Court to announce if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be extradited to the United States

After five years of battling extradition to the US to face 17 counts of espionage, Julian Assange will hear his fate when the UK High Court announces its decision at 9.30pm (AEDT).

Julian Assange speaks to the media from the balcony of the Embassy Of Ecuador in London, 2017. Picture: Getty Images.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will know whether he will be extradited to the United States later tonight Australian time.

After five years of battling extradition to the United States to face 17 counts of espionage and a computer misuse charge for revealing hundreds of thousands of classified military documents in 2010, Mr Assange will hear his fate at 9.30pm AEDT when two British High Court judges hand down a decision.

This could be the 52-year-old’s final day in the UK and hundreds of supporters are expected outside the Royal Courts of Justice to hear the decision.

If the result goes Mr Assange’s way, the court will allow a further appeal to a full court of the High Court and he will most likely remain in Belmarsh prison.

If it doesn’t, Mr Assange will be on a US military plane to Virginia almost immediately and he will be held in a maximum security remand centre until trial.

Mr Assange faces a maximum term of 175 years if found guilty on all charges, however in repeated court sessions US lawyers have insisted the usual sentence would be around five years. The Americans have also negotiated a deal with the Australian government that if he is convicted, Mr Assange will be sent to Australia to serve out his sentence.

Mr Assange’s wife Stella, who has two young sons by Mr Assange tweeted this morning: “This is it.”

This is it.

DECISION TOMORROW.

10.30am
Royal Courts of Justice#FreeAssangeNOWhttps://t.co/QzQEvejJNupic.twitter.com/pt6nIeiaIt

— Stella Assange #FreeAssangeNOW (@Stella_Assange) March 25, 2024

Mrs Assange had told The Australian during a Foreign Press Association briefing earlier this month that she feared the US may extradite her husband without warning in secrecy and darkness without any time to act.

In one other case involving an extradition from Britain to the United States, she said US marshals took the individual within 24 hours.

She said: “They weren’t taken to Heathrow or on a commercial flight, they weren’t where unions could take some kind of action, they were taken onto a US airfield and flown on a military jet to the United States.”

Mrs Assange added: “The show would be on the other end, it would be done in secrecy and darkness. It would be done without any time to react, the kind of show would happen once he was in Virginia in United States custody.”

Mr Assange’s lawyers are preparing to lodge a petition to the European Court of Human Rights for a rarely granted emergency injunction to stop any extradition, but a decision may not come through in time.

Earlier this month, The Wall St Journal reported that the US Justice Department and Mr Assange’s lawyers were in talks over a plea deal that would allow him to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information, resulting in his release from prison.

The lesser charge would be a misdemeanor offence to which Mr Assange could plead remotely, and likely be freed shortly after any deal was concluded.

Mr Assange, held in the high security Belmarsh jail as a remand prisoner, was too ill to attend the last two day High Court hearing.

His legal worries had begun nearly 14 years ago almost immediately after releasing hundreds of thousands of war logs and classified military documents relating to the Afghan and Iraq wars on the WikiLeaks website. Fearing the United States government was using a Swedish investigation into alleged sexual misdemeanours as a pretext to try and extradite him to US territory, Mr Assange fled to the Ecuador embassy in London seeking asylum.

He was in the embassy for nearly seven years before British police dragged him out in April 2019.

It was later revealed security officials working inside the embassy had been providing video and other surveillance to the CIA. It has also been reported that the CIA had canvassed options to assassinate the Australian.

In the initial extradition 2019 hearing the Westminster magistrates court ruled Mr Assange was at high risk of suicide if he was to be extradited and placed in the maximum security cells of the US justice system.

Mrs Assange says that her husband faces charges that could result in him spending the rest of his life in a maximum-security prison for publishing true information that revealed war crimes committed by the US government.