The United States said it would file an appeal against the decision Monday and called for Assange to be jailed while the trial continues.
Judge Vanessa Baraitser said in her ruling on Wednesday that “there are substantial grounds to believe that if Mr Assange is released today he would not be handed over to the courts and face the appeal procedure.”
The 49-year-old Australian will remain in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he has already served a 50-week sentence for breaching bail conditions in 2012 when he entered the London embassy in Ecuador to avoid extradition to Sweden.
Assange faces an 18-count U.S. federal indictment for his role in publishing military and diplomatic diplomatic cables.
In April 2019, the U.S. charged him with “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion,” a charge that carries a maximum sentence of five years. In May 2019, the federal government charged Assange with 17 more charges under the Espionage Act for his role in publishing military and diplomatic diplomatic cables.
Each of these charges carries a possible ten-year sentence, meaning that if convicted, Assange could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.
The U.S. government alleges that Assange actively solicited classified information from former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who obtained thousands of pages of classified material and provided Assange with diplomatic cables. from the State Department, important reports of activities related to the Iraq war, and information related to detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
Assange’s lawyers and supporters have long argued that the extradition order and the charges against him are politically motivated and that, if carried out, it would have a gruesome effect on press freedoms in both the United States and the United States. in the United Kingdom.