No plea deal seen as Julian Assange faces what could be his final extradition hearing

London: The wife of jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he is unlikely to accept any plea deal with the United States government in return for early release over espionage and computer hacking charges, believing it would set a dangerous precedent for journalism.

Assange, 52, an Australian hacker-turned-publisher, faces what could be his final court hearing in London starting on Tuesday as he tries to stop his extradition to the US on charges relating to the 2010 disclosure of a huge cache of classified government documents.

Stella Assange, wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, attends a news conference ahead of Julian Assange’s final UK appeal hearing, in London.Credit: AP

England’s High Court has scheduled two days of arguments over whether Assange, who spent seven years in self-exile inside a foreign embassy and the past five years in prison, can ask an appeals court to block his transfer. If the court doesn’t allow the appeal to go forward, he could be sent across the Atlantic.

In several media appearances ahead of the hearing, Stella Assange said her husband was “extremely weak” both physically and mentally, and warned the decision could be a matter of life and death.

On Monday, she said she was convinced that if her husband was extradited to the US, “he will die” and revealed that the Australian High Commissioner to the UK, Stephen Smith, had intervened over Christmas to secure medical attention for Assange at Belmarsh Prison.

Three years ago, a London court temporarily blocked his extradition to the US because the move would put him at risk of suicide.

Julian Assange in 2017.Credit: AP

Asked if Assange was considering a plea deal with the US Department of Justice, which could involve authorities downgrading the charges in exchange for a guilty plea, Stella Assange said her husband was not prepared to admit guilt when none applied.

“The only thing that he would be pleading to is journalism,” she told the ABC. “He is being accused of receiving information from a source, information that was in the public interest, that belonged in the public, and the US is actually engaged in an admission, an admission that they now criminalise journalism.

“Journalism has been re-classed as espionage; an unprecedented prosecution has been taken against a publisher for the very first time in the more than 100-year history of this act and it is going to set a precedent … that can then be used against the rest of press anywhere in the world,” she said.

The US wants Assange to face trial on one charge of computer hacking and 17 charges of violating the 1917 Espionage Act, relating to one of the biggest leaks of classified material in history. If found guilty, Assange faces up to 175 years in jail, although authorities have said any sentence is likely to be much lower.

Prosecutors say he conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trove included 90,000 reports relating to the war in Afghanistan, 400,000 relating to the Iraq war and 250,000 US diplomatic cables. Manning’s 35-year prison sentence was commuted by then US president Barack Obama after four years.

Assange also published thousands of emails belonging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, a development that dominated her 2016 election campaign.

Lawyers for Assange plan to argue he can’t get a fair trial in the US, that a US-UK treaty prohibits extradition for political offences and that the crime of espionage was not meant to apply to publishers.

His lawyers believe his foreign nationality and his political opinions would make it difficult for him to get a fair trail. Also, they believe Biden may see Assange as “closer to a high-tech terrorist than a whistleblower”.

Assange and his supporters have also argued his leaking of classified military documents should be protected under the US Constitution’s First Amendment because he was acting as a journalist when he published the documents. Those who’ve questioned the charges include the editorial boards of The New York Times and The Guardian, as well as Amnesty International.

He has been held at London’s Belmarsh jail since April 2019 when he was sentenced for skipping bail conditions. He had previously spent seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy after breaking bail in 2012 when he was due to be extradited to Sweden on unrelated sexual assault charges, which were subsequently dropped. He was arrested and forcibly removed from the Ecuadorean embassy by British police in 2019.

Stella Assange told BBC Radio 4’s Today program that “this could very well be the final hearing for Julian”.

“Julian cannot, will never be safe in a US prison, there is no question about it,” she said. “We know that there are elections coming up in the United States. He will simply never be safe if he is in US custody.”

If the London court rejects Assange’s plea for a full appeal, he could be extradited to the US once British officials approve his removal. His legal team plans to appeal an adverse ruling to the European Court of Human Rights, but they fear he could possibly be transferred before the court in Strasbourg, France, could halt his removal.

Australia’s parliament last week passed a motion calling for Assange’s return to Australia, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, one of 86 MPs to vote in favour against 42 who opposed. He said he hoped the case could be “resolved amicably”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last year pushed back against Australian government demands for an end to Assange’s prosecution, saying he was accused of “very serious criminal conduct”.

With agencies

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.