Assange’s lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, has opened a final attempt at the British court to prevent his extradition to the U.S., which wants him tried for violating the Espionage Act.
Fitzgerald said if extradited, Assange will “suffer a flagrant denial of justice.”
American lawyers argued that Assange threatened the “strategic and national security interests of the United States.”
Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, said her husband could die if he is extradited. She told supporters the U.S. and U.K. authorities “can’t get away with this.”
“Julian needs his freedom, and we all need the truth,” she said.
Although he won an initial bid to prevent extradition in 2021
, British courts have since overturned that decision. The U.K. has already signed extradition papers.
Assange spent seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London before he was kicked out and imprisoned by U.K. authorities. He has been fighting his extradition ever since.
The WikiLeaks founder published the first damning U.S. military documents in 2010, with the leaked files showing alleged American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among the releases was a video of a U.S. Apache
helicopter shooting down civilians in Iraq.
Assange got the files from former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was convicted based on the Espionage Act but had her sentence commuted by former President Obama.
The U.S. accuses Assange of working with Manning to hack into sensitive military material.
Read more at TheHill.com.
