Julian Assange Extradition Delayed as UK Court Asks for Assurance He Won’t Receive Death Penalty

A High Court in London is seeking assurances from the U.S. government that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange won’t receive the death penalty if his extradition is approved.

Besides taking the death penalty off the table, the UK court wants the U.S. to guarantee that the 52-year-old Assange would be granted free speech protections under the First Amendment, a panel of two judges wrote in a ruling published Tuesday. They are also asking for assurances that Assange wouldn’t face prejudice at his trial in the U.S. because of his Australian citizenship. The U.S. government has three weeks to submit the requested assurances, the judges stated.

Assange is asking the High Court for permission to appeal his extradition to the U.S., where he is charged with 18 counts related to publishing secret government, military, and diplomatic intelligence documents on WikiLeaks. In 2010, Assange published a classified video of a 2007 attack by a U.S. helicopter that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, Iraq, including two staffers from Reuters. WikiLeaks subsequently published 250,000 diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world.

In its ruling on Tuesday, the High Court delayed its decision on Assange’s appeal until May 20. Should the U.S. government decline to submit the assurances requested by the High Court, Assange’s request to appeal the extradition will be granted and an appeal hearing will be held.

It’s not yet clear whether the U.S. will offer the assurances sought by the High Court. Officials claim that by publishing the secret documents, Assange put the lives of the civilians working with the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan at risk.

WikiLeaks attorney Jennifer Robinson said she was not confident that the legal team could rely on any assurances from the U.S. government, the BBC reported, adding that the U.S. should drop the case altogether.

“US diplomatic assurances are not worth the paper they’re written on,” Robinson said, according to the outlet.

Assange has been held in a high-security prison in London since 2019, the same year Ecuador withdrew the asylum status it had granted the WikiLeaks founder for seven years. Prior to his years-long stay in the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange was accused of rape and sexual assault by two WikiLeaks volunteers in Sweden, which he has always denied. Assange has claimed the Swedish case was set up by the U.S. as a pretext to extradite him.

Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, has said she fears her husband will commit suicide if placed in isolation in a U.S. prison. On Tuesday, Stella Assange said he was being punished for his work as a journalist, according to NPR. The U.S. has stated that it does not consider Assange a journalist.

“Julian is a political prisoner. He is a journalist, and he is being persecuted because he exposed the true cost of war, in human lives,” Stella Assange said.