The extradition case for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been postponed until at least September over complications arising from the coronavirus.
On Monday, British District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ordered the case to be moved from Woolwich Crown Court to another court and pushed back Assange’s may hearing to Sept. 7.
“It’s going to take some negotiation to find a crown court that is open in September, in the current climate, and willing and available to take this hearing,’ Baraitser said.
Assange, 48, was arrested just over a year ago and is facing up to 175 years in U.S. prison stemming from 18 charges of espionage and computer hacking related to the trove of U.S. intelligence documents he released online in 2010. The United States has accused Assange of working in coordination with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack the Department of Defense and of releasing secrets that put U.S. citizens in danger.
Attorney Edward Fitzgerald has been critical of his inability to see Assange during the coronavirus pandemic and said his client was “unwell” during a briefing in mid-April.
“There have always been great difficulties in getting access to Mr. Assange. But with the coronavirus outbreak, the preparation of this case cannot be possible,” Fitzgerald told the court on April 27.
Assange lived for seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted for questioning in a sexual assault investigation. That case was later dropped.
After the South American country revoked his asylum, Metropolitan Police said officers arrested Assange last year for failing to surrender to a court in 2012. Video showed him being dragged out of the building while holding a copy of Gore Vidal’s History of the National Security State.
The WikiLeaks founder, already known for the leaking of U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010, subsequently played a key role in Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election by released emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and other Democratic officials. The U.S. intelligence community concluded in a 2017 assessment that WikiLeaks was used by Russian intelligence to release information as part of an effort to elect Trump. WikiLeaks denies this assertion.
“He is there for facing the full power of the U.S. government,” Fitzgerald added. “They have massive resources. They have a series of legal resumptions operating in their favor.”
