In a long-running legal saga, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has won a key legal battle in his attempt to avoid extradition to the United States on espionage charges. Two judges at London’s High Court ruled that Assange can appeal against his extradition order. The 52-year-old has been in custody in a high-security London prison since 2019, following his self-exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The charges are related to his organization’s publication of classified documents. The legal battle has spanned over a decade and a half.
The timeline of events in Assange’s legal saga dates back to 2006 when he founded WikiLeaks in Australia, which began publishing sensitive or classified documents. In 2010, WikiLeaks released almost half a million documents relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to a series of legal issues for Assange. Swedish prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him based on allegations of rape and molestation in August 2010. Assange denied the allegations and left Sweden for Britain in September 2010.
In the following years, Assange faced legal challenges in both Sweden and the United Kingdom. He surrendered to police in London in December 2010 and was detained pending an extradition hearing. After a district court ruled in February 2011 that Assange should be extradited to Sweden, he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in June 2012. Despite being granted political asylum by Ecuador, Assange continued to face legal battles, including the loss of his bid to cancel an arrest warrant in Sweden in July 2014.
The legal saga continued with Swedish prosecutors dropping some investigations against Assange in August 2015 due to the statute of limitations. However, an investigation into a rape allegation remained active. Assange claimed “total vindication” in February 2016 as the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that he had been unlawfully detained. After several developments in 2018, including the revocation of his asylum status by Ecuador and his arrest by London police, Assange faced a new indictment by the U.S. government in May 2019 over WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents.
Various legal rulings and appeals followed, leading to a British judge ruling in January 2021 that Assange could not be extradited to the U.S. due to concerns about his mental health. However, the High Court granted the U.S. government permission to appeal this ruling in July 2021. Despite a ruling in December 2021 that U.S. assurances about Assange’s detention were sufficient, the Supreme Court in Britain refused to grant Assange permission to appeal his extradition in March 2022. The ongoing legal battle led to a final legal bid in February 2024 to stop Assange’s extradition, with High Court judges giving U.S. authorities three weeks to provide further assurances. In May 2024, the High Court ruled that Assange could mount a new appeal based on free-speech protections and his status as a non-U.S. citizen, with the hearing date yet to be determined.
