against on the basis of his nationality, as an Australian-born foreign national.
In a short ruling, the judges said the US submissions were not sufficient, granting Assange permission to a full appeal in relation to the legal points on freedom of speech and nationality.
A date has not yet been set for the next hearing.
The 52-year-old is wanted by US authorities onespionage charges connected to his organization’s publication of thousands of classified documents and diplomatic cables in 2010 and 2011. Assange faces spending the rest of his life behind bars if convicted.
An Assange supporter pictured with a placard reading "Let him go Joe" outside London's Royal Courts of Justice.
Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, said outside the court that Monday’s ruling “marks a turning point.”
“Everyone can see what is going on here: the US case is offensive, it offends our democratic principles. It offends our right to know it is an attack on journalists everywhere,” she continued.
“We are relieved as a family that the courts took the right decision today. But how long can this go on for?”
Activist Redde Jean-Baptiste told CNN that one of Assange’s lawyers had said the WikiLeaks founder had been having sleepless nights.
“(He’s) trying to prepare for a case that would determine his life or his death, so as you can imagine the pressure he’s been under that is torture in itself,” Jean-Baptiste said.
Jean-Baptiste added that Monday’s ruling is a “glimpse of hope for him” and “we are now on the right path.”
Julian Assange gestures from a police vehicle after arriving at the Westminster Magistrates' Court in London in April 2019.
Assange holds a copy of The Guardian newspaper in London on July 26, 2010, a day after WikiLeaks posted more than 90,000 classified documents related to the Afghanistan War.
Assange attends a seminar at the Swedish Trade Union Confederation in Stockholm on August 14, 2010. Six days later, Swedish prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest based on allegations of sexual assault from two women. Assange has always denied wrongdoing in that case, and years later Swedish prosecutors eventually dropped their investigations.
Assange, in London, displays a page from WikiLeaks on October 23, 2010. The day before, WikiLeaks released approximately 400,000 classified military documents from the Iraq War.
Assange and his bodyguards are seen after a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in November 2010. It was the month WikiLeaks began releasing diplomatic cables from US embassies.
Assange sits behind the tinted window of a police vehicle in London on December 14, 2010. Assange had turned himself in to London authorities on December 7 and was released on bail and put on house arrest on December 16. In February 2011, a judge ruled in support of Assange's extradition to Sweden. Assange's lawyers filed an appeal.
In October 2011, a month after WikiLeaks released more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables, Assange speaks to demonstrators from the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
Assange leaves the High Court in London in December 2011. He was taking his extradition case to the British Supreme Court.
Assange leaves the Supreme Court in February 2012. In May of that year, the court denied his appeal against extradition.
Assange addresses the media and his supporters from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on August 19, 2012. A few days earlier, Ecuador announced that it had granted asylum to Assange. In his public address, Assange demanded that the United States drop its "witch hunt" against WikiLeaks.
Assange speaks from a window of the Ecuadorian Embassy in December 2012.
Assange addresses the Oxford Union Society from the Ecuadorian Embassy in January 2013.
Assange appears with Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino on the balcony of the embassy in June 2013.
Assange speaks during a panel discussion at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, in March 2014.
Assange attends a news conference inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2014.
Assange is seen on a video screen in March 2015, during an event on the sideline of a United Nations Human Rights Council session.
Assange, on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy, holds up a United Nations report in February 2016. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said that Assange was being arbitrarily detained by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Assange speaks to the media in May 2017, after Swedish prosecutors had dropped their investigation of rape allegations against Assange. But Assange acknowledged he was unlikely to walk out of the embassy any time soon. "The UK has said it will arrest me regardless," he said. "The US CIA Director (Mike) Pompeo and the US attorney general have said that I and other WikiLeaks staff have no ... First Amendment rights, that my arrest and the arrest (of) my other staff is a priority. That is not acceptable."
Assange was seen for the first time in months during a hearing via teleconference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2018. The hearing was then postponed due to translation difficulties.
A van displays images of Assange and Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who supplied thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in April 2019. A senior Ecuadorian official at the time said no decision had been made to expel Assange from the embassy. According to WikiLeaks tweets, sources had told the organization that Assange could be kicked out of the embassy within "hours to days."
A screen grab from video footage shows the dramatic moment when Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by police in April 2019. Assange was arrested for "failing to surrender to the court" over a warrant issued in 2012. Officers made the initial move to detain Arrange after Ecuador withdrew his asylum and invited authorities into the embassy, citing his bad behavior.
Assange gestures from the window of a prison van as he is driven into the Southwark Crown Court in London in May 2019. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching his bail conditions in 2012.
A sketch depicts Assange appearing at the Old Bailey courthouse in London for a ruling in his extradition case in January 2021. A judge rejected a US request to extradite Assange, saying that such a move would be "oppressive" by reason of his mental health. That ruling was overturned in December by two senior judges.
In pictures: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
In March, the London court delayed its decision on an extradition as the judges sought a series of assurances, around both the First Amendment protections and the death penalty.
The United States will not seek adeathpenalty if Assange is extradited, the High Court was told on Monday.
“The United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offence,” according to documents submitted by lawyers representing the US government.
It has been 12 years since the Australian has lived freely. Assange has spent the past five years in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison and nearly seven years before that holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in the citytrying to avoid arrest. He maintains his extradition is politically motivated.
Alan Rusbridger, editor of the UK political monthly Prospect Magazine, wrote in an op-ed for CNN that working with Assange was “often a bumpy ride” but that their collaboration while he was still the Guardian’s editor-in-chief was “groundbreaking.”
He added that the US case looks “like a very belated attempt to punish whistleblowers and discourage journalists, whether conventional or not, from poking their noses where they’re not welcome.”
This story has been updated.
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