UK court issues order to extradite Julian Assange to US to face trial

On Wednesday, a United Kingdom (UK) court issued an official judgment extraditing Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, to the United States to face charges related to the publishing of secret material linked to the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

Priti Patel, the interior minister, now has the final say, albeit Assange has 14 days to appeal any decision to allow the transfer.

A magistrate’s decision in central London on Wednesday takes the lengthy legal dispute in the UK courts nearer to a resolution.

However, Assange’s attorneys have promised to make submissions to Patel and, if necessary, to launch more arguments on other issues in the case.

His lawyers, Birnberg Peirce Solicitors, stated in a statement last month that “no appeal to the High Court has yet been made by him in respect of the other critical points he highlighted earlier”.

“Of course, that distinct appeal process has yet to be started”.

Last month, Assange was denied permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court against deportation to the United States, where he might face a life sentence.

America wants him prosecuted for the leak of 500,000 secret military files from the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 50-year-old Australian looked to have earned a relief in January of last year, claiming that being held in solitary confinement at a maximum-security US institution would put him at risk of suicide.

The US government filed an appeal, and its attorneys cited diplomatic assurances that Assange would not be kept in harsh isolation at a federal jail and would get sufficient care during a two-day appeal hearing in October.

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Assange appealed the decision, and in January, two judges granted him permission to file an application with the nation’s highest court on “laws of general public significance”.

However, the court denied the appeal, stating that the application “didn’t establish an arguable question of law”.