WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves Westminster Magistrates Court in London, UK.
Henry Nicholls | Reuters
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received permission from a British court on Tuesday to appeal his extradition to the United States, where he is needed on espionage charges.
The 52-year-old has been fighting extradition for over a decade. During that time, Assange spent seven years in exile at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and the last almost five years in Belmarsh, a maximum security prison on the outskirts of the British capital.
Assange is needed in the US on 18 charges, including 17 under the Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He faces up to 175 years in prison after WikiLeaks published lots of of 1000’s of secret military files and diplomatic documents leaked from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
United States says that the allegations relate to Assange’s alleged role “in one of the largest disclosures of classified information in U.S. history.”
US prosecutors want to put Assange on trial for leaking secret military files and diplomatic cables. Assange has denied pleading guilty and his lawyers say the case against him is politically motivated.
Metropolitan Police officers at the Royal Court of Justice in London before the extradition hearing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Photo date: Wednesday, February 21, 2024
James Manning – Dad’s paintings | Images | Getty Images
WikiLeaks gained international notoriety in 2010 when the site published footage of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed two Reuters employees and several other others in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
In the wake of that high-profile announcement, it released lots of of 1000’s of other secret files, revealing information that often embarrassed Washington.
Assange failed to appear at a two-day hearing at the London High Court in February due to “serious ill health”, WikiLeaks he said via the social networking site X.
