U.K. Approves Extradition for Julian Assange

The journalistic database WikiLeaks called out today’s ruling by U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel as a “dark day for press freedom,” CNN reports. 50-year-old Julian Assange, their founder, is wanted for 18 criminal charges in the US stemming from his organization’s leak of classified documents in 2010, though NBC News asserts he still “denie[s] any wrongdoing” in his actions. Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison in London for the past three years while the US pushed for his extradition. Last December, Washington won an appeal in London over this battle, reversing the U.K.’s previous decision not to extradite on concerns of Assange’s deteriorating mental health.

WikiLeaks hasn’t been the only group protesting Assange’s criminal indictment, which CNN states could result in up to 175 years in prison. Executive members of Amnesty International, the U.K.’s National Union of Journalists, and Australia’s Foreign Office have all issued statements today criticizing the harmful treatment of Assange for actions that many would simply consider a journalist’s duty. Assange’s legal counsel will continue to appeal his case and potentially take it to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, reports CNN.

Though WikiLeaks published the Iraq and Afghanistan war-related defense documents in 2010, Assange wasn’t charged until 2019, according to the Department of Justice. NBC News states that 34-year-old activist Chelsea Manning, a former Army analyst who had leaked many of these files to WikiLeaks, received her charges and a sentence of 35 years in 2013, but her sentence was commuted by President Obama in 2017.