WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can now appeal extradition to US, rules UK court

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks on Monday, won the bid to appeal against a UK court ruling approving his extradition to the United States on Monday. The appeal was approved by High Court judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson.

The US government charged the 52-year-old Australian with 18 counts, including espionage and hacking government computers, stemming from WikiLeaks' 2010 release of thousands of classified documents.  He was held in London's Belmarsh Prison since April 2019, after his arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy where he sought asylum for nearly seven years.

In 2010, Assange was charged for publishing sensitive military and diplomatic cables and for violating the US’s Espionage Act. The US in its argument stated that lives were put at risk because of the leaked documents contained unredacted names.

According to Assange's lawyers, the US provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that the whistleblower would receive free press protections if extradited to America to face espionage charges.

His lawyers argued he was a journalist who exposed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sending him to the US, they said, would expose him to a politically motivated prosecution and risk a “flagrant denial of justice.”

.Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006. The platform is for whistleblowers to anonymously leak sensitive documents. It was in 2010, when the website gained international notoriety after publishing classified US military and diplomatic documents provided by former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

The US government in its argument said that Assange's actions went beyond traditional journalism and directly harmed national security. They argued that publishing such documents with names of informants and other sensitive details jeopardized lives and national interests.

However, as per Assange's supporters, he only acted as a journalist, publishing information of public interest.