UK Supreme Court rejects Assange's appeal against extradition to US
Xinhua News Agency, London, March 15 (Reporter Du Juan Xu Feng) The British Supreme Court ruled on the 14th that it will not accept the appeal of Julian Assange, the founder of the "WikiLeaks" website, for refusing to be extradited to the United States.
Data map: Assange
A British district court ruled early last year, rejecting the U.S. request to extradite Assange on the grounds that Assange suffers from depression and other mental illnesses and is at a higher risk of suicide after being extradited to the United States.
The U.S. government later appealed to the U.K. High Court, saying Assange would not be held in a maximum-security prison or in tight isolation until his trial after being extradited to the U.S.
If Assange is convicted, he could be allowed to serve his sentence in Australia, where he was born.
At the end of last year, the British High Court ruled, allowing the US government to extradite Assange.
Assange's legal team believes that the US government's above commitment is not credible, and immediately appealed to the Supreme Court.
Assange, 50, founded WikiLeaks in 2006.
In 2010, "WikiLeaks" exposed a large number of US diplomatic cables and US military secret documents during the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, exposing the war crimes of the US military.
One of the videos of a US military Apache gunship shooting and killing journalists and civilians in Iraq has been widely circulated.
Assange was immediately involved in the lawsuit, the United States brought 17 counts of espionage and one count of misuse of a computer against him.
In 2019, Assange was arrested and jailed in the UK.
Subsequently, the United States requested the extradition of Assange on the grounds that WikiLeaks released confidential documents related to the United States and endangered the lives of others.
According to British media reports, the British Home Secretary will then need to decide whether to extradite Assange to the United States.
Once the Home Secretary approves extradition, Assange can also request a "judicial review" of the decision.