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

Priti Patel now has to make one of the most important decisions of her career: will she bow to heavy pressure from the United States and send a vulnerable man who has been convicted of no crime to face an indeterminate number of years in an American jail where he may experience intimidation and isolation? Her decision is imminent and all other legal avenues have been explored.

This was the scenario 10 years ago in the case of Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker who, working out of his north London bedroom, trawled through the computer systems of Nasa and the US defence department in search of information about UFOs and left behind some mildly rude messages about the systems sloppy security. The home secretary was Theresa May, who halted extradition proceedings at the last minute.

Now Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and also a vulnerable man who has been in Belmarsh high-security prison for three years without being convicted of any crime is facing extradition, with the issue due to be decided this month. Once again, the home secretary has an opportunity to demonstrate, as May did, that respect for justice and humanity are much finer and more enduring qualities than appeasement.

It is worth recalling the words of party leaders in support of McKinnon after Labour home secretaries to their great shame declined to intervene in the years after his initial arrest in 2002. Nick Clegg, then leading the Liberal Democrats in opposition, said that McKinnon has been hung out to dry by a British government desperate to appease its American counterparts. David Cameron, before he became prime minister, had said: McKinnon is a vulnerable young man and I see no compassion in sending him thousands of miles away from his home and loved ones to face trial.

The current case is different in that, while McKinnon remained at liberty, Assange has been held in custody alongside murderers and terrorists after the seven years he spent in the Ecuadorian embassy, seeking political asylum. He should have been given bail long ago to be with his wife, Stella Moris, whom he married in prison in March, and their two young children; he could simply be electronically tagged and monitored. It is also different in that he faces charges under the Espionage Act which carries a potential sentence of 175 years. And yes, the US criminal justice system does actually impose such medieval sentences.

Last year, at the Summit for Democracy, Joe Biden pledged to support a free press: Its the bedrock of democracy. Its how the public stay informed and how governments are held accountable. Around the world, press freedom is under threat. As it happens, it is 50 years since Daniel Ellsberg was being prosecuted under a similar law to the ones Assange faces for releasing the Pentagon Papers which exposed the lies and hypocrisies of the Vietnam war. He is one of Assanges staunchest supporters. This week he told me that this extradition would mean that journalists, anywhere in the world, could be extradited to the US for exposing information classified in the US. He argues that it would also set a precedent that any reporter could be extradited to other countries for exposing information classified in those countries.

Assange also has the backing of all organisations that battle on behalf of freedom of expression, from Amnesty International to Reporters Without Borders. As Julia Hall of Amnesty International puts it: Demanding that states like the UK extradite people for publishing classified information that is in the public interest sets a dangerous precedent and must be rejected.

In March, the justice secretary, Dominic Raab, told the Daily Mail of plans for a new bill of rights: Weve got to be able to strengthen free speech, the liberty that guards all of our other freedoms, and stop it being whittled away surreptitiously, sometimes without us really being conscious of it. How empty those words will be if Assange is extradited.

It was, after all, thanks to WikiLeaks and Assange that the world saw the secret video of a US aircrew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing after their airstrike killed a dozen people, including two Iraqi journalists. Should our ability to see that footage be whittled away surreptitiously?

Another Assange advocate is Janis Sharp, McKinnons mother, who fought so gallantly on his behalf a battle now being made into a film. Ten years loss of liberty is surely more than long enough for an extremely ill, autistic man, a whistleblower who shared information of a war crime that he felt was in the public interest to know, she told me. Seeing my own son Gary McKinnon suicidal and in permanent mental torment through the terror of proposed extradition, leaves me in no doubt that much-needed compassion must be brought to bear in this very lengthy tragic case.

Patel has an important choice, but it is not difficult. Extradition should be resisted. Assange should be released and allowed to resume a normal life. Anyone who seriously values freedom of expression should support his fight.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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Priti Patel, hear this loud and clear: Julian Assange must not be handed over to the US - The Guardian

Its been 50 years since Cornelia Parker first said to herself: One day, perhaps Ill have a show at the Tate. As a schoolgirl, she had a propensity for art because it allowed her to go off-piste. I wasnt overly academic, she explains, as her new retrospective prepares to open at Tate Britain in London. I liked going off on a tangent. So yes, Im very pleased about the show. Its a dream come true.

Although Parkers decades-long career has given her great prominence shortlisted for the Turner prize in 1997, given an OBE in 2010 she talks about her work like its an unfolding mystery. When we meet over Zoom, she is sporting her trademark short bob and blunt Joan of Arc fringe, theorising about art while dealing with a tree surgeon who is tending to her garden. She is softly spoken and unassuming surprisingly for an artist whose work is often loud, dramatic and violent. Perhaps the most famous is 1991s Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, in which Parker enlisted the British Army to blow up a shed stuffed with toys, gardening tools and stuff found in charity stores. The charred fragments were then suspended from a ceiling, creating an explosion eerily frozen in time.

At the Turner exhibition a few years later, Parker exhibited Mass (Colder Darker Matter), suspending the blackened remains of a church that had been struck by lightning in Texas. Her other notable works include Thirty Pieces of Silver, for which she had dozens of silver-plated objects including musical instruments, teapots, candlesticks and cutlery all flattened by a steamroller. In 2005, meanwhile, she suspended fragments of dry soil taken from beneath the Leaning Tower of Pisa to prevent its collapse. This was Subconscious of a Monument, an ode to Galileo, who would suspend objects from the tower to test his theory of gravity.

There is, without doubt, a profoundly unsettling side to Parkers work. While sculpture tends to represent physical stability, hers depict the constantly unstable that universal condition of vulnerability, which she creates by treating objects with cartoon violence, as she puts it. Where did this desire to blow things up come from? Theres something about the explosion as a piece of iconography, she says. You see them in action films all the time. Before CGI, film-makers were having to blow things up and they quite enjoyed it. Boys usually like it and I was brought up as a boy by my father, who had three girls and wanted a boy. So perhaps my fixation with guns and violence and explosions is me taking on this role a bit too much. She laughs. Why do little boys pick up a stick pretend its a gun? The want to destroy things seems to be part of our nature. Otherwise violence wouldnt exist.

Whats special about cartoon deaths, she adds, is that whoever gets hurt whether its Tom or Jerry almost always gets resurrected. If theyve been flattened with a steamroller, they just peel themselves up off the floor. Suspending the exploded shed was like a reanimation. Because when all the objects were on the ground, it looked like a morgue. But now its been taken back in time.

Michelangelo Antonionis 1970 film Zabriskie Point was one of her inspirations theres an amazing slow-motion explosion as were the headlines of the time. IRA bombs were at the forefront of your mind, a bit like Ukraine is now. Its almost like sympathetic magic, which is when you enact something to stop it happening for real. Im always doing things in the hope theyre not going to happen.

Parker was born in Cheshire in 1956, the middle of three girls. Her career was incremental: there was no overnight success. In 1974, she did an art foundation course in Cheltenham before going on to Wolverhampton Polytechnic. She then made theatre sets and did an MA, before moving to east London in the early 1980s. Her first solo exhibition, at the Ikon in Birmingham, wasnt until 1988.

Since then, she has tried to make both large and quieter works. The smaller works are more contemplative, like object poems, she says. The Maybe, which appeared at Londons Serpentine Gallery in 1995, was a performance piece conceived by Tilda Swinton, who lay inside a glass vitrine. For Pornographic Drawings, she used solvent to dissolve pornographic video tapes confiscated by customs.

To celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta in 2015, Parker created a 13-metre hand-embroidered tapestry of the charters Wikipedia page. Many of its 4,000-plus words were embroidered by men and women with opposing political views, including lords, barons, baronesses, human rights lawyers and prisoners. There were also contributions from Julian Assange and Edward Snowden alongside the US ambassador. Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger embroidered political contemporary relevance, Jarvis Cocker chose common people.

The Magna Carta was all about justice, she says. I went to see Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy. He wanted to draw a lipstick heart on his bit of embroidery. I took it off him and said, No! In the end, he embroidered, Freedom, which was the word Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, also embroidered.

The more we talk, the clearer it becomes that Parker isnt one of those artists whos content to sit on the sidelines of history. There is a highly charged political streak within her, one that rears its head in her work, both consciously and subconsciously. In May 2017, she was even chosen to be the official general election artist, the first woman to take on the role. I was thinking, Fuck it, I might as well immerse myself totally in politics, rather than feeling inept and on the outside. I felt like a reporter. I went to all the manifesto launches.

Its hard not to engage in politics, she says, before listing off all the reprehensible items in the current news agenda, including the invasion of Ukraine, Priti Patels beyond the pale plans to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda, and Boris Johnsons narcissism. But the most pressing issue for her is the climate emergency. I first became aware of how awful it could be in 2005 when I went to a conference at Oxford with climate scientists. It was quite earth-shattering. I think its the biggest thing in everybodys lives and they dont realise it yet. Bidens about to give out permits for more drilling for oil. And if Trump gets back in, were all toast.

In the run-up to the 2015 general election, Parker endorsed the Green partys Caroline Lucas. Today, she and her husband, the artist Jeff McMillan, are constantly trying to drag their 20-year-old daughter out on marches. We live in a very important time. As a human race, we have to make some decisions about whether were going to survive.

Parker used to drive people bananas with her campaigning around the climate emergency. I was always going on to the people who ran galleries, including the Tate and Serpentine, about the need to prepare for the future. Not having BP as a sponsor, for example. In the end, youve got to stand up and be a good citizen, open your mouth when you need to, and make sure your actions are good.

As a remainer, Brexit is still very much on Parkers mind. Why is the issue so important to her? It affects everything. Your freedom of movement, my daughters future. Im thinking of applying for German citizenship because Im half German. I dont like feeling not part of Europe. I dont want to be a little Englander.

This sentiment is the inspiration for a new work at Tate Britain. Called Island, its made up of something Parker acquired from Parliament while election artist. I saw they were taking up some tiles in the corridors that ran from the Commons to the Lords. Everybody from Winston Churchill to Margaret Thatcher had walked over this path, and they were just going to grind them to dust. So I asked if I could have a quantity of them.

She has now turned them into a kind of floating carpet theyre slightly raised off the ground. On top, Im putting a greenhouse, painted with chalk from the white cliffs of Dover, our most well known piece of geography. Theres a beacon inside, which pulsates like a lighthouse, breathing in and out, quite anxiously. Essentially, she explains, the work is a raft, adrift in the world. The country is being taken where the government want us to go. Theyre promising all kinds of things which never get delivered. But if you live in a glass house, you dont throw stones.

The exhibition will also feature a trio of films about identity, territory and emblems. One is about a poppy-making factory in Kent. Another is about a Muslim family making Christian iconography, including crowns of thorns and crucifixes, in the occupied Palestinian territories. And the third, called Flag, is filmed in a factory in Cardiff that makes Union Jacks. We filmed them making one from beginning to end and then we run it backwards. They take the flag apart piece by piece, as the hymn Jerusalem plays in the background. I suppose its sympathetic magic to stop the Union Jack getting dismembered into four countries following Brexit.

I wonder if this search for the meaning of nationhood has something to do with her own background: Parkers grandmother was a German nurse in the Luftwaffe during the second world war, while her British grandfather fought at the Battle of the Somme in the first. Im sure it does, she says. Both my mother and my grandfather were prisoners of war. My mother, when she came to England, was very scarred mentally. I was born 10 years after the war ended, so it was all still quite raw. That kind of scarring gets passed on.

This clashing of worlds, and the wish to ward off catastrophe, seems to underline Parkers work. Art, she says, is an act of faith. Is there a message shed like people to take away from the exhibition? Theres 100 works. I just hope people enjoy it.

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I dont want to be a little Englander Cornelia Parker on BP, bombs and becoming a German - The Guardian

Julian Assange Quick InfoHeight6 ft 2 inWeight72 kgDate of BirthJuly 3, 1971Zodiac SignCancerSpouseStella Moris

Julian Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who is best known for founding WikiLeaks, an international non-profit organization that publishes news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources, in 2006. The organization had created a storm in 2010 when it published a series of leaks that had included classified details and logs about the Afghanistan war and the Iraq War. Soon after this, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks. In November 2010, the government of Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for Julian on allegations of s*xual misconduct, an act that was seen as a pretext for his extradition from Sweden to the United States. After losing his battle against extradition to Sweden, he had breached bail and taken refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, in June 2012. He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012. Swedish prosecutors eventually dropped their investigation in 2019 but in April of that year, his asylum was withdrawn after a series of disputes with the Ecuadorian authorities. He was then arrested by British authorities and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. In May 2019, the United States government had further charged him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. In January 2021, a judge in the United Kingdom ruled against the United States request to extradite him on account of his mental health and risk of suicide. Later that month, he was denied bail, pending an appeal by the United States. In December 2021, the High Court in London ruled that Julian could be extradited to the United States. In March 2022, the UK Supreme Court refused him permission to appeal that verdict.

Julian Paul Hawkins

Julian

Cancer

Townsville, Queensland, Australia

HMP Belmarsh, London, England, United Kingdom

Julian had attended multiple schools including the Goolmangar Primary School in New South Wales (19791983) and the Townsville State High School, a secondary school in his hometown of Townsville. He had also been homeschooled for a while.

After his high school graduation, he studied programming, mathematics, and physics at Central Queensland University (1994), an Australian public university, and the University of Melbourne (20032006), a public research university in Melbourne. He, however,did not complete his courses.

Editor, Publisher, Activist

Julian Assanges net worth had been $300 thousand according to CelebrityNetWorth.com.

Slim

6 ft 2 in or 188 cm

72 kg or 158.5 lbs

Julian has dated

In an email in January 2007, Julian had mentioned that he had a daughter as well.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a German activist, had revealed, in his 2011 memoir titled Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the Worlds Most Dangerous Website, that Julian had fathered several other children.

In 2015, in an open letter, Julian had mentioned details about another son.

He has also revealed that his youngest child, before his 2 sons with Stella, was French.

He had forced these children and their mothers to change identities and reduce contact with him because of the death threats that he had received due to his activism.

White

He is primarily of English descent.

Gray

Blue

Straight

Featured Image by Julian Assange / Instagram

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Julian Assange Height, Weight, Family, Spouse, Education ...

LONDON (AP) Britains top court on Monday refused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face spying charges.

The court said it refused because the case didnt raise an arguable point of law.

Assange, 50, has sought for years to avoid a trial in the U.S. on a series of charges related to WikiLeaks publication of a huge trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

The case is now expected to be formally sent to British Home Secretary Priti Patel, who will decide whether to grant the extradition.

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.

Mondays news narrows Assanges options, but his defense team may still seek to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service, said Assanges lawyers can also seek to challenge other points that he had lost in the original district court decision.

Barry Pollack, Assanges U.S.-based lawyer, said Monday that it was extremely disappointing that Britains Supreme Court is unwilling to hear the appeal.

Mr. Assange will continue the legal process fighting his extradition to the United States to face criminal charges for publishing truthful and newsworthy information, he said.

Assanges British lawyers, Birnberg Peirce Solicitors, said they can make submissions to the Home Secretary within the next four weeks, ahead of her making any decision.

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.

But 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 U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They argue that his case is politically motivated.

If convicted, Assanges lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in jail 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.

Assanges partner Stella Moris, who has two young children with him, said Sunday they have been given permission to marry in prison later this month.

___

Eric Tucker in Washington and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

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Julian Assange denied permission to appeal by UK's top ...

Julian Assange, even as he is being judicially and procedurally tormented, has braved every legal hoop in his effort to avoid extradition to the United States. Kept and caged in Belmarsh throughout this farce of judicial history, he risks being extradited to face 18 charges, 17 based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.

District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser initially ruled on January 4, 2021 against the US, finding that Assange would be at serious risk of suicide given the risk posed by Special Administrative Measures and the possibility that he would end his days in the ADX Florence supermax facility. It took little to read between the lines: the US prison system would do away with Assange; to extradite him would be oppressive within the meaning of the US-UK Extradition Treaty.

The US Department of Justice appealed to the High Court of England and Wales, citing a range of implausible arguments. Baraitser, they argued, could have sought reassurances from the prosecutors about Assanges welfare. A number of diplomatic reassurances were duly offered after the fact. Assange would not be subjected to SAMs, or spend his time in the supermax facility. Adequate medical attention to mitigate the risk of suicide would also be provided. Just to sweeten matters, the publisher would be able to serve the post-trial and post-appeal phase of his sentence in Australia.

Every one of these undertakings was served with a leaden caveat. Everything was dependent on how Assange would behave in captivity, leaving it to the authorities to decide on whether to honour such undertakings. Given that the US authorities have previously instigated surveillance operations against Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy, and contemplated his possible poisoning and abduction, such undertakings sounded crudely counterfeit.

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Ian Burnett, and Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, in their December 2021 decision, ate from the hands of the US prosecution. They did not accept that the USA refrained for tactical reasons from offering assurances at an earlier stage, or acted in bad faith in choosing only to offer them at the appeal stage. There was no evident basis for assuming that the USA has not given the assurances in good faith. It followed that Assanges suicide risk would be minimised he had, the judges reasoned, little to worry about. He would not be subjected to SAMs or be sent to ADX Florence.

Assanges legal team made several formidable arguments, suggesting that the US prosecution had inappropriately introduced fresh evidence against an adverse ruling in order to repair holes identified in their case. Natural justice issues were also at stake given the timing of the move to provide assurances at such late stage. There were also issues with the legality of a requirement on judges to call for reassurances rather than proceeding to order discharge.

The defence readied themselves for an appeal. In a short ruling on January 24, Lord Burnett kept the grounds of the appeal to the UK Supreme Court anaemically thin. Assurances [over treatment] are at the heart of many extradition proceedings. The question left facing the Supreme Court was a lonely one: In what circumstances can an appellate court receive assurances from a requesting state which were not before the court at first instance in extradition proceedings. This did not even consider the point that diplomatic assurances are not legal considerations but political undertakings to be modified and broken.

Other public interest grounds were also excluded. No mention of press freedom. No mention of the role played by the CIA, the dangers facing Assange of ill-treatment in the US prison system, or risks to his mental health. There was nothing about the fact that the prosecution case is wretchedly shoddy, built upon the fabricated testimony of Sigurdur Siggi Thordarson, famed conman, convict and trickster. This was an appeal encumbered with the serious prospect of failure.

Despite this, Assanges partner, Stella Moris, was initially confident that the High Court had done enough, certifying that we had raised a point of law of general public importance and that the Supreme Court had good grounds to hear this appeal.

On March 14, Moris and others of same mind were roundly disabused. The Supreme Court comprising Lord Reed, Lord Hodge and Lord Briggs, were curt in dismissal. In the words of the Deputy Support Registrar, The Court ordered that permission to appeal be refused because the application does not raise an arguable point of law.

Birnberg Peirce Solicitors, the firm representing Assange, expressedregret that the opportunity has not been taken to consider the troubling circumstances in which Requesting States can provide caveated guarantees after the conclusion of a full evidence hearing.In the matter of Assange, the Court found that there was a real risk of prohibited treatment in the event of his onward extradition.

Dismay at the decision was expressed by Amnesty Internationals Deputy Research Director for Europe, Julia Hall. The Supreme Court has missed an opportunity to clarify the UKs acceptance of deeply flawed diplomatic assurances against torture. Such assurances are inherently unreliable and leave people at risk of severe abuse upon extradition or other transfer.

The next stage in this diabolical torment of the WikiLeaks founder involves remitting the case to Westminster Magistrates Court, which will only serve a ceremonial role in referring the decision to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel. Only the most starry-eyed optimists will expect extradition to be barred. (Patel is fixated with proposed changes to the UK Official Secrets Act that will expansively criminalise journalists and whistleblowers who publish classified information.) The defence will do their best in submissions to Patel ahead of the decision, but it is likely that they will have to seek judicial review.

In the likely event of Patels approval, the defence may make a freedom of press argument, though this is by no means a clear run thing. It will still be up to the higher courts as to whether they would be willing to grant leave to hear further arguments. Whichever way the cards fall, this momentous, torturous journey of paperwork, briefs, lawyers, and prison will continue to sap life and cause grief.

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Rotten Rulings: Julian Assange and the UK Supreme Court ...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has married his fiance atBelmarsh Prison, just weeks before the third anniversary of his arrest.

Assange has been held in the high-security prison since he was dragged out of London's Ecuadorian embassy in 2019. He was given permission to marry last year.

He is fighting extradition to the United States, where he is wanted for an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information after WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

His partner Stella Moris, 38, a lawyer, arrived at the southeast London jail in a dress designed by Dame Vivienne Westwood.

She was joined by the couple's sons Gabriel, four, and Max, two, and Assange's father and brother, Richard and Gabriel Shipton.

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Thirty of his supporters gathered outside the prison with a marquee and wedding cake. Adorned with white flowers and yellow ribbons, a sign at the entrance read: "The world is with you - free Assange."

Assange, 50, has always denied any wrongdoing and won support for his case from human rights organisations and journalist groups across the world.

He spent seven years in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.

He was arrested in the embassy after Ecuador revoked his asylum status.

Read more:Fugitive or hero? Timeline of Julian Assange's legal battle

Ms Moris spoke of her joy at being allowed to marry the WikiLeaks founder - despite restrictions being placed on their wedding.

Four guests and two witnesses were allowed to attend the ceremony, as well as two security guards.

She said before the wedding: "Obviously we are very excited, even though the circumstances are very restrictive.

"All the guests and witnesses must leave as soon as the ceremony is over, even though that will be before normal visiting time ends.

"Julian is looking forward to the wedding because it is finally happening, many months after we first made the request."

Read more:Assange put through 'hell' at embassy, says former diplomat

Westwood also designed a kilt for Assange, whose parents are of Scottish heritage.

The couple are paying for the ceremony, and instead of sending gifts, they have suggested supporters donate to the new official Crowdfunder campaign, sponsor a park bench or similar in their area, and put up posters calling for Assange to be freed.

A Prison Service spokesperson said: "All weddings in prisons must meet the requirements outlined in the Prison Service policy."

The service said photography for weddings in prisons is facilitated by prison staff, in line with "established national policy on photographing prisoners", adding: "The relevant policy makes clear the governor can block images being taken if it is believed they will be shared publicly, which can compromise prison security. Accordingly, photos will be taken by prison staff."

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange marries at Belmarsh ...

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Top secret Julian Assange and Pak NFT collaboration is wikileaked - State-Journal.com

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange has won the first stage of his bid to appeal a decision which could see him be extradited to America.

In December 2021, the High Court ruled in a sensational U-turn that Assange can be extradited to the US.

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Julian Assangeis an editor and founder ofWikiLeaks, a source which provides news leaks and classified information obtained by anonymous sources.

WikiLeaks rose to prominence in 2010 as it published a series of leaks provided by aUSArmy intelligence analyst namedChelsea Manning.

The information included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video, the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs, and Cablegate.

Being in fear of the US government, Assange took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London.

He was granted asylum by Ecuador due to fears of political persecution and extradition to the United States.

Assange remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London for approximately seven years.

He was granted Ecuadorian citizenship in 2018 but the asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with the Ecuadorian authorities in 2019.

Assange has two children with lawyer and girlfriend Stella Morriswhile living at the Ecuadorian embassy.

The pair have been engaged since 2017.

He was previously married to Teresa from 1989 to 1999, with whom he has one son.

Was Assange accused of sexual assault?

Julian Assange

Aside from leaking thousands of classified US government information in 2010 and 2011, Assange also allegedly took part inleaking emails Hillary Clinton sentand received when she was Secretary of State as the 2016 presidential election was approaching.

The US Intelligence concluded that the Russian government carried out a hacking campaign as part of broader efforts to interfere in the 2016 United States elections.

In 2018, 12 Russian intelligence officers were indicted on criminal charges by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The charges against the Russians included carrying out the computer hacking and working with WikiLeaks and other organizations to spread stolen documents.

In May of 2019, he was found guilty of breaching the Bail Act and was sentenced to serve 50 weeks in a UK prison.

The US government also unsealed an indictment against Assange for alleged computer intrusion, related to the leaks provided by Manning.

Towards the end of May, the US government also charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917.

The Department of Justice"broadened" the charges against himin June, claiming he conspired with the web activist group Anonymous.

If convicted, he would have been held in isolation at the maximum-security Supermax jail in Colorado, described as 'a "fate worse than death" by a former warden.

As of December 2021, Assange is being held at theHM Prison Belmarshin the UK.

Hesuffered a strokein early December while at the prison, with the CPS approving a wedding application a month prior so he couldmarry fiance Stella Morris.

He has been fighting extradition to the US with his lawyers previously arguing he is a high suicide risk and is too ill to be sent to America for a trial.

In January 24, 2022, his lawyers won the first stage of his bid against the Supreme Court's decision that he can be extradited to the US, meaning he could remain in the UK.

Speaking outside the court, Assange's fiance, Stella Moris said: "Make no mistake, we won today in court.

"But let's not forget that every time we win, as long as this case isn't dropped, as long as Julian isn't free, he continues to suffer."

Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006.

The site appears to still be running, as the last post appears to have been made in October of 2019.

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Who is Julian Assange and where is he now? - The Sun

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange greets supporters from a balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2017. Britain's top court on Monday refused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face spying charges. Frank Augstein/AP hide caption

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange greets supporters from a balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2017. Britain's top court on Monday refused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face spying charges.

LONDON Britain's top court on Monday refused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face spying charges.

The court said it refused because the case "didn't raise an arguable point of law."

Assange, 50, has sought for years to avoid a trial in the U.S. on a series of charges related to WikiLeaks' publication of a huge trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

The case is now expected to be formally sent to British Home Secretary Priti Patel, who will decide whether to grant the extradition.

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 wouldn't 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 court's decision, saying that the U.S. promises were enough to guarantee that Assange would be treated humanely.

Monday's news narrows Assange's options, but his defense team may still seek to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service, said Assange's lawyers can also seek to challenge other points that he had lost in the original district court decision.

Barry Pollack, Assange's U.S.-based lawyer, said Monday that it was "extremely disappointing" that Britain's Supreme Court is unwilling to hear the appeal.

"Mr. Assange will continue the legal process fighting his extradition to the United States to face criminal charges for publishing truthful and newsworthy information," he said.

Assange's British lawyers, Birnberg Peirce Solicitors, said they can make submissions to the Home Secretary within the next four weeks, ahead of her making any decision.

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.

But 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 U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They argue that his case is politically motivated.

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

Assange has been held at Britain's 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.

Assange's partner Stella Moris, who has two young children with him, said Sunday they have been given permission to marry in prison later this month.

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Julian Assange is dealt a legal blow as he fights extradition to the U.S. : NPR