By Brian Melley and Jill Lawless —
The Associated Press
A UK court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be immediately extradited to the United States on espionage charges, in a partial victory for the WikiLeaks founder.
Two judges at the UK Supreme Court have said they will grant Assange a new appeal unless US authorities offer more guarantees about what will happen to him.
The ruling means that the legal tangle, which began more than a decade ago, will continue.
The case has been adjourned until May 20.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is transported from a court where he appeared for violating the conditions of his parole seven years ago, in London, on May 1, 2019. Matt Dunham / AP
Judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson declared that, if the United States does not provide guarantees, they will authorize Assange to appeal his extradition on grounds such as the violation of freedom of expression and the possibility of a death sentence.
“If no guarantees are offered, we will grant you permission to appeal without a new hearing,” they indicated.
“If assurances are given, we will give the parties the opportunity to present new allegations before making a final decision on the request to authorize an appeal.”
During a two-day hearing in February at the Supreme Court, Edward Fitzgerald, Assange's lawyer, said that US authorities wanted to punish him for the US government's "exposure of criminality on an unprecedented scale",
including torture and murder.
Assange's supporters have maintained that he is a journalist protected by the First Amendment who exposed irregularities committed by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan that were of public interest and point out that the process is politically motivated and that he will not receive a fair trial in the country. .
The US government asserted that Assange's actions went far beyond journalism by indiscriminately requesting, stealing and publishing classified official documents that endangered innocent lives.
The judges rejected six of the nine arguments presented by Assange in his appeal, but indicated that they would grant his appeal based on three issues: freedom of expression, the claim that he is disadvantaged
because he is not a US citizen
and the risk of being sentenced to the death penalty.
The United States has promised that he will not be sentenced to the death penalty, but the judges said it is "conceivable that that guarantee could be interpreted restrictively by the defendant, so as not to preclude the imposition of the death penalty."
[Julian Assange awaits ruling on his last resort to avoid extradition to the US]
Assange, a 52-year-old Australian computer expert, has been charged in the United States for the publication in 2010 of hundreds of thousands of classified documents on Wikileaks.
US prosecutors allege that he conspired with Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a Pentagon computer and publish diplomatic cables and secret military files on the wars in Iran and Afghanistan.
Assange faces 17 charges of espionage and one of computer misuse.
If convicted, his lawyers said he could face up to 175 years in prison, although U.S. authorities said the sentence is likely to be much shorter.
His wife and supporters have reported that his physical and mental health has been affected by more than a decade of legal battles, including the seven years he spent in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and the five years he has been in a high security prison on the outskirts of the British capital.