The High Court of London has ruled in favor of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and he will have the opportunity to appeal the decision to extradite him to the United States. UNN reports this with reference to CNN.
Details
Assange's legal team argued that the judges should not take into account the assurances of US prosecutors that the WikiLeaks founder could rely on the rights and protections provided by the US First Amendment.
Assange is wanted by US authorities on espionage charges related to his organization's publication of thousands of classified documents and diplomatic cables in 2010 and 2011. If convicted, he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars.
In March, the court postponed the extradition decision because the judges wanted to receive a number of guarantees, including from the United States, that it would not seek the death penalty for the 52-year-old Australian citizen.
Assange has spent the last five years in London's maximum security Belmarsh prison, and before that he spent almost seven years hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in the English capital, trying to avoid arrest. He claims that his extradition is politically motivated.
Addendum
WikiLeaks gained international notoriety in 2010 when it published a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by U.S. forces in Baghdad that killed two Reuters journalists.
Since this high-profile publication, the site has published hundreds of thousands of other classified files, releasing information that has often embarrassed Washington.