Their lawyers can appeal the decision, in what appears to be a lengthy process in the English courts and perhaps in Strasbourg.
The Court of Appeal for England and Wales has authorized the extradition to the United States of Julian Assange, following “solemn promises” by the Virginia judicial authorities that they will not incarcerate him in a maximum security prison, that they will allow him to comply with the possible sentence in Australia and that they will provide him with adequate health care during his time in detention.
The United States authorities want to prosecute him for having incited Chelsea Manning, a former Army soldier, to penetrate databases from which he extracted documents, which allowed Wikileaks to publish evidence of possible crimes committed by the United States armed forces in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This appeal focused on the question of whether Assange’s mental health is so precarious that he should not be extradited to the United States, as the trial judge decided. His lawyers have reserved the possibility of resorting to the other components of that sentence, which found only in the health of the detainee a reason to prevent the extradition.
They can also try an appeal to the decision of this Friday before the highest court of England and Wales, the Supreme. PiuY, if your judges ruled that Assange should be extradited, it is highly probable, given the arguments that his defense has presented in the proceedings, that he could appeal that decision to the Strasbourg Court, which interprets the application of the European Convention on Human Rights. .
Nine and one day
The Wikileaks boss is indicted by a Virginia state court on 18 counts under the Espionage Act. The American authorities have insisted that Assange is not a journalist and that, therefore, he is not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which protects freedom of publication. If the extradition were carried out and the US court found him guilty, he could be sentenced to a prison sentence of up to 175 years in prison.
Assange, 50, has already spent nine years in prison. From 2012 to 2019 he was voluntarily locked up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, to avoid his extradition to Sweden, where two crimes of rape were being investigated. After his arrest in the diplomatic compound, he was jailed for 50 weeks for breaking his parole on bail. He remains in the maximum security prison in Belmarsh, south-east London, pending the final decision of the courts on the lawsuit from the US judicial authorities.
Lawyers for the Australian and various associations and individuals have requested his parole alleging that the mental health of the persecuted is precarious or that he was at risk of contracting Covid in jail. Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who saw the extradition demand in the first instance, rejected all the requests, but decided in her sentence, last January, that he should not be sent to the United States due to the state of his mental health and the risk of suicide.
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