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The US must provide assurances that Julian Assange will not receive the death penalty if convicted, before a UK court rules on whether he can appeal against his extradition.
The court has adjourned its decision by three weeks to give the US government time to comply.
US authorities say the Wikileaks founder endangered lives by publishing thousands of classified documents.
His lawyers have argued that the case is form of "state retaliation".
In a High Court judgment on Tuesday, Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Johnson said that Mr Assange would be able to bring an appeal on three grounds, unless assurances were given by the United States.
These assurances are that the 52-year-old would be protected by and allowed to rely on the First Amendment - which protects freedom of speech in the US; that he would not be "prejudiced at trial" due to his nationality; and that he would not face the death penalty if he is convicted.
Judges have given the US authorities three weeks to make those assurances, with a final hearing potentially taking place on 20 May.
"If assurances are not given then we will grant leave to appeal without a further hearing," said Dame Victoria in the court's ruling.
"If assurances are given then we will give the parties an opportunity to make further submissions before we make a final decision on the application for leave to appeal."
See also: Julian Assange faces further wait over extradition ruling
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 26 2024, @04:57PM (3 children)
So I remember some of the history here.
Back when Wikileaks was making the Bush administration look bad, the Democrats were largely cheering while the Republicans were largely calling for Assange's head on a platter, and shortly after that came the sexual misconduct accusations (with the absolute demand that he be physically in custody in Sweden with no assurances at all that he wouldn't be turned over to the US immediately after questioning) that put him on the run in the UK and then to the Ecuador embassy in London. Then in 2016, Wikileaks made Hillary Clinton look bad too, and suddenly the Democrats were also calling for Assange's scalp, and that's about the point where efforts started being made to force him out of the Ecuador embassy and into prison. And there he's been, for years since, all without trial.
He absolutely could make the argument that he's a political prisoner, and has been now for approximately 15 years, all for publishing information inconvenient to politicians, something that's supposed to be legal in a free country.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 26 2024, @05:48PM
> for publishing information inconvenient to politicians
No, for publishing information inconvenient to TLAs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Tuesday March 26 2024, @09:17PM (1 child)
I also remember some history, from that same period.
Katharine Gun leaked a secret memo in which the NSA requested the UK's aid in bugging the United Nations' offices of a number of nations. She didn't hide in a corner, and look what happened to her [wikipedia.org]
. Odd, eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2024, @10:56PM
There's a difference.
She was a one-time leak and she'll never do it again. Prosecuting any case against her would have either been empty of evidence or exposed a lot of info they didn't want to expose.
Assange set up wikileaks, which is an ongoing irritation to all the shady shits out there. Regardless of what he is charged with, his real death penalty crime is the on-going publishing of their dirty little secrets.