Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage and of hacking government computers, a British judge has decided.
Lawyers for US authorities are to appeal against the ruling, which rejected arguments that the WikiLeaks co-founder would not get a fair trial in the US but blocked extradition on the basis that procedures in prisons there would not prevent him from potentially taking his own life. […]
But turning to evidence by eminent medical experts about Assange’s precarious mental health, she said: “The overall impression is of a depressed and sometimes despairing man, who is genuinely fearful about his future.”
“I find that the mental condition of Mr Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America,” she concluded. […]
In her ruling, which triggered elation among Assange’s supporters that he was not being extradited, but dismay that it was solely based on health grounds, the judge said she had no reason to doubt that “the usual constitutional and procedural protections” would be applied to a trial he might face in the US.
Sending Assange across the Atlantic would not breach a bar on extradition for “political offences” she said, and she had no reason to doubt that “the usual constitutional and procedural protections” would be applied to a trial he might face in the US. She sided with the argument of lawyers for US authorities who had denied Assange was being prosecuted merely for publishing diplomatic cables and military files. Her ruling was that his actions, if proven, would “amount to offences in this jurisdiction that would not be protected by his right to freedom of speech”. Läs artikel