LONDON — A London court ruled Monday that Julian Assange, the embattled WikiLeaks founder, could appeal his extradition to the United States, a move that opens a new chapter in his prolonged fight against being sent to the U.S. to face trial on espionage charges.
Two High Court judges said they would allow a full appeal to be heard and gave Assange’s lawyers until Friday to submit a full case outline to the court.
Assange, 52, has been held in Belmarsh, one of Britain’s highest-security prisons, in southeastern London since 2019 as his fight against the extradition order has proceeded through the courts.
Earlier this year, the High Court asked the U.S. government to give assurances that Assange would be granted protections under the U.S. Constitution, including that he would not be denied constitutional rights automatically granted to Americans just because he is Australian and that the death penalty would not be imposed.
The U.S. Embassy in Britain responded in a letter sent to Britain’s Foreign Office in April. Assange’s legal team accepted that the U.S. had guaranteed he would not face the death penalty but argued in court that the other assurances did not go far enough to meet the court’s request.
The United States had promised that if Assange were extradited, he would “have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial” First Amendment protections, but added, “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. courts.”
Assange’s legal team viewed that caveat as unsatisfactory. “We say this is a blatantly inadequate assurance,” said one of his lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald. He argued that “there is no guarantee that he will be even permitted to rely on the First Amendment.”
In their Monday decision, the judges agreed Assange had grounds to appeal his extradition on that basis.
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