WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is one step closer to facing espionage charges in the US after a British judge formally approved his extradition.

The case will go to Britains interior minister for a decision, and Assange, 50, still has legal avenues of appeal.

A judge at Londons Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday issued the extradition order in a brief hearing, as Assange watched by video link from Belmarsh Prison. He stated his full name and date of birth.

It is up to Home Secretary Priti Patel to decide whether to grant the extradition.

The order comes after the UK Supreme Court last month refused Assange permission to appeal against a lower courts ruling that he could be extradited.

The move doesnt exhaust the legal options for Assange, who has sought for years to avoid a trial in the US on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse related to WikiLeaks publication of a massive trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

His lawyers have four weeks to make submissions to Patel, and can also seek to appeal to the High Court.

Assange lawyer Mark Summers told the court that the legal team had serious submissions to make.

American prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal 500,000 classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

Supporters and lawyers for Assange argue that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech for publishing documents that exposed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They argue that his case is politically motivated.

A British district judge had initially rejected a US extradition request on the grounds that Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh US prison conditions. US authorities later provided assurances that the WikiLeaks founder wouldnt be held in solitary confinement at a federal supermax prison that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.

In December, the High Court overturned the lower courts decision, saying that the US promises were enough to guarantee that Assange would be treated humanely.

Assanges lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in jail if he is convicted in the US, though American authorities have said the sentence was likely to be much lower than that.

Assange has been held at Britains high-security Belmarsh Prison in London since 2019, when he was arrested for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years holed up inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed.

Last month, Assange and his former lawyer Stella Moris married in a prison ceremony.

Before the wedding, she proudlywrote in the Guardianhow she would go through the gates at the most oppressive high-security prison in Britain to marry the love of my life.

With Post wires

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Judge approves Julian Assange extradition to US to face spy charges

Julian Assange was secretly recorded while living at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.EPV

The conversations between Julian Assange and his lawyers illicitly recorded by the Spanish security company UC Global at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder took refuge for years, could have been delivered to agents of the US secret services, according to Santiago Pedraz, the judge at Spains High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, in charge of the espionage case.

Delivery to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or to US authorities of details about the defense strategy of the cyberactivist, whom the US wants to have extradited from the UK, is reflected in a court order issued by Pedraz to which EL PAS has had access. In this document, which deals with procedural issues, the judge explains to the British authorities why he needs to take witness testimony from the British lawyers and Assanges doctors who were spied on at the embassy. These individuals include Gareth Peirce, 82, the famous British lawyer who was played by actress Emma Thompson in the 1993 movie In the Name of the Father.

Proving that US intelligence services learned about Assanges defense strategy by spying on his lawyers could annul the extradition by questioning the illegal methods used by the US to get Assange tried there, according to legal sources. If Spain is allowed to take testimony, as victims of US espionage, from lawyers and doctors who are now defending him in the extradition case, the British justice system would be left in an embarrassing situation, according to the same sources. It could be argued that the process was flawed because the right of defense was violated by the country requesting the extradition.

The judge sent a European Investigation Order (EIO) to the British justice more than two years ago, when he requested permission to question Assange in a videoconference from London as a witness in the case against Undercover Global. But British authorities have been reluctant to cooperate, and have asked for additional information on top of documents that were sent months ago without receiving a response. The EIO is a common judicial tool to speed up cooperation between judges and circumvent laborious rogatory letters based on instruments of international law.

In this case, however, the British justice has been blocking the investigation. The British lawyers spied on at the embassy by order of UC Global owner David Morales, and whom Pedraz is asking to interrogate, are the same ones who are now defending Assange in the US extradition request that a British judge has just approved. Home Secretary Priti Patel, one of the toughest members of Boris Johnsons government, has two months to make the final decision.

The US is charging Assange with 18 crimes for revealing classified information about military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan on WikiLeaks, and he could face up to 175 years in prison. Since his expulsion in 2019 from the Ecuadorian Embassy, the Australian activist has been held in Londons Belmarsh maximum-security prison.

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Julian Assange spying case: Judge suggests CIA may have received illicitly recorded conversations - EL PAS USA

It is easy to forget why Julian Assange has been on trial in England for, well, seemingly forever.

Didnt he allegedly sexually assault two women in Sweden? Isnt that why he holed up for years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid facing charges? When the bobbies finally dragged him out of the embassy, didnt his dishevelled appearance confirm all those stories about his lousy personal hygiene?

Didnt he persuade Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning to hack into the United States militarys computers to reveal national security matters that endangered the lives of American soldiers and intelligence agents? He says he is a journalist, but hasnt the New York Times made it clear he is just a source and not a publisher entitled to first amendment protection?

Review: The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution Nils Melzer (Verso)

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you are not alone. But the answers are actually no. At very least, its more complicated than that.

To take one example, the reason Assange was dishevelled was that staff in the Ecuadorian embassy had confiscated his shaving gear three months before to ensure his appearance matched his stereotype when the arrest took place.

That is one of the findings of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, whose investigation of the case against Assange has been laid out in forensic detail in The Trial of Julian Assange.

What is the UNs Special Rapporteur on Torture doing investigating the Assange case, you might ask? So did Melzer when Assanges lawyers first approached him in 2018:

I had more important things to do: I had to take care of real torture victims!

Melzer returned to a report he was writing about overcoming prejudice and self-deception when dealing with official corruption. Not until a few months later, he writes, would I realise the striking irony of this situation.

The 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council directly appointspecial rapporteurs on torture. The position is unpaid Melzer earns his living as a professor of international law but they have diplomatic immunity and operate largely outside the UNs hierarchies.

Among the many pleas for his attention, Melzers small office chooses between 100 and 200 each year to officially investigate. His conclusions and recommendations are not binding on states. He bleakly notes that in barely 10% of cases does he receive full co-operation from states and an adequate resolution.

He received nothing like full co-operation in investigating Assanges case. He gathered around 10,000 pages of procedural files, but a lot of them came from leaks to journalists or from freedom-of-information requests. Many pages had been redacted. Rephrasing Carl Von Clausewitzs maxim, Melzer wrote his book as the continuation of diplomacy by other means.

What he finds is stark and disturbing:

The Assange case is the story of a man who is being persecuted and abused for exposing the dirty secrets of the powerful, including war crimes, torture and corruption. It is a story of deliberate judicial arbitrariness in Western democracies that are otherwise keen to present themselves as exemplary in the area of human rights.

It is the story of wilful collusion by intelligence services behind the back of national parliaments and the general public. It is a story of manipulated and manipulative reporting in the mainstream media for the purpose of deliberately isolating, demonizing, and destroying a particular individual. It is the story of a man who has been scapegoated by all of us for our own societal failures to address government corruption and state-sanctioned crimes.

Read more: Explainer: what charges does Julian Assange face, and what's likely to happen next?

The dirty secrets of the powerful are difficult to face, which is why we and I dont exclude myself swallow neatly packaged slurs and diversions of the kind listed at the beginning of this article.

Melzer rightly takes us back to April 2010, four years after the Australian-born Assange had founded WikiLeaks, a small organisation set up to publish official documents that it had received, encrypted so as to protect whistle-blowers from official retribution. Assange released video footage showing in horrifying detail how US soldiers in a helicopter had shot and killed Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists in 2007.

Apart from how the soldiers spoke Hahaha, I hit them, Nice, Good shot it looks like most of the victims were civilians and that the journalists cameras were mistaken for rifles. When one of the wounded men tried to crawl to safety, the helicopter crew, instead of allowing their comrades on the ground to take him prisoner, as required by the rules of war, seek permission to shoot him again.

As Melzers detailed description makes clear, the soldiers knew what they were doing:

Come on, buddy, the gunner comments, aiming the crosshairs at his helpless target. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.

The soldiers request for authorisation to shoot is given. When the wounded man is carried to a nearby minibus, it is shot to pieces with the helicopters 30mm gun. The driver and two other rescuers are killed instantly. The drivers two young children inside are seriously wounded.

US army command investigated the matter, concluding that the soldiers acted in accordance with the rules of war, even though they had not. Equally to the point, writes Melzer, the public would never have known a war crime had been committed without the release of what Assange called the Collateral Murder video.

The video footage was just one of hundreds of thousands of documents that WikiLeaks released last year in tranches known as the Afghan war logs, the Iraq war logs, and cablegate. They revealed numerous alleged war crimes and provided the raw material for a shadow history of the disastrous wars waged by the US and its allies, including Australia, in Aghanistan and Iraq.

Read more: Julian Assange on Google, surveillance and predatory capitalism

Melzer retraces what has happened to Assange since then, from the accusations of sexual assault in Sweden to Assange taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in an attempt to avoid the possibility of extradition to the US if he returned to Sweden. His refuge led to him being jailed in the United Kingdom for breaching his bail conditions.

Sweden eventually dropped the sexual assault charges, but the US government ramped up its request to extradite Assange. He faces charges under the 1917 Espionage Act, which, if successful, could lead to a jail term of 175 years.

Two key points become increasingly clear as Melzer methodically works through the events.

The first is that there has been a carefully orchestrated plan by four countries the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and, yes, Australia to ensure Assange is punished forever for revealing state secrets.

The second is that the conditions he has been subjected to, and will continue to be subjected to if the USs extradition request is granted, have amounted to torture.

On the first point, how else are we to interpret the continual twists and turns over nearly a decade in the official positions taken by Sweden and the UK? Contrary to the obfuscating language of official communiques, all of these have closed down Assanges options and denied him due process.

Melzer documents the thinness of the Swedish authorities case for charging Assange with sexual assault. That did not prevent them from keeping it open for many years. Nor was Assange as unco-operative with police as has been suggested. Swedish police kept changing their minds about where and whether to formally interview Assange because they knew the evidence was weak.

Melzer also takes pains to show how Swedish police also overrode the interests of the two women who had made the complaints against Assange.

It is distressing to read the conditions Assange has endured over several years. A change in the political leadership of Ecuador led to a change in his living conditions in the embassy, from cramped but bearable to virtual imprisonment.

Since being taken from the embassy to Belmarsh prison in 2019, Assange has spent much of his time in solitary confinement for 22 or 23 hours a day. He has been denied all but the most limited access to his legal team, let alone family and friends. He was kept in a glass cage during his seemingly interminable extradition hearing, appeals over which could continue for several years more years, according to Melzer.

Assanges physical and mental health have suffered to the point where he has been put on suicide watch. Again, that seems to be the point, as Melzer writes:

The primary purpose of persecuting Assange is not and never has been to punish him personally, but to establish a generic precedent with a global deterrent effect on other journalist, publicists and activists.

So will the new Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, do any more than his three Coalition and two Labor predecessors to advocate for the interests of an Australian citizen? In December 2021, Guardian Australia reported Albanese saying he did not see what purpose is served by the ongoing pursuit of Mr Assange and that enough is enough. Since being sworn in as prime minister, he has kept his cards close to his chest.

The actions of his predecessors suggest he wont, even though Albanese has already said on several occasions since being elected that he wants to do politics differently.

Melzer, among others, would remind him of the words of former US president Jimmy Carter, who, contrary to other presidents, said he did not deplore the WikiLeaks revelations.

They just made public what was the truth. Most often, the revelation of truth, even if its unpleasant, is beneficial. [] I think that, almost invariably, the secrecy is designed to conceal improper activities.

The first in the two-part series Ithaka: A Fight to Free Julian Assange airs on ABC TV tonight at 8.30pm.

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A new book argues Julian Assange is being tortured. Will our new PM do anything about it? - The Conversation Indonesia

Jennifer Robinson said the development "raises serious questions" about information shared between the UK and US over Mr Assange's extradition case

One of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges lawyers has reached a settlement with the Government after it accepted it was likely she was the subject of covert surveillance which breached her human rights, she said.

Jennifer Robinson welcomed a statement by the European Court of Human Rights which she said meant the UK Government has accepted her rights were breached by surveillance.

Julian Assange Victoria Jones

Mr Assange awaits a decision by Priti Patel on whether he should be extradited to the US Danny Lawson

She was one of the three lead claimants in a complaint against the UK Government which went to the court.

Ms Robinson said the UK Government has reached a friendly settlement, admitting there was reasonable cause to believe she was the subject of surveillance.

She said: The UK Government has now admitted that its surveillance and information-sharing arrangements with the US violated my rights. That includes in relation to the protection of confidential journalistic material.

This follows a pattern of unlawful spying on Julian Assange and his legal team, and it raises grave concerns about government interference with journalistic material and privilege.

It also raises serious questions about what information the UK and US governments have been sharing about Mr Assanges case against extradition to the US.

The development came as Mr Assange awaits a decision by Home Secretary Priti Patel on whether he should be extradited to the United States.

Ms Robinson said she will receive compensation which she will donate to Privacy International, which worked on her case, to support their work on the protection of civil liberties and right to privacy and free speech.

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Julian Assange's lawyer likely to have been 'subject of covert surveillance' - government accepts - GB News

More than three months on from the first of two floods that engulfed large parts of the regional city of Lismore, the surrounding Northern Rivers region of New South Wales (NSW) and outer areas of Sydney, thousands of residents remain effectively homeless and thousands more have been blocked from flood recovery grants.

Following the flood disasters of February 28 and March 30, in which many people had to rely on local volunteers to be rescued, the state and federal governments belatedly and grudgingly promised various aid packages, mostly for businesses, to seek to head off widespread outrage over the lack of government rescue and recovery assistance.

Yet less than a third of applications for help have been approved so far, and many more have been rejected, producing growing discontent in Lismore and elsewhere over the contemptuous official response.

The NSW Liberal-National Coalition government, backed by the Labor Party parliamentary opposition, announced four different grant programs for devastated households and businesses. More than 43,000 applications have been made across those programs, but only 27 percent have been approved, while 50 percent have been declined.

Even worse, the governments Resilience NSW agency, which was nowhere to be seen during the floods, has approved only about 330 Disaster Relief Grants from more than 2,440 applications. Likewise, the Rural Assistance Authority, which is meant to aid primary producers, has processed a little under half of the 3,200 grant applications it has received, and approved about1,100.

Premier Dominic Perrottets NSW government has flatly defended this record, saying it has more than 200 people working to process grant applications. To put that in perspective for people, its more than four times the number of grant applications that we had resulting from the Black Summer fires, Flood Recovery Minister Steph Cooke said.

However, there have been similar outcomes from the 201920 bushfire catastrophe, with victims still homeless or struggling to rebuild more than two years on.

In a bid to cover its tracks, the government is now claiming that the delays and rejections for the flood grants are the result of fraudulent claims, even though these allegations apply to only a fraction of the applications.

Of the 43,000 applications, 2,705 are reportedly under review for possible fraud, and just 530 applications have been referred to the police for investigation. Many of these may be honest mistakes, given the complex and confusing application processes.

There is a similar pattern of delay and obstruction from insurance companies. More than 216,000 claims had been filed by the end of May, potentially costing $4.3 billion. According to the Insurance Council of Australia, however, only about 20 percent of claims, totalling almost $1 billion, have been paid.

During a brief hearing in Lismore last week by a parliamentary inquiry into the floods, people spoke about couch surfing, sleeping in vans or camping in houses with no walls or doors.

Marcus Bebb, formerly of South Lismore, explained that he and his family of five are living in a caravan in a showground after losing their home. A rebuild could take three years, and he was still waiting to hear the governments position on house buybacks.

Downtown Lismore still remains a disaster zone, with most shops boarded up, along with key educational and cultural institutions such as the citys library, art gallery, TAFE college and historical museum. Debris still litters some streets.

Due to the protracted failure of governments, both Coalition and Labor, to address the threat of climate change, the entire region is at increasing risk of extreme weather events such as floods and fires, with the dangers greatest among its high proportion of working-class, vulnerable and poor residents.

The WSWS discussed these and other political issues with residents last Saturday at the only shopping complex still open in Lismore, at Goonellabah. Many commented on the hundreds of extra people now homeless in the area and the difficulties residents were having in filling out the complex forms and providing all the documents needed to apply for government grants.

Glorz, a long-time resident, who is studying to be a teacher, commented: People have been left to fend for themselves since the floods. Its like governments want to get rid of them.

Asked for her views on the May 21 federal election and the new Labor government, Glorz agreed that both the major parties stood for the interests of big business. Its a two-party system, and nobody else had a chance, she said. I reckon that the Australian people have been ripped off, the workers have been ripped off and the general citizens have been ripped off.

Asked about the Socialist Equality Partys fight for a socialist alternative, she commented: The whole system needs to be abolished, the current government and everything. They are just one body with lots of arms. All they are about is themselves. A new system needs to be for the people, and by the people.

Glorz condemned the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and had no confidence that the Labor government would do anything to free him. That man stood up years ago and told us the truth and nobody wanted to believe what was going on. He has been jailed for telling the truth. He needs to be free, because men like him are leaders in free speech.

In the context of the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine, she added: And its a chain reaction to whats actually going on now. If you think back to what he [Assange] was saying years ago, and exposing years ago, that is now coming true.

He exposed America, and England and Australia for who they really are, and they dont want that. They want him out of the picture completely. He has a hell of a lot more to expose, and they dont want that Free Julian Assange!

Danny and Sandra, from the NSW south coast, were visiting friends in Lismore. They stopped to voice their support for Assange.

Danny explained: Hes told the world the truth. Hes brought out the secrets and showed the world. Hes opened up what the world didnt know about If you tell the truth in this country today, you are penalised for it. America is the problem and Australia is too far in bed with the Americans.

Sandra added: He was only doing his job as a journalist. He was holding up journalistic integrity, because he didn't divulge his sources. Its disgusting. There were never any charges against him.

Danny interjected: The people are starting to find out, and if they dont stop theres going to be a revolution. The people are sacrificing, with the price of living and everything else, but the governments dont sacrifice.

Sandra asked: Whats the use of sending money to Ukraine, like billions of dollars, to kill people? So theyre warmongers.

In its March 6 statement, Australias floods: An indictment of capitalism, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) explained:

Every aspect of the floods crisisfrom the lack of preparation and warnings to people, to the inadequacy of basic infrastructure and support services, and the lack of assistance offered to the hundreds of thousands of flood victimsis the direct result of the subordination of society to the dictates of private profit.

The statement outlined a series of essential demands, including:

These demands mean forming rank-and-file committees to fight for them, rejecting the dictates of the financial elite and advancing the struggle for a workers government to implement socialist measures.

As the statement explained: The pressing social needs of the majority can and must be addressed by placing the banks, insurance companies, property developers and other corporate giants under working class ownership and democratic control.

Join the SEP campaign against anti-democratic electoral laws!

The working class must have a political voice, which the Australian ruling class is seeking to stifle with this legislation.

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Thousands of Australian flood victims still denied government aid - WSWS

The scuffle broke out just a stones throw away from Buckingham Palace (Picture: Reuters)

Protesters wearing Free Assange t-shirts were arrested on The Mall just moments before the Queens Platinum Party at the Palace began.

One man was pictured being pinned down on the ground and handcuffed as eight officers surrounded him.

Another man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask was also detained by police in the same spot close to Buckingham Palace.

Beside the scuffle was a placard saying Free Assange demanding the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The 50-year-old Australian activist has been in Belmarsh maximum-security prison since 2019.

Hed spent seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy before eventually being forced out into the custody of UK police.

Earlier this year the High Court formally ordered Assange to be extradited to the US, where hes wanted for an alleged conspiracy to disclose national defence information.

The charge came after Wikileaks published hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

A crowd of 20,000 people attended tonights Platinum Party at the Palace, celebrating Queen Elizabeth IIs 70-year reign.

On the star studded line-up was Diana Ross, Craig David, Hans Zimmer, Diversity and Queen (the band).

There was a pre-recorded performance from Sir Elton John, while stars including Sir David Attenborough, Emma Raducanu, David Beckham, Stephen Fry, Dame Julie Andrews, The Royal Ballet, and Ellie Simmonds will also appeared.

The Queen also showed off her acting skills by staring in a skit with none other than Paddington Bear.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us atwebnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this,check our news page.

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'Free Assange' protesters arrested right before Party at the Palace - Metro.co.uk

President Biden has reportedly made a final decision not to invite the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to attend the Summit of the Americas, which opens in Los Angeles today. The move might lead to other Latin American leaders boycotting the talks. Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador as well as the leaders of Guatemala, Bolivia and Honduras have threatened to skip the summit, which is taking place in the United States for the first time since 1994. Cuban President Miguel Daz-Canel recently criticized Bidens plan to exclude Cuba and other nations.

President Miguel Daz-Canel: Our America has changed. Exclusions are no longer possible. The decision to not invite everyone is a historic setback, and all countries must be invited on equal terms. Its disrespectful and harmful to the sovereignty of nations to try to decide, from the privileged condition of the host, those who represent them. In the face of attempts at exclusion and selectivity, it is urgent to strengthen the authentic mechanisms of Latin American and Caribbean integration and coordination.

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Biden Excludes Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from Summit of the Americas - Democracy Now!

LONDON (AP) A British judge on Wednesday formally approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to face spying charges. The case will now go to Britains interior minister for a decision, though the WikiLeaks founder still has legal avenues of appeal.

The order, which brings and end to the years-long extradition battle closer, comes after the U.K. Supreme Court last month refused Assange permission to appeal against a lower courts ruling that he could be extradited.

District Judge Paul Goldspring issued the order in a brief hearing at Westminster MagistratesCourt, as Assange watched by video link from Belmarsh Prison and his supporters rallied outside the courthouse, demanding he be freed.

Home Secretary Priti Patel will now decide whether to grant the extradition.

The move doesnt exhaust the legal options for Assange, who has sought for years to avoid a trial in the U.S. on charges related to WikiLeaks publication of a huge trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

His lawyers have four weeks to make submissions to Patel, and can also seek to appeal to the High Court.

Assange lawyer Mark Summers told the court that the legal team had serious submissions to make.

The U.S. has asked British authorities to extradite Assange so he can stand trial on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. American prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

Supporters and lawyers for Assange, 50, argue that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech for publishing documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They argue that his case is politically motivated.

A British district court judge had initially rejected a U.S. extradition request on the grounds that Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. U.S. authorities later provided assurances that the WikiLeaks founder wouldnt face the severe treatment that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.

In December, the High Court overturned the lower courts decision, saying that the U.S. promises were enough to guarantee that Assange would be treated humanely. The Supreme Court in March rejected Assanges attempt to challenge that ruling.

Assanges lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in jail if he is convicted in the U.S., though American authorities have said the sentence was likely to be much lower than that.

Assange has been held at Britains high-security Belmarsh Prison in London since 2019, when he was arrested for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed.

Last month, Assange and his partner Stella Moris married in a prison ceremony.

Read this article:
Judge Approves Extradition of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

His Wikileaks investigation revealed many US war crimes and he has been wanted ever since

By Democracy Now

HAVANA TIMES A British judge has ordered the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, where he faces a 175-year sentence. The final decision on Assanges extradition will now be made by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel. Amnesty Internationals Simon Crowther spoke outside the courthouse prior to todays ruling.

Simon Crowther: Julian Assange is being prosecuted for espionage for publishing sensitive material that was classified. And if he is extradited to the U.S. for this, all journalists around the world are going to have to look over their shoulder, because within their own jurisdiction, if they publish something that the US considers to be classified, they will face the risk of being extradited.

Read more news here on Havana Times

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UK Judge OKs Extradition of Julian Assange to US - Havana Times

In the course of the next few days, Priti Patel will make the most important ruling on free speech made by any home secretary in recent memory. She must resolve whether to comply with a US request to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges.

The consequences for Assange will be profound. Once in the US he will almost certainly be sent to a maximum-security prison for the rest of his life. He will die in jail.

The impact on British journalism will also be profound. It will become lethally dangerous to handle, let alone publish, documents from US government sources. Reporters who do so, and their editors, will risk the same fate as Assange and become subject to extradition followed by lifelong incarceration.

For this reason Daniel Ellsberg, the 91-year-old US whistleblower who was prosecuted for his role in the Pentagon Papers revelations, which exposed the covert bombing of Laos and Cambodia and thus helped end the Vietnam war, has given eloquent testimony in Assanges defence.

He told an extradition hearing two years ago that he felt a great identification with Assange, adding that his revelations were among the most important in the history of the US.

The US government does not agree. It maintains that Assange was effectively a spy and not a reporter, and should be punished accordingly.

Up to a point this position is understandable. Assange was anything but an ordinary journalist. His deep understanding of computers and how they could be hacked singled him out from the professionally shambolic arts graduates who normally rise to eminence in newspapers.

The ultimate creature of the internet age, in 2006 he helped found WikiLeaks, an organisation that specialises in obtaining and releasing classified or secret documents, infuriating governments and corporations around the world.

The clash with the US came in 2010, when (in collaboration with the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, the New York Times and other international news organisations) WikiLeaks entered into one of the great partnerships of the modern era in any field. It started publishing documents supplied by the US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

Between them, WikiLeaks and Manning were responsible for a series of first-class scoops that any self-respecting reporter would die for. And these scoops were not the tittle-tattle that comprises the daily fodder of most journalism. They were of overwhelming global importance, reshaping our understanding of the Iraq war and the war on terror.

To give one example among thousands, WikiLeaks published a video of soldiers in a US helicopter laughing as they shot and killed unarmed civilians in Iraq including a Reuters photographer and his assistant. (The US military refused to discipline the perpetrators.)

To the intense embarrassment of the US, WikiLeaks revealed that the total number of civilian casualties in Iraq was 66,000 far more than the US had acknowledged.

It shone an appalling new light on the abuse meted out to the Muslim inmates at Guantnamo Bay, including the revelation that 150 innocent people were held for years without charge.

Clive Stafford Smith, the then chairman of the human rights charity Reprieve who represented 84 Guantnamo prisoners, praised the way WikiLeaks helped him to establish that charges against his clients were fabricated.

Its easy to see why the US launched a criminal investigation. Then events took an unexpected turn in November 2010 when Sweden issued an arrest warrant against Assange following allegations of sexual misconduct. Assange refused to go to Sweden, apparently on the grounds that this was a pretext for his extradition to the United States and took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Sweden never charged Assange with an offence, and dropped its investigation in 2019.

This was an eventful year in the Assange story. Ecuador kicked him out of the embassy and he was promptly arrested for breaching bail: hes languished for the past three years in Belmarsh prison. Meanwhile the US pursues him using the same 1917 Espionage Act under which Ellsberg was unsuccessfully prosecuted. Assanges defence, led by the solicitor Gareth Peirce and Edward Fitzgerald QC, has argued that his only crime was the crime of investigative journalism.

They point out that the indictment charges Assange with actions, such as protecting sources, that are basic journalistic practice: the US alleges that Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records. Any journalist who failed to take this elementary precaution when supplied with information by a source would be sacked.

The US stated that Assange actively encouraged Manning to provide the information. How disgraceful! No wonder Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, has warned that: It is dangerous to suggest that these actions are somehow criminal rather than steps routinely taken by investigative journalists who communicate with confidential sources to receive classified information of public importance.

Despite all this, theres no reason to suppose that Patel will come to Assanges rescue though there may yet be further legal ways to fight extradition.

Even if Patel wasnt already on the way to winning the all-corners record as the most repressive home secretary in modern history, the Johnson government, already in Joe Bidens bad books, has no incentive to further alienate the US president.

If and when Assange is put on a plane to the US, investigative journalism will suffer a permanent and deadening blow.

And the message will be sent to war criminals not just in the US but in every country round the globe that they can commit their crimes with impunity.

Peter Oborne is a journalist and author. His latest book, Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam, is available now

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Extraditing Julian Assange would be a gift to secretive, oppressive regimes - The Guardian