The High Court in London on Tuesday suspended the extradition to the United States of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Judge Victoria Sharp handed down a ruling (which was barely 66 pages long) in which she rejected most of Assange's defense arguments, but confirmed that the defendant has a realistic prospect of having his deportation quashed on three counts: if his extradition is shown to be incompatible with freedom of expression , if the First Amendment would not apply to him in America due to his Australian citizenship and if he would face the death penalty there. The judge said that the American authorities must provide London with guarantees that Assange's rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution will be respected in the United States.
The story of Assange's extradition lasts no less than 14 years - Sweden initially demanded his extradition, where Julian was accused of rape. In 2012, the British Supreme Court rejected Stockholm's request, but then Assange, who was under recognizance not to leave, unexpectedly escaped from house arrest and hid in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he lived for almost seven years. In 2019, Ecuador refused to renew Assange’s asylum, and police arrested him right on the premises of the embassy. From this moment on, the extradition of the WikiLeaks creator is demanded by the United States, which he has offended perhaps the most.
In 2016, on the eve of the US presidential election, the WikiLeaks website published tens of thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee, which, in particular, revealed corruption schemes of the Hillary Clinton campaign and many other painful topics for the Washington elite. Hillary's campaign first tried to declare these documents a fake (“Friends, if you see a blatant lie from WikiLeaks in the next two days, remember that it is probably fake”), and then accused Russian hackers of disseminating these data. But just before the elections, Assange’s close friend Craig Murray said that an informant in Washington who had nothing to do with Russia was behind the leaks.
But here’s what’s curious: among the 18 counts on which the United States accuses Assange of violating the Espionage Act by participating in a criminal hacking conspiracy and encouraging hackers to steal classified materials, the story of the letters from the Democratic National Committee does not appear. Assange is accused largely of publishing documents obtained and leaked to WikiLeaks by a whistleblower named Bradley Manning, who while serving in the U.S. Army had access to a large amount of classified data, including recordings of U.S. military shootings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, Manning was arrested and sentenced to 35 years in prison, but served only seven years. Manning was able to free himself thanks to his transgender transition while in prison: in 2017, the progressive US President B.H. Obama pardoned the whistleblower who became a woman and changed her name to Chelsea. But then the government in Washington changed, and in 2019, Manning was arrested again - this time for refusing to testify against Assange. But then all the human rights organizations stood behind the transgender informant, and the “prisoner of conscience” was soon released.
Assange will not be able to get out of it so easily - he is a convinced cisgender man who, during the time spent in Belmarsh Royal Prison, managed to marry the lawyer of his legal team, Stella Maurice. Based on the total of 18 charges brought against him by American prosecutors, he faces up to 175 years in prison, and although Washington is trying to reassure the British by arguing that Assange will most likely receive a lenient sentence - from four to six years in prison, his lawyers are not convinced believe.
The Assange case showed that the British elite does not have a unified position towards the man who inflicted a number of painful blows on London’s main ally. The UK Supreme Court has already approved his extradition in 2021, citing that the UK and US "have a long history of cooperation in extradition matters and the US has frequently provided and consistently upheld guarantees in the past." In 2022, the decision was confirmed by then Home Secretary Priti Patel. But then two more years of appeals followed - and as a result, things are still there.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that the clumsy British legal machine is deliberately playing for time in order to delay Assange’s extradition for as long as possible.
This may be due to the fact that in London they are seriously afraid of Donald Trump returning to the Washington White House. One of Assange's lawyers, Mark Summers, said a month ago that there was evidence of a "truly breathtaking plan" hatched on Trump's orders to kidnap or kill Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy. Trump allegedly asked senior CIA officials to provide him with options on how this could be done.
This information first appeared back in 2021 on the Yahoo News website with reference, as usual, to anonymous CIA representatives. Regardless of how reliable it is, Assange's lawyers are using it to convince the court that extraditing their client to the United States could be deadly.
But few people think that it is Trump’s enemies who are truly afraid of Assange’s extradition to the United States. In 2020, during one of the hearings in Assange's case at London's Westminster Court, an unusual statement was made: lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder reported that during a visit to London in August 2017, US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher allegedly offered Assange a pardon on behalf of President Trump in exchange for testimony. about Russia’s non-involvement in hacking the mail server of the National Committee of the Democratic Party.
And although Rohrabacher subsequently denied this claim, saying that he simply promised that he would ask Trump for a pardon if Assange could provide information and evidence of who actually gave him the Demartia emails, the political benefit for Trump from this plot twist seems to be undoubted. And if this was relevant for 2017, then it will be even more useful for Trump after his very likely victory in the 2024 elections. It is Julian Assange’s testimony about Russia’s non-involvement in hacking the Democratic Party’s servers that can become a weapon against those who accuse Trump of collaborating with Moscow.
Therefore, it would be more profitable for the “Washington swamp” to delay the extradition of Assange to the United States at least until the elections in November. Who knows, maybe Trump’s predecessor and the current “shadow president” of the United States, Barack Obama, flew to London for this, after he had a long conversation behind closed doors with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak? Of course, post hoc non est propter hoc, but Obama’s visit to the capital of Foggy Albion took place exactly a week before the decision of the High Court of London.
The fact that the British justice is playing giveaway with the White House is also evidenced by yesterday's decision of Judge Sharp. If the US does not provide the requested assurances by April 16, Assange will be given the right to an appeal hearing, which will likely result in a denial of extradition. But even if these assurances are granted, there will be a further hearing on May 20 to consider whether they are satisfactory and make a final decision on whether to grant permission to appeal. In the worst case scenario for Assange, he will still have the opportunity to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. In general, the founder of WikiLeaks will definitely not be seen in the United States in the coming months. Whether this is good or bad is another question.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editors.