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Shortly after ten o'clock local time on Monday morning, Julian Assange entered the large wood-paneled room in the Old Bailey, London's Supreme Court.
In a dark blue suit, a green-gray corona mask pulled over his mouth, the 49-year-old took a seat in the dock and briefly confirmed his date of birth.
The native Australian looked well-groomed, very different from his spectacular arrest in the Ecuadorian embassy almost two years ago.
Across from Assange, separated by a plexiglass pane and many meters away, a district judge was to decide the fate of the Wikileaks founder shortly afterwards.
Vanessa Baraitser took time to justify her judgment.
After almost an hour, it seemed almost clear to observers that she would allow the US judiciary's extradition request.
The English judge neither accepted Assange's accusation that the trial against him was politically motivated, nor that his disclosure of intelligence information was justified by the freedom of the press.
Baraitser also described the possible serious consequences of a separation for his family as "unfortunately not unusual".
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But the turning point came with the last point of the judicial justification.
“I now come to the question of health,” Baraitser introduced the decisive argument with which she would ultimately reject the US extradition request.
She relied on the expertise of four psychiatrists who had extensively examined and observed the accused.
Assange suffers from "severe depression" with "schizophrenic characteristics", is autistic, and there have been several suicides in his family.
In 1991 he tried to cut his wrists.
In May 2019, Assange managed to smuggle a razor blade into his cell in Balmarsh Prison.
The Wikileaks founder was arrested for violating his bail conditions after being deported from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had found refuge for seven years.
"He has the intellect and the will to carry out his suicide plans," says Baraitser, while Assange crosses his legs and listens and kneads his fingers incessantly.
In the United States, Assange is threatened with being taken to the ADX Florence prison in Oklahoma after being convicted of espionage, argued the lawyer.
The detention center is considered a top maximum security prison, in which convicts of terrorism and other serious crimes are incarcerated, many in strict isolation.
Inmates repeatedly commit suicide.
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Belmarsh was able to respond to Assange's thoughts of suicide, for example by reducing isolation measures, according to Baraitser.
The opposite is the case in the US prison.
External communication is limited to two phone calls a month.
“I am convinced that the risk of suicide there is a substantial one,” said the lawyer, who concluded her judgment with the words: “The mental health of Mr. Assange is of such importance that his extradition to the United States of America meant an act of cruelty. "
Julian Assange wiped his forehead after these words.
His partner, Stella Morris, mother of two children, burst into tears.
Separated through the pane of glass, the couple spoke briefly before Assange's legal team announced they would apply for bail.
This will be negotiated next Wednesday.
Cheers broke out among Assange's supporters on the street outside the City of London Court.
The London judge's verdict is an important chapter in a ten-year saga that does not only focus on the highly controversial figure Julian Assange.
It is far more about the question of what journalism is allowed and what only the state.
Whether the publication of intelligence material is in the public's interest if it exposes crimes of the state and its institutions, but at the same time endangers members of these institutions.
Is Assange an "enemy of the state" that the US military officially declared him to be?
Or a hero of freedom of the press, freedom of expression and democracy, to whom he is made above all by those who view the state as fundamentally corrupt?
War crimes against innocent civilians in Iraq
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The Wikileaks publications exposed serious war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, who murdered innocent civilians while apparently having fun.
Amnesty International and other organizations warned before the ruling in London that extradition would be a blow to freedom of the press.
Especially since the allegations made by the US judiciary could also be used in other cases.
Berlin had appealed to the British judiciary to take “human rights and humanitarian aspects” into account in its judgment.
The US judiciary will appeal the ruling.
On the basis of 18 counts, Assange is threatened with up to 175 years in prison.
Joe Biden's new administration was reluctant to comment on the verdict.
Assange's Wikileaks fell into Barack Obama's tenure in 2010.
Endangering the lives of US soldiers in war zones is something the Democrats have hardly forgiven Assange since then.