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US wins appeal against UK ruling that blocked Julian Assange’s extradition

Protestors hold signs calling for Julian Assange to be freed.

Enlarge / Supporters of Julian Assange outside the Royal Courts of Justice on December 10, 2021, in London, England. (credit: Getty Images | Chris Ratcliffe )

A UK court ruling today brought the US government one step closer to securing the extradition of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who faces criminal charges for his alleged role in helping Chelsea Manning steal classified information from the US Department of Defense. The ruling was issued today by the UK’s High Court of Justice in London.

Today’s decision came in response to the United States’ appeal of a January 2021 district judge’s judgment that rejected the particular extradition request on the grounds that Assange would be at greater risk of suicide in the American prison system. The district judge’s ruling criticized US prison conditions and noted that “Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide at the MCC jail in August 2019” and Chelsea Manning “was hospitalized after an attempt to commit suicide at the ADC jail [William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia] in 2020. ”

In February, the ALL OF US offered several assurances to typically the UK about how Assange will be treated after extradition. The High Court was satisfied that these assurances “[e]xclude this possibility of Mr. Assange being made subject to ‘special administrative measures’ or held at often the ‘ADX’ facility (a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, USA), either pretrial or after any conviction, unless, after entry associated with the assurances, he commits any kind of future act which renders him liable to such conditions regarding detention, ” according to your court’s summary of today’s ruling .

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