Desk Report
Publish: 24 Jan 2022, 11:49 pm
Photo: AFP
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
was on Monday given permission to appeal against a decision to extradite him to
the United States.
Washington wants to put the 50-year-old
Australian on trial in connection with WikiLeaks' publication of 500,000 secret
military files relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The High Court in London in
December overturned a lower court's ruling not to send him to the United States
on the grounds he would be a suicide risk.
Lawyers for Assange then
challenged the decision, arguing that the country's highest court should rule
on "points of law of general public importance".
"The respondent's
application to certify a point of law is granted," said judges Ian Burnett
and Timothy Holroyde in a written ruling.
The judges said that they
themselves were not granting him a right of appeal at the Supreme Court.
But Assange had the right to
pursue the point of law in the highest court, which can decide whether to take
the case.
"Julian won," Stella
Morris, his fiancee and the mother of his two young children, wrote on Twitter.
"It is now for the Supreme
Court to decide whether it will hear Julian's appeal."
"I'm relieved beyond
words," said Sue Barnett, 61, from Nottingham, central England, holding a
placard stating: "10 years enough. Free Assange now."
"We were all fearing the
worst."
Assange's lawyers challenged US
assurances that he would not be held in punishing isolation at a federal
supermax prison, and would receive appropriate care.
His supporters have long argued
that his physical and mental health has been affected by being held on remand
at a high-security prison in southeast London.
He has been behind bars because
he is seen as a flight risk, having previously skipped bail in 2012 over claims
he sexually assaulted two women in Sweden.
He spent seven years at Ecuador's
embassy in London.
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