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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange last month appealed a decision by the British government to order his extradition to the United States.
The appeal, filed in high court on Friday, is the latest twist in a decade-long legal saga sparked by the release of classified U.S. documents on his website. No further details on the appeal were immediately available.
Assange’s supporters staged a protest ahead of his 51st birthday on Saturday, and his wife Stella Assange gathered outside the Home Office on Friday to call for his release.
Julian Assange has fought for years in British courts to avoid being sent to the United States, where he faces 17 counts of espionage and one charge of misusing a computer. U.S. prosecutors say the Australian citizen helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning put his life at risk by stealing classified diplomatic cables and military documents later released by WikiLeaks.
To his supporters, Assange is an undercover reporter who exposes U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A British court ruled in April that Assange could be sent to the United States to stand trial, sending the case to the British government for a decision. Home Secretary Priti Patel signed an order on June 17 authorizing Assange’s extradition. The Australian government has been under increasing pressure to intervene, but last month Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejected calls for him to publicly ask Washington to drop the prosecution of Assange.
Assange’s supporters and lawyers insist he is a journalist and entitled to First Amendment protections for free speech.They argue that the case is politically motivated and that he will face inhumane treatment without a fair trial in the United States
Assange remains at the high-security Belmarsh prison in London, where he has been since he was arrested in 2019 for evading bail in another legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face charges of rape and sexual assault.
Sweden dropped a sex crime investigation in November 2019 as time passed, but a British judge kept Assange in jail pending the outcome of his extradition case.
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