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WHY HAS THE CASE DRAGGED ON SO LONG?While the U.S. criminal case against Assange was only unsealed in 2019, his freedom has been restricted for more than a dozen years.Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country.He was arrested by British police after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy.Although Sweden dropped its sex crimes investigation, Assange has remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison while the extradition battle with the U.S. continues.A judge in London initially blocked Assange’s transfer to the U.S. on the grounds he was likely to kill himself if held in harsh American prison conditions.But subsequent courts cleared the way for the move after U.S. authorities provided assurances he wouldn’t experience the severe treatment that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.Stella Assange and her husband’s supporters have criticized those assurances as being meaningless because they are conditional.WHAT ARE POSSIBLE OUTCOMES FROM THE HEARING?If the London court rejects Assange’s plea for a full appeal, he could be extradited to the U.S. once British officials approve his removal.His legal team plans to appeal an adverse ruling to the European Court of Human Rights, but they fear he could possibly be transferred before the court in Strasbourg, France, could halt his removal.If he prevails at next week’s hearing, it would set the stage for an appeal process that is likely to further drag out the case.“This procedure has been marked by prolonged and creeping time frames,” Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said. “We call it punishment through process. It is obviously a deliberate attempt to wear him down to punish him by taking this long.”While the U.K. Supreme Court rejected Assange’s petition, saying he didn’t raise an “arguable point of law,” his wife said his new bid will raise several points that are grounds for appeal.Lawyers for Assange plan to argue he can’t get a fair trial in the U.S., that a U.S.-U.K. treaty prohibits extradition for political offenses and that the crime of espionage was not meant to apply to publishers.“The drafters of the Espionage Act did not intend for publishers to fall within its ambit,” Stella Assange wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Unchallenged expert evidence showed that receipt and publication of state secrets is routine, and that there was an ‘unbroken practice of non-prosecution’ of publishers. The prosecution ‘crosses a new legal frontier’ and ‘breaks all legal precedents.’”
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WikiLeaks founder Assange may be near the end of his long fight to stay out of the US
