UK court denies Assange option to appeal US extradition

The UK Supreme Court on Monday refused an extradition appeal for free speech activist Julian Assange. His organization, WikiLeaks, said Assange's fate now lay in the hands of the UK's Conservative home secretary, Priti Patell.

The politician is now set to decide on an extradition request from the United States.

The whistleblower is accused of publishing secret documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and could be sentenced to up to 175 years for breaking US espionage laws.

What is the case about?

Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006, and drew the ire of Washington by releasing information allegedly obtained by US soldier Chelsea Manning from the US Department of Defense in 2010. The data famously included a recording of a US military helicopter firing at civilians in Baghdad.

US prosecutors claim that his work put lives at risk.

In 2010, Assange was accused of rape by a Swedish woman and of a sexual assault by another following a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm. The Australian-born activist has denied the charges, claiming that sex was consensual. The case against him was eventually dropped in 2019. However, the accusations were enough to prompt Assange to seek asylum in Ecuador and hide in the Ecuadorian embassy in London from 2012 to 2019, when Ecuador stripped him of their citizenship. He was then dragged out of the embassy and is now in UK jail. He is due to marry his partner Stella Moris on March 23.

Assange's fate prompted outrage from Reporters Without Borders, and many other free speech groups from across the world, with Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture,  accusing the US of trying to "criminalize investigative journalism." Melzer also publicly accused Stockholm police of changing the accuser's testimony so that it would appear as if a rape had taken place. The UN official also said Assange was exhibiting symptoms of "psychological torture" during his prolonged detainment. 

What comes next?

Assange has continued to fight US extradition from the UK custody, with a lower court ruling that he should not be extradited because his mental health problems might put him at a risk of suicide in the United States. But this ruling war overturned by a higher court in December.

Now, the United Kingdom's Supreme Court denied his option to appeal because "that application did not raise an arguable point of law" according to a spokesperson.

If the extradition decision is ratified by the United Kingdom's home secretary, Assange's team has the option of trying to challenge it via a judicial review. The 50-year-old could also take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

dj/aw (AP, Reuters, AFP)