The British judiciary refused, on Monday, a request to extradite the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, to the United States, which is demanding him for publishing hundreds of thousands of secret documents, indicating the possibility of his suicide.
However, the case of the 49-year-old Australian, who has become to his supporters a symbol of the struggle for media freedom, may not stop there, as the US authorities have informed the court of their intention to appeal Judge Vanessa Barritzer´s ruling.
While the judge rejected the arguments related to defending freedom of expression, she considered that "the measures described by the United States will not prevent him from committing suicide" because he may face "conditions of near complete isolation" in the US prison system. Therefore, she refused his extradition request for "mental health reasons".
Assange remains detained in Belmarsh prison until Wednesday´s session to consider the release request.
Outside the Old Bailey criminal court, the verdict was greeted with glee by some 30 people shouting "Free Julian Assange" and "We win!"
"Today marks Julian´s victory (...) It is a first step towards justice in this case," said Stella Morris, Assange´s attorney, who became his partner and had two children with her upon leaving the court. An end to legal prosecutions against Assange.
"The battle is not over yet," said WikiLeaks editor Kristin Harvinson, adding that, however, "this is a moment of hope at the start of the new year."
Edward Snowden, who revealed to the press the communications surveillance programs of the US National Security Agency, said he hoped the move would represent the "end" of the case. Amnesty International welcomed this move but warned that it "does not exempt the UK from initiating these legal proceedings on political grounds."
It is not known what the position of the US President-elect Joe Biden´s administration will be towards the founder of WikiLeaks. Assange went on trial during President Donald Trump´s term. Meanwhile, the US judiciary stopped the prosecution of the founder of WikiLeaks during the era of his predecessor, Barack Obama, of whom Biden was a deputy.
But only 10 years ago, he compared Assange to a "hi-tech terrorist" less than a month ago.
In an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel Sunday, Morris indicated that Assange, who is currently in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London, "has not met any of his lawyers since March."
And condemned, saying that "Julian´s defense team was not able to perform its work to a large extent ... The situation in Belmarsh prison is not comparable to the conditions of detention that he will be exposed to in the United States if he is extradited," considering that Assange "will be buried alive."
Assange is being prosecuted by the US judiciary on charges of espionage in particular, and because of its publication, as of 2010, more than 700,000 confidential documents related to US military and diplomatic activities, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. If convicted, he could be imprisoned for 175 years.
In her ruling, the British judge said there was "insufficient evidence of pressure from the Trump administration on prosecutors" and "little or no evidence of President Trump´s hostility to Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks."
She explained that Julian Assange´s deal with hacker groups to obtain documents "made him go beyond the role of investigative journalism."
The American "Freedom of the Press" organization expressed "great satisfaction" with the decision, but regretted that it was not motivated by freedom of the press, and said, "The judge decided that the prison system is repressive and cannot be extradited."
The United States accuses the founder of WikiLeaks of endangering US intelligence sources, and Assange denies the accusation. Among the documents that were leaked was a video tape showing the killing of civilians by US soldiers´ fire in Iraq in July 2007, and among the dead were two journalists from the Reuters news agency.
And Harvinson said in a statement sent at the end of the week, that "the mere presentation of this case before the courts, and its continuation for a long time, constitutes an unprecedented and widespread attack on freedom of expression."
During the five-week hearings in February and September, Assange´s attorneys denounced a “political” process based on “lies,” and stressed that the US-British agreement “explicitly” prohibits the extradition of wanted persons for “transgressions of a political nature.”
Assange was arrested in April 2019 after seven years he spent at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought refuge after violating the terms of his bail, for fear of being extradited to the United States or Sweden, where he faced a case of rape that was stabbed and has since been dropped.
The UN special rapporteur on torture, Niels Melzer, has denounced the conditions of detention of WikiLeaks founder. And he wrote an open letter to Donald Trump on December 22, asking the outgoing US president to pardon the founder of WikiLeaks, because he is not an "enemy of the American people."
