January 4th According to Reuters, on January 4th local time, a judge of a local court in London, England, will rule whether to agree to the U.S. government’s extradition of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks website.
It is reported that Vanessa Baraitser, a judge of the London District Court, will make a ruling at 10:00 a.m. local time on January 4. If she agrees to the extradition application, the British Home Secretary Priti Patel will make a final decision.
The report said that regardless of the outcome of the ruling, the losing party may appeal to the High Court of London, and the case may eventually be transferred to the Supreme Court of England. This also means that the trial of this case may be delayed for some time.
According to previous reports, Assange created the WikiLeaks website in 2006. In 2010, the website exposed a large number of confidential documents of the U.S. government about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In November of the same year, the Swedish Prosecutor’s Office launched a criminal investigation into Assange on suspicion of rape.
Assange was in England at that time and refused to plead guilty after being arrested by the British police. In 2012, while on bail, he entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom and stayed in detention for many years. On April 11, 2019, the Ecuadorian government withdrew Assange’s asylum, and Assange was immediately arrested by British police. At present, the United States is seeking the extradition of Assange.
The U.S. lawyer who filed an extradition request for Assange accused Assange of more than a dozen counts. Assange’s lawyer believes that once Assange is convicted, he will face a maximum of 175 years in prison.
