Julian Assange will face his official extradition hearings in February 2020, following a Friday ruling by the U.K.’s Westminster Magistrates Court.
The U.S. requested that the U.K. hand the WikiLeaks founder over to face a series of charges, including under the Espionage Act, and the U.K.’s Home Secretary signed off on the request earlier this week, but it will now be many months until those proceedings get fully underway.
Assange, 47, was arrested in April at Ecuador’s embassy in London on a single U.S. charge of conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer network in 2010. Prosecutors allege he agreed to help Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning crack a password that would have given Manning access to a classified military network.
Federal prosecutors later accused the WikiLeaks founder of violating the Espionage Act as part of a new superseding indictment in late May, charging him on 17 new counts in addition to the single count unsealed in early April. The Justice Department has said that the leaks by WikiLeaks put the lives of U.S. troops, allies, and partners at risk.
Ben Brandon, who represented the U.S. in court, detailed the allegations against Assange and said they were related to “one of the largest compromises of confidential information in the history of the United States.”
“WikiLeaks is nothing but a publisher,” said Assange, who appeared via video link, telling the court “175 years of my life is effectively at stake.”
Mark Summers, who argued on Assange’s behalf in court today, said that this case presented “a multiplicity of profound issues” and that it represents “an outrageous and full-frontal assault on journalistic rights.”
Jennifer Robinson, another one of Assange’s attorneys, told a crowd of supporters outside the hearing on Friday that “this case is an outrageous affront to journalistic protections” and claimed that Assange was being charged for “publishing truthful information.” Robinson remarked that the “restrictions” placed against Assange while held in Belmarsh prison made it more difficult for them to mount a proper defense. And she said that Assange “continues to suffer … difficult health impacts” while imprisoned.
Assange is serving a 50-week prison sentence for violating British law for actions he took to hide out in Ecuador’s London embassy in 2012 while attempting to avoid a bid by Sweden to try him in connection to allegations of sexual assault. Assange hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years until British Metropolitan Police removed him earlier this year.
If Assange only serves part of those 50 weeks, it’s possible that he might be out of prison by the time his extradition proceedings begin.
Assange’s legal team has indicated their intent to appeal his bail sentence.
It remains unclear whether Sweden will successfully extradite or prosecute Assange.
Describing Assange as “the public face of WikiLeaks,” the DOJ says he founded the website as “an intelligence agency of the people.” The U.S. government alleges that Assange “actively solicited United States classified information, including by publishing a list of ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ that sought, among other things, classified documents” starting in late 2009.
And the DOJ said in its filings that “Manning responded to Assange’s solicitations by using access granted to her as an intelligence analyst to search for United States classified documents, and provided to Assange and WikiLeaks databases containing approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables.”
