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Key Points
- Assange was arrested in 2019 after spending seven years holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy.
- UK courts previously blocked his extradition, but the High Court reversed the decision on appeal in 2021.
- Assange’s lawyers are now appealing on grounds including that the decades-long prison sentence he faces is “disproportionate”.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was absent from a London court due to illness on Tuesday, as his lawyers launched a likely last bid to appeal against his extradition to the United States to face espionage charges.
Washington indicted Assange multiple times between 2018 and 2020 over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret military and diplomatic files on the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Stella Assange likened her husband’s case to that of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition activist who died in prison on Friday while serving a three-decade sentence.
“Julian is a political prisoner and his life is at risk. What happened to Navalny can happen to Julian,” she told reporters outside court where a large crowd called for his release.
On the first of two days of evidence before two High Court judges, the 52-year-old’s leading lawyer said previous rulings contained “errors of law” and that the US charges against him are “political”.
“There is a real risk that he will suffer flagrant denial of justice” if sent to the US, Edward Fitzgerald KC, one of Assange’s lawyers, argued.
Earlier, Fitzgerald told the judges that Assange was “not well today” and would not attend in person or via video.
Lawyers for the US government will present their arguments on Wednesday. It was unclear if Assange will attend then.
US President Joe Biden has faced sustained domestic and international pressure to drop the 18-count indictment against Assange in a Virginia federal court, which was filed under his predecessor Donald Trump.
Major media organisations, press freedom advocates and the Australian parliament are among those decrying the prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act, which has never been used over the publishing of classified information.
Washington alleges Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to conduct “one of the largest compromises of classified information” in US history.
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