Another decisive day for the prisoner whose legal battle has become the universal defense of press freedom. The judges of the High Court of England and Wales, Victoria Sharp and Adam Johnson, will decide this Monday whether they consider the additional guarantees offered by Washington sufficient for Julian Assange, 52, to have a fair trial. If they are satisfied, they could give the green light to the extradition to the United States of the co-founder of Wikileaks, who has been under provisional arrest in the high-security Belmarsh prison, on the outskirts of London, since April 2019. The state of The prisoner’s health has suffered a serious deterioration in the last year, which is why he has not been able to be present at court hearings, not even through videoconference. His wife, Stella Assange, will go to the court building first thing in the morning. Hundreds of protesters are again expected to come to express their support for the former hacker.
Assange’s legal team has tried in recent months to give their client one last opportunity to appeal his extradition before British justice. The decision to give the green light to the extradition was adopted in 2022 by the then British Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, once the Supreme Court approved the guarantees offered by Washington regarding the safety of the prisoner, and the measures that were taken. they would adopt to prevent him from ending his own life.
However, judges Sharp and Johnson decided to validate three of the arguments put forward by the publisher’s lawyers to prevent its delivery to the US authorities. On March 26, the court demanded additional guarantees from Washington that, when the time came to be tried in that country, Assange could use the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects freedom of the press, in his defense; It would not reduce their rights because they are not US citizens, nor would it finally impose the death penalty on the accused.
175 years in prison
The court gave Washington three weeks to offer a response, which came at the last minute as a series of commitments and ambiguous statements. The US authorities assured, in a diplomatic communication to the judges, that Assange would not be discriminated against because of his nationality, nor would they demand the death penalty, because it is not contemplated in the crimes of which he is accused. The US Government accuses the prisoner of 17 crimes against the Espionage Act and one for computer interference. The Australian editor would face 175 years in prison for the leak of more than 250,000 classified documents from the US State Department in November 2010. Morning Express was one of the media that participated in that concerted effort to publish these papers.
“The US response has been to say that Assange will always be able to argue the First Amendment in his defense, but that it will be the court that must decide whether to admit it or not. That is no guarantee, quite the opposite. It does not clarify anything about what may happen if he is eventually extradited to the United States,” Jennifer Robinson, the Australian publisher’s lawyer, explained last week at a briefing in London with the Foreign Press Association.
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There are three possible outcomes of this Monday’s hearing. Assange’s legal team is convinced that we will not have to wait more days to hear the magistrates’ decision, which they will announce at the end of the session. They can consider Washington’s guarantees valid and authorize extradition; they can reject them, and allow the prisoner to appeal again against his surrender to British justice – more months of prison ahead until the trial is held; or the remote but possible decision to put an end to the process and order the release of the prisoner.
In the event that the extradition goes ahead, Assange’s team plans to request an order suspending execution from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, and later appeal the entire process before this instance. It is not at all clear, however, that the ECtHR is going to interfere in the sovereignty of two States negotiating extradition.
The current Australian Government and its Parliament have requested the release of Assange, a citizen of that country. The legislative chamber approved a resolution with the same request in February, with the conservative opposition voting against. The Prime Minister, the Labor Party Anthony Albanese, supported the request with his vote, and has conveyed to Washington the desire of his Government that the extradition request be abandoned and the co-founder of Wikileaks be allowed to return.
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