What Will Happen to Julian Assange Now?
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not be held in supermax prison conditions if he is allowed to be extradited to the United States, American officials have assured British authorities. American officials have made the compromise in the hopes of finally ending the lengthy battle to put Assange, 50, on trial for espionage charges in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported. If Assange is convicted in an American court, U.S. officials have also said the Australian would be allowed to serve jail time in his home country, the outlet reported. The revelations were made in a court ruling provided by the U.K. Crown Prosecution Service obtained by the outlet. BREAKING: The US has been granted limited permission to appeal Januarys decision that Julian #Assange should not be extradited    "The new revelations concerning the DoJ's lead witness confirm what we all knew: that the case against Julian has been built on lies" | Stella Moris pic.twitter.com/ueGSEDxcyX  WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) July 7, 2021  Britain's High Court has also granted the U.S. government permission to appeal a January decision that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be sent to the United States to face espionage charges. The judicial office said Wednesday that the appeal had been granted and the case would be listed for a High Court hearing. No date has been set. In January, a lower court judge refused an American request to send Assange to the U.S. to face spying charges over WikiLeaks publication of secret military documents a decade ago. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition on health grounds, saying Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. The judge ordered that Assange must remain in prison during any potential U.S. appeal, ruling that he 'has an incentive to abscond' if he were freed. Assange has been in London's high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was arrested in April 2019 for skipping bail seven years earlier during a separate legal battle. He had spent seven years holed up inside Ecuador's London embassy, where he fled in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed. For those who still believe the media provides news, please read this. Having led the persecution of Julian #Assange, the "free press" is uniformly silent on sensational news that the case against #Assange has collapsed. Shame on my fellow journalists.https://t.co/qIpvS9FmJG  John Pilger (@johnpilger) July 2, 2021  U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. The prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published. Lawyers for Assange argue that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment freedom of speech protections for publishing documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange's fiance, Stella Moris, urged U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday to drop the prosecution launched under his predecessor, Donald Trump. Moris, who has two young sons with Assange, said outside the High Court that the WikiLeaks founder was 'very unwell' in prison. 'He won his case in January. Why is he even in prison?' she said. She added: 'Six months ago, Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked the extradition of my partner, Julian Assange, because consigning him to the US prison system would have amounted to signing his death warrant. That should have been the end of it. 'The case is rotten to the core, and nothing that the US government can say about his future treatment is worth the paper it is written on. This is a country whose agents plotted to kill Julian on British soil, who harried his solicitors and stole legal documents; who even targeted our six-month-old baby. 'I'm appealing to the Biden administration to do the right thing. This appeal was taken two days before the Trump administration left office, and if the Biden administration is serious about respecting the rule of law, the First Amendment and defending global press freedom, the only thing it can do is drop this case.' Moris also said that the Biden administration 'admits that the Trump Department of Justice lacked independence.' 'It seems inconceivable that President Biden would want to continue with this case  because Julian's freedom is coupled to all our freedoms, and no democratic society can ever make journalism a crime,' she said. 'If the Biden Administration does not end this now, the case will limp through the courts while Julian remains in prison indefinitely, unconvicted, suffering and isolated, while our young children are denied their father.' She added that the 'case is itself falling apart' after the lead witness 'now admits that he lied in exchange for immunity from US prosecutors.' 'The lawyers of Julian were spied on, their offices were broken in to. Even our six-month-old baby was targeted while he was in the embassy,' she said. Moris said that Attorney General Merrick Garland 'has egg on his face' because of the decision to use a witness who allegedly perjured himself in order to try to imprison Assange and keep him there. Moris, who spoke to reporters outside of the the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday, had visited Assange in Belmarsh earlier in the day,  'He is happy when he sees us  it's not representative when I see him because obviously it's the one respite he gets,' she said. 'Belmarsh prison is a terrible place. Just yesterday, another prisoner was found dead in his cell. The suicide rate is three times higher than the average UK prison and it is a daily struggle.' A group of doctors representing over 250 medical professionals from 35 countries wrote to President Joe Biden on Wednesday, urging him to drop charges against Assange under the Espionage Act. They said: 'Mr Assange continues to suffer serious, life-threatening effects of the psychological torture he has been subjected to for more than a decade.' Mark Lytle, a former federal prosecutor who is now a lawyer at the law firm Nixon Peabody, told the Wall Street Journal that the decision to let Assange serve out his sentence in Australia is unusual. 'It is extremely rare, and it's usually based on a process after conviction. To offer it up front to gain extradition, that is a break with the policy,' he said. Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition for the Crown Prosecution Service, told the outlet it was also unusual to assure how Assange would be treated as a prisoner. This article has been adapted from its original source.