Julian Assangeâs partner has said a decision to extradite the WikiLeaks co-founder to the US would be âpolitically and legally disastrous for the UKâ, on the eve of the judgeâs ruling.
Assange, 49, faces an 18-count indictment, alleging a plot to hack computers and a conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information in a case critics have decried as a dangerous attack on press freedom.
At the Old Bailey on Monday, the district judge Vanessa Baraitser will deliver her decision on whether he should be extradited to face the charges in the US, where his lawyers say he faces up to 175 years in jail if convicted. The US government says the sentence is likely to be between four and six years.
Before Baraitserâs ruling, Stella Moris, who has two children with Assange, said a decision to allow extradition would not only be an âunthinkable travestyâ for her partner but would damage cherished British freedoms.
TimelineWikiLeaks releases about 470,000 classified military documents concerning American diplomacy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It later releases a further tranche of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables.
A Swedish prosecutor issues a European arrest warrant for Assange over sexual assault allegations involving two Swedish women. Assange denies the claims.
He turns himself in to police in London and is placed in custody. He is later released on bail and calls the Swedish allegations a smear campaign.
A British judge rules that Assange can be extradited to Sweden. Assange fears Sweden will hand him over to US authorities who could prosecute him.
He takes refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He requests, and is later granted, political asylum.
Assange is questioned in a two-day interview over the allegations at the Ecuadorian embassy by Swedish authorities.
WikiLeaks says Assange could travel to the United States to face investigation if his rights are 'guaranteed'. It comes after one of the site's main sources of leaked documents, Chelsea Manning, is given clemency.
Swedish prosecutors say they have closed their seven-year sex assault investigation into Assange. British police say they would still arrest him if he leaves the embassy as he breached the terms of his bail in 2012.
Britain refuses Ecuador's request to accord Assange diplomatic status, which would allow him to leave the embassy without being arrested.
He loses a bid to have his British arrest warrant cancelled on health grounds.
Ecuador cuts off Assange's internet access alleging he broke an agreement on interfering in other countries' affairs.
US prosecutors inadvertently disclose the existence of a sealed indictment against Assange.
Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno says Assange has 'repeatedly violated' the conditions of his asylum at the embassy.
Police arrest Assange at the embassy on behalf of the US after his asylum was withdrawn. He is charged by the US with 'a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer.'
He is jailed for 50 weeks in the UK for breaching his bail conditions back in 2012. An apology letter from Assange is read out in court, but the judge rules that he had engaged in a 'deliberate attempt to evade justice'. On the following day the US extradition proceedings were formally started.
Swedish prosecutors announce they are reopening an investigation into a rape allegation against Julian Assange.
Home secretary Sajid Javid reveals he has signed the US extradition order for Assange paving the way for it to be heard in court.
Assange's extradition hearing begins at Woolwich crown court in south-east London. After a week of opening arguments, the extradition case is to be adjourned until May. Further delays are caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
A hearing scheduled for four weeks begins at the Old Bailey with the US government expected to make their case that Assange tried to recruit hackers to find classified government information. If the courts approve extradition, the British government will still have the final say.
Was this helpful? Thank you for your feedback.âIt would rewrite the rules of what it is permissible to publish here,â Moris wrote in the Mail on Sunday. âOvernight, it would chill free and open debate about abuses by our own government and by many foreign ones, too.
âIn effect, foreign countries could simply issue an extradition request saying that UK journalists, or Facebook users for that matter, have violated their censorship laws. The press freedoms we cherish in Britain are meaningless if they can be criminalised and suppressed by regimes in Russia or Ankara or by prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia.â
The case against Assange relates to WikiLeaksâs publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011.
Prosecutors say Assange helped the US defence analyst Chelsea Manning breach the Espionage Act, was complicit in hacking by others and published classified information that endangered US informants.
Assange denies plotting with Manning to crack an encrypted password on US Department of Defense computers and says there is no evidence anyoneâs safety was compromised.
His lawyers argue the prosecution is politically motivated and that he is being pursued because WikiLeaks published US government documents that revealed evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, said: âThe mere fact that this case has made it to court let alone gone on this long is an historic, large-scale attack on freedom of speech.
âThe US government should listen to the groundswell of support coming from the mainstream media editorials, NGOs around the world such as Amnesty and Reporters Without Borders and the United Nations who are all calling for these charges to be dropped.â
Assange has been held in the high-security Belmarsh prison since police carried him out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had taken refuge for seven years, and arrested him for breaching his bail conditions.
The UN special rapporteur on torture, Prof Nils Melzer, who has visited him in Belmarsh, has said Assange is showing all of the symptoms associated with prolonged exposure to psychological torture and should not be extradited. The court heard he had been diagnosed with Aspergerâs syndrome, and psychiatrists for the defence said he suffered from severe depression and was a high suicide risk.