The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange is more likely tonight to be extradited to the United States than he has been in since running afoul of Swedish and American authorities in 2010. The reason Mr. Assange is getting bad news for Christmas in 2021 is that the 50-year-old Intel nightmare just lost an appeal in the Royal Courts of Justice in London. American prosecutors must’ve been high-fiving all-around after winning their appeal, overruling a London district Judge who ruled Assange couldn’t be extradited due to his likely suicide risk in an American prison.
According to Reuters,
“Judge Timothy Holroyde said he was satisfied with a package of assurances given by the United States about the conditions of Assange’s detention, including a pledge not to hold him in a so-called “ADX” maximum-security prison in Colorado and that he could be transferred to Australia to serve his sentence if convicted.”
Swedish authorities initially attempted to capture Assange to prosecute him for alleged sexual assaults against three women. He came to the attention of the American intelligence and law enforcement communities following the arrest and trial of Pvt. Bradley (aka Chelsea) Manning and the sudden emergence of hundreds of classified diplomatic cables, videos, and reports on WikiLeaks which thoroughly embarrassed the most powerful men and women in the world.
At this point, the next step for Assange is an appeal to the UK Supreme Court, the highest court of appeal in the land which was only recently grafted onto the pre-existing UK legal system standing in place of the House of Lords and the monarch as the ultimate last appeals in the United Kingdom.
“It is highly disturbing that a U.K. court has overturned a decision not to extradite Julian Assange, accepting vague assurances by the United States government,” Assange’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said. “Mr. Assange will seek review of this decision by the U.K. Supreme Court.”
Assange: Hero, Villain, Criminal, Prisoner
Many if not most employees of media corporations hate Assange and are fine seeing him imprisoned because he's broken more major stories than all of them combined.
Many if not most Democrats feel the same because his accurate 2016 reporting reflected poorly on Hillary & the DNC.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 9, 2021
Like so many other questions in the world today, that of whether Julian Assange is a heroic journalist or a global criminal guilty of aiding and abetting espionage on an epic scale, a sexual predator, or a victim of false accusation is as much a politically driven decision as any other. Simply put, the facts have not been borne out, Assange has never stood trial for his crimes, only for possible extradition to either Sweden or the U.S., and until he has his day in court the world will never know with any certainty. President Donald Trump was lobbied to pardon Assange and chose not to do so. To date neither have President Obama or the Biden-Harris regime, suggesting that perhaps some things are still bipartisan. Republican or Democrat, it seems the government still wants him to stand before the court.