Julian Assange has been detained or exiled by himself in London for most of a decade.
Photographer: Jack Taylor / Getty Images
Photographer: Jack Taylor / Getty Images
A UK judge will rule on Monday on whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges after weeks of talking about a possible Donald Trump pardon.
The decision by a London judge will come after President Trump, whose administration filed the charges, issued a large number of pardons to political allies. And lawyers say Trump’s chances of clemency are better than a judge buying Assange’s arguments that his human rights will be trampled on in the United States.
“It is very rare for magistrates to reject U.S. extradition requests,” said Anthony Hanratty, a BDB Pitmans lawyer in London who specializes in extradition cases. “There is a pretty strong assumption that the United States will meet its obligations in relation to human rights and the legal process.”
Assange, 49, has been detained or exiled by himself in London for most of a decade. He initially sought refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 instead of being questioned in a Swedish sexual assault case, which was later withdrawn. Last year, when he was expelled from the embassy, he faced U.S. charges related to WikiLeaks disclosures.
He is accused of working with U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain classified documents from databases containing about 90,000 reports of activities related to the war in Afghanistan, 400,000 related reports with the Iraq war and 250,000 State Department cables.
Read more: Assange receives support from another famous Leaker
In a couple of extradition hearings earlier this year, delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, Assange’s lawyers focused their arguments on allegations that he could not receive a fair trial in the United States.
But Assange garnered praise from Trump during the 2016 campaign when WikiLeaks posted emails that undermined Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. And it looks like Assange’s supporters have gone from the extradition battle to focusing on a possible pardon.
Assange’s fiancée, Stella Moris, has spent the past few months making direct requests to Trump via Twitter and appearances on Fox News.
“I beg you, please take him home for Christmas,” he tweeted last month.
WikiLeaks officials declined to comment ahead of Monday’s ruling and referred to Moris’ tweets. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.
The prospect of presidential intervention gained momentum early last year when Assange’s lawyers said a congressman and an associate of Trump met with Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in the summer of 2017 to discuss a pardon if he revealed the source behind the leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee.
The pardon fever has only grown in recent weeks after Trump issued pardons on more than a dozen people. The recipients were mostly political allies, including Paul Manafort, its former campaign manager, and Charles Kushner, the real estate developer and father of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Trump would oppose the pardon from his own administration. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, when he was director of the CIA, described WikiLeaks as a hostile force threatening the US
Unless pardoned, the extradition process to London is likely to drag on, regardless of how Judge Vanessa Baraitser rules on Monday. Hanratty said appeals could take 18 to 24 months with possible appeals to the UK Supreme Court and even the European Court of Human Rights.
(Updates with the first mention of a presidential pardon in the eleventh paragraph.)